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I have been interested in Zen for a while and I'm trying to educate myself as best I can by listening to SFZC podcasts at work and reading whatever I can, but something confuses me. Brian Enos' book Practical Shooting: Beyond Fundamentals kind of spurred this, but the lenses I've found for mindfulness and letting go of Self are handgun shooting (when I find time to do it) and archery. Enos isn't a Zen teacher by any stretch, but he lines up with a lot of what Shunryu Suzuki seems to be driving at in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and his website has an entire subforum dedicated to applying Zen principles to shooting sports. I don't see any reason why a martial art (peacefully practiced) or precision sport of any kind should be antithetical to Buddhism, but I see aversion to it out there. SFZC had a speaker make some garbled mention of it after Newtown, and DhammaWiki has some ridiculous distinction between rifle competition (rifles are designed to kill) and handgun competition (apparently handguns are not?) and seems to accept handguns but not rifles. Shooting is shooting, and letting the Self go to "just shoot" doesn't change from one shooting platform to the next. It's the same on a bow, on a handgun, on a rifle, on a shotgun, doesn't matter. It's even the same casting with a fly rod for accuracy. I just don't see any difference in my experiences. Am I just confused, or is there some aversion to exploring Buddhist concepts (specifically Zen ones) through martial arts practices? If there is, why? Kennebago fucked around with this message at 20:07 on May 14, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 20:01
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Paramemetic posted:Also, there are other ways to further your practice than shooting a gun, so they might consider that to be the better case. I personally would see a difference between shooting a performance, sport designed high powered rifle, or a .22LR, and, say, an AR15 or even a Garand or another war rifle. I get the first sentence here and can see validity to that suggestion, but isn't drawing linguistic distinctions between "war rifle" and "not a war rifle" kind of at odds with Zen thought, though? Also, wouldn't kendo or judo be equally not so good as IDPA or IPSC competition (if not much, much worse)? This is where I fall down - striking or throwing someone is ok, but clearing a plate rack or shooting standardized paper silhouette targets at speed is bad? Or 3D archery vs bullseye competition, etc. At a high level they're just precision sports; there is no force-on-force aspect to them at all, so why does the equipment make a difference? Edit: Whoops, missed your edit - that makes a little more sense. Thanks for explaining. Soft vs hard is why I think shooting lends itself so well to Zen or Taoist interpretations, and why I am so confused by the reactions I see out there. The weak link in the system is always the shooter, and the more you "force" a shot the worse you are, and physical rigidity always, without fail, works against the shooter. This is true regardless of platform. Kennebago fucked around with this message at 21:38 on May 14, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 21:27
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