Impolite Company

Training with Intention

This is a quote taken from Jeffrey Brooks book, Rhinoceros Zen:  Zen Martial Arts and the Path to Freedom:

In karate practice every move you make must be made with
intention. You can’t just reposition your body in the air, adopt the
posture of a punch or a block and think you are really training
karate. In karate your intention itself is what you are training.
A kata is a sequence of fighting moves performed against a series
of imaginary opponents. It is one of the two primary methods for
training in the traditional martial arts—not only on Okinawa, but in
China and Japan as well. If kata is trained without intention in the
movements it will not be useful for self- defense. If you are training
your intention, not just your posture, it is an effective means of
perfecting fighting skills.

Kata: Obsession in the Pursuit

Kata should be approach(ed) as art on one level, and the pursuit of the kata should, in my opinion, have all of the elements that I touched on: a fever, desire, even obsession. The pursuit of kata should involve the desire(,) the desire to achieve more tha(n) skill, but become art. . And let me be clear the word obsession, it teeters on imbalance. Hmmmm… teetering on the edge of imbalance – where the action is in pursuit of art.

                                            --Obsession in the Pursuit, from The Striking Post

It's a tough line to walk--there has to be an obsessive element to raise any pursuit to an art form that causes other parts of your life to suffer by comparison.  You don't want that to create an imbalance that makes your life too one-dimensional but you do want it to create a spirit of freedom that allows you to take chances and explore, both in your art and in the rest of your life.  Where you draw the line (and how well you hue to it) will be different for everyone.