home: https://starling.us/gan
by Ĝan Ŭesli Starling
copyright 2007-2026
Once taken entirely for granted as both necessary and required, meditation has, in the past decade, become a topic much debated on martial arts Internet discussion boards. All these debates are initiated by persons who fear it will undermine their own preferred religious tradition. These fears are born entirely of ignorance.
Nevertheless, seeking to avoid conflict, many a martial arts school throughout the West has degraded this element of their tradition so as to provide no instruction, allowing it to decay into an empty ritual...a thirty-second waste of time.
This situation had ought be repaired or else the practice simply abandoned. Yet the latter would be tragic as it has genuine utility for each and every martial artist regardless of their personal philosophy. Below I will povide a simple introduction together with comparisons which should suffice to allay all fears.
Meditation is just a technique, a method, a skillful application of concentrated awareness. Purely in and of itself that’s all it is and nothing more. All else depends upon context. Context itself is two-fold: internal & external. Of these two, it is the internal context which takes precedence. And this has further sub-distinctions which are likewise two-fold:
With respect to these two, meditation differs in no slightest way whatsoever from other skills the martial artist seeks to achieve. Nor even yet in any other walk of life beyond the martial arts themselves. Take driving, for instance. You can drive a police car or a getaway car, a church bus, a school bus or a Greyhound bus. You can drive an ambulance or a Sherman tank. The skill sets for each of these differ only very slightly. But how very dissimilar indeed their motivations, application and eventual results.
Meditation, like any skill set, has myriad possible applications. Some are general, others highly specialized. Those of highly specialized variety require a meditator to steer their chosen course of contemplation strictly within established limits. Without these steering mechanisms the specialized context is entirely lost. Establishing the context is an effort of will.
I often read of persons outside the Buddhist faith who fear to engage in meditation lest they tresspass away from their own belief system. This fear is wholly unfounded. It takes a deliberate religious intent for meditation to be Buddhist. One can read for themself where the historic Buddha admonished his followers that a meditator “...puts forth effort, strains his mind, and struggles.” The same is true with respect to hindu or sufi or any other specialized meditative context. All those traditions proclaim at great length how single-minded of purpose the meditator must be to accomplish each tradition’s specialized meditative goal. Short of this the effort is wasted.
Clearly then, to practice meditation in a religious context one must first wholeheartedly embrace that context. Short of this no specialized realization of that context will occur. All traditions agree on this. Thus any fear that one might accidentally transgress outside their chosen faith is unfounded. The mere technique of meditation is neutral. All else depends upon one’s chosen context. Context is all-embracing, but for the sake of convenience, let us divide and conquer by halves.
Just as with the technique of driving, so too with meditation. You have to steer determinedly else you shall not, will not, cannot arrive at any pre-defined goal.
Allow me to illustrate. Open any how-to manual of Tibetan buddhist meditation and you will find the practice begining with never fewer than two, and sometimes as often as six, preparatory, context-defining, elements. At minimum, these include Refuge and Bodhicitta, the first establishing one’s relationship to ultimate goals, the second one’s distinct motivation. Moreover, it will always conclude Dedication of Merit to re-inforce the second. To a Tibetan, these are not emtpy formulae but all-important, context-defining requirements without which the practice isn’t properly buddhist at all.
This internal context is the more important half. So consider... Toward what objective do you strive and what is the nature of your own personal motivation. No one can define these for you. Nor can they thrust a foreign objective upon you. Nor can they inject a foreign motivation into you. To such extent as this you are entirely safe from untoward, intrusive foreign influence.
This refers to the immediate environs wherein you choose to meditate. The atmosphere may either aid or hinder your efforts. They may either inspire or distract you. A novice religious meditator would establish imagery to inspire his or her contemplation. An experienced one could just as easily do without. A novice will seek some quiet locale. The experienced can tune out unwanted distractions. Environs unsuited to meditation are just as often unsuited to other persuits as well. You must either control or else adapt to your environs. Unless they are overtly religious and contrary to your personal outlook, then there ought be little to fear from practicing meditation therein. And, with practice, you will immunize yourself against external influences in any case.
This most basic technique of meditation is nearly always the same regardless of context. The point is to focus one’s power of observation concentratedly upon a single object and hold it there without distraction. This is accomplished, not as a triumph of the will, but deftly, subtly, with the finesse of one highly skilled.
The particular object of concentration can be anything at all. Or it might be no thing at all. In a distinctly religious context, the object of meditation would itself be distinctly religious. In an otherwise more vaguely spiritual context, the object would have to likewise manage to be vaguely spiritual. But these are specialized contexts, something for the more experienced meditator, should they so choose. The meditator must know their object and accept it else they cannot observe it with proper concentration.
First one must develop the skill of concentrated awareness. And to exercise oneself in this skill the simplest and most handy object for observation is the breath. The breath as an object of meditation has numerous advantages.
Choose a quiet place free of compelling distractions, auditory or visual.
Develop, through practice, this basic skill in the quiet of your own home. It will not develop quickly.
What follows is just one example. The details are bound to vary from one MA environment to the next. Consider it as but one example of a semi-specialized, martial arts context.
After bowing, et cetera, await the instructor’s signal. In Korean this is Moong yum!
Carry forth the outlook thus deliberately formulated into whatever activities may follow. Having set your attitude by effort it will, with sufficient repetition, gradually become more habitual. It will, in due course, become entirely natural to you. These values are entirely generic and mundane. There being no religious (or even vaguely spiritual) content therein, what harm can possibly result from concentrating thereupon? Fears of religious undermining are clearly unfounded.
The discipline to ignore a thought when your attention is needed elsewhere is essential to any martial artist. The trick of simply dismissing a thought unattended is far more skillful than the effort of dire and forceful supression.
The skill to observe, focusedly, in the here and now prevents your sinking into that leaden, whatever shall I to do next mode of internal distraction. Thus when your opponent makes their move, you are more quickly aware of it. Should they sink into internal distraction, you are more quickly aware of that too.
The freedom to choose, at will, which attitude you shall embrace for a given circumstance allows you to situate yourself as best befits the time and place. Being thus nimble of both mind and heart you will find yourself better able to support whatever ideals you profess to hold dear and more deft in avoiding their opposite.
Freed from the obsession to outwardly project meaning upon all and sundry you accept things for what they are and participate at one less remove. Thus your participation becomes more participatory, your responses more spontaneous.
And last but not least, you free yourself of constantly having to tell yourself the story of you. Once free of that, little impetus remains to constantly tell others the (usually somewhat fantasised, even slightly fictional) story of you. With no story to either project or protect, others have less of a handle with which to yank you around. How this works is subtle. You elect to gradually habituate your natural self towards that ideal which formerly had only been an artificial construct built mostly for display to others. You learn to grow into it rather than merely put it on in the manner of a costume.
One especial benefit is self-assurance. Through constantly observing yourself from within (rather than awaiting report on how other’s see you from without) you will have grown to know yourself quite intimately. Whosoever knows themself to the Nth degree rises above all insult and intimidation. Verbal attacks will loose their sting since whatever flaw or lack has been called attention to is already admitted. Whatever remedies are needed you will be already putting into effect. Nor will will ficiticious accusations stir stir any inner pangs of dread for their possibly being true. You will already know yourself too well for that.
For the sake of presenting a wholly mundane (non-contraversial) analogy representing the skill required for basic meditation as described above, allow me to suggest that you study Morse code.
I do both you see, meditate and read Morse code. When reading Morse code your focus needs to keep on track in the here and now. Think about the characters you’ve heard a moment before and you’ll miss the characters being sent now. Having missed the character being sent now, you’ll stress out and not attend the character being sent after that.
Think too much on the characters being sent now and you’ll try and guess the characters yet to come. Most of the time you’ll guess right. But when you guess wrong you’ll flub the characters which do get sent, stress out, and miss more yet after that.
So you must divide your awareness. The ear must listen to the characters being sent now. The mind must not judge their meaning but wait until after a whole word has been sent and then simply realize it.
If a dog barks, a phone rings, or something else in the house goes beep such that you do flub a character then no slightest panic may be allowed to arise. You simply await the next character to come and let what remains of the text present itself.
You cannot think your way through the problem of interpreting Morse code. All you can do is be observant while it occurs. Just so, in martial arts you cannot think your way through an encounter. Too much spontaneity is lost. Too many opportunities flash into and out of existence before they are even recognized. In addition to philosophical investigation, the power to observe intently and with dispassion has many a useful application.
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