My way to the dragon

(Photo: Google pics)

“It is like a finger pointing to the moon: don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all the heavenly glory…”. Captain America was my first hero not solely because of marvels series thrilling and f8ull of actions, but because of the kind of body that he had built up. I had fallen in love with the shape of him and hence aspired to learn more about bodybuilding. So as aspirations and expectations started pointing towards the whole new process of training up the physical body, grace dawned and exposed its heavenly glory-the dragon, the god of mixed martial arts (MMA), the legendary and unbeaten Bruce Lee. Luckily I did not concentrate on impressing others and gathering fame.

Martial arts is a scientific approach to carry out your body movements in such a fashion, that given the constraints, how effectively can one use the energy, surroundings and circumstances to produce the maximum impact to knock out the opponent. It is a very ancient science much forgotten and neglected in the digital world where the civilization attend only to their thoughts and petty logic, spiritual masters, who had transcended lust and attachment realized that one has to train the body and mind complex to extreme perfection in order to embrace the eternity and therefore they came up with verities of techniques. Besides these codified systems of combat are also practised for self-defence, military, law enforcement, entertainment, and preservation of a nation’s intangible cultural heritage.

Fallen in the trap, I was living a life of dull and meaningless routine, goals set by the society, working hard to make up the expectations of relatives and neighbours, parents and teachers, growth has stopped, awareness forcibly anaesthetized, when entered Bruce Lee. He was an actor, a philosopher, martial artist, a bodybuilder, an action choreographer, a director and a writer. He experimented with different training techniques and nutritional diets. He discovered a scientific method to a heavily built but lean body. Tao of jeet kune do (JKD), written by him and later published by his friends and his wife proves his enlightenment into a pure state of endless knowledge and immense strength. He reigns in the hearts of millions and his philosophy continues to inspire generations. His dedication and devotion to his duty and training urge one to give him a seat next to God when it comes to strength, power and stamina.

From him I learnt the way to learn, “I said empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water: now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot, be water, my friend. Once you train your mind to start to “express yourself honestly, not lying to oneself “, you truly get involved in the actions, even the minutes of them are done consciously.” “martial arts ultimately means expressing oneself honestly”. Clarity radiates and thereby one realizes that “all knowledge ultimately means self-knowledge”, and thereby the person transcends all limitations and sufferings. It reminds me of a similar Buddhist saying “to study the way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be enlightened by all things “. Expressions take the form of anger, determination, dedication, fearless actions, careless attitude towards obstacles, and when the goal is met you aspire for greater perfection till a day comes when you free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying because to learn to die is to be liberated from it”.

In conclusion, I bow down before this great personality and confess that I lack precision and realization to describe a man who lived his life revolutionizing martial arts, to gift the world the highest techniques of combat that are to have no technique at all.

~ Sutirtha

LEARNING TO LET GO...

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