Mindful Forms and the art of Mindfulness… What is the reason to keep the form?

Mindful Forms and Learning

Good morning, folks! I am Jin with Morning Mindfulness Podcast. Hope you are doing great wherever you are! Let’s breathe and smile.

I was recently taking another lesson from my teacher. As you know, perhaps, I am studying Zen music, and this is my playing you can hear on the background. He told me something about Zen tradition that I think is also applicable to Yoga, Qigong, Martial arts and many other things.

Zen music came out of numerous very unregulated ancient traditions and became a very rigid Path of Zen practice. Look at tea ceremony. Every move has to be painfully precise. Same with Karate. Every kata has to be exact. Calligraphy, ikebana, whatever you look at. Yoga asanas for that matter.

However, one thing I noticed long ago, my teachers never talk about any spiritual stuff. At some point I even thought it didn’t exist in the tradition. It does, just in a different way.

What my teacher said, the concept of precision in the form was created to put our body into specific shape, like a vessel. And also to take our mind off the topic of divinity through multiple and not always pleasant repetitions. Because if we start talking about spiritual development, or about divine nature of practice, it instantly creates various interpretations of spiritual doctrines in different people.

However, teaching physical forms and following the rigid Path does not create any misunderstanding because it is all tangible. Obviously. That shapes the body. That makes a vessel.

Once the vessel is ready, the spirit will enter it on it’s own. We don’t have to worry about that. Then the form becomes redundant. That’s why masters don’t need to follow the same form as we, students, do.

There’s also a different, Taoist, approach, which is basically formless and intuitive. I will talk about it another time.

Thanks for stopping by.

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PEACE!
Jin

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