Nagare: Sanshin to Mushin
From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumablog
As individuals our actions have very little chance to change the way the Universe is running because Nature does not take our human desires into account. The meteorite that crashed in the Yucatan 65 millions years ago might have been obeying the laws of the Universe, the dinosaurs didn’t agree with it crushing them all!
As we cannot influence what is outside our Body&Mind (B&M) complex/entity, we must recenter our actions for the exclusive benefit of ourselves by flowing and drifting aimlessly within (or on top of) the outside world. The B&M has to learn to achieve “total coordination” in order to develop this natural ability to flow.
The 流れ(flow, nagare) is more than a movement it is above all an attitude in Life, and this is exactly what I have been learning during the last 26 years with Hatsumi sensei. We train to suppress the thinking and analytical process in our actions. This is the secret of Hatsumi sensei’s budô.
In a real fight if you are (body + mind + intention + analysis) you are dead . Fighting is about reacting without intention 無想 (musô), and not about having a perfect body shape, a fantastic mind, and a lot of intentions!
Our first objective is to find this unity and instead of being three (body, mind, and consciousness) to become ONE. This unity is possibly achieved by training thoroughly the fundamentals and the basics of the bujinkan.
Unity is 結束 (kessoku) but the first kanji is yû 結 (like in yûgen) from which we understand that from the ONE we can find the invisible nagare and become ZERO.
When the practitioner reaches this level of “oneness” he gain access to the “zero state” of 無心 (mushin) he can flow without intentions on the stream of Life.
And the proof is that 無心, mushin has also the meaning of “innocence”, like the innocence of a 3 year old kid (cf. sanshin no kata). leads to mushin.
“3″ becomes “1″ and “1″ becomes “0″
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