just learned how to use modern technology! see you can teach an old dog new tricks!
I suppose QR tags are the way forward.
worth spending time enjoying
One may encounter two kinds of five elements philosophy in Japan. One is called, in Japanese, gogyō 五行, having its backgrounds in the Chinese five elements, and the other is called godai 五大. Godai is usually regarded as a Buddhism term in Japan, with certain influences from Hinduism. The following article explains the latter.
The Buddhist philosophy godai, lit. “five great”, is perhaps best known in the West for their use in Miyamoto Musashi’s famous text Gorin-no-sho (The Book of Five Rings), in which he explains different aspects of swordsmanship by assigning each aspect to an element.
Chi地
Chi (sometimes ji) or tsuchi, meaning “Earth”, represents the hard, solid objects of the world. The most basic example of chi is in a stone. Stones are highly resistant to movement or change, as is anything heavily influenced by chi. In people, the bones, muscles and tissues are represented by chi. Emotionally, chi is predominantly associated with stubbornness, stability, physicality, and gravity. It is a desire to have things remain as they are; a resistance to change. In the mind, it is confidence. When under the influence of this chi mode or “mood”, we are aware of our own physicality and sureness of action. (Note: This is a separate concept from the energy-force, pronounced in Chinese as qì (also written ch’i) and in Japanese as ki, and written alternatively as 気, 氣, or 气.)
Sui水
Sui or mizu, meaning “Water”, represents the fluid, flowing, formless things in the world. Outside of the obvious example of rivers and the like, plants are also categorized under sui, as they adapt to their environment, growing and changing according to the direction of the sun and the changing seasons. Blood and other bodily fluids are represented by sui, as are mental or emotional tendencies towards adaptation and change. Sui can be associated with emotion, defensiveness, adaptability, flexibility, suppleness, and magnetism.
Ka火
Ka or hi, meaning “Fire”, represents the energetic, forceful, moving things in the world. Animals, capable of movement and full of forceful energy, are primary examples of ka objects. Bodily, ka represents our metabolism and body heat, and in the mental and emotional realms, it represents drive and passion. ka can be associated with motivation, desire, intention, and an outgoing spirit. Besides the obvious examples of heat and flame, lightning can also be thought of as an extension of Ka.
Fū風
Fū or kaze, meaning “Wind”, represents things that grow, expand, and enjoy freedom of movement. Aside from air, smoke, and the like, fū can in some ways be best represented by the human mind. As we grow physically, we learn and expand mentally as well, in terms of our knowledge, our experiences, and our personalities. Fū represents breathing, and the internal processes associated with respiration. Mentally and emotionally, it represents an “open-minded” attitude and carefree feeling. It can be associated with will, elusiveness, evasiveness, benevolence, compassion, and wisdom.
Kū空
Kū or sora, most often translated as “Void”, but also meaning “sky” or “Heaven”, represents those things beyond our everyday experience, particularly those things composed of pure energy. Bodily, kū represents spirit, thought, and creative energy. It represents our ability to think and to communicate, as well as our creativity. It can also be associated with power, creativity, spontaneity, and inventiveness.
Kū is of particular importance as the highest of the elements. In martial arts, particularly in fictional tales where the fighting discipline is blended with magic or the occult, one often invokes the power of the Void to connect to the quintessential creative energy of the world. A warrior properly attuned to the Void can sense their surroundings and act without thinking, and without using their physical senses.
Representations of the Godai The most common representations today of the five elements, outside of martial arts and fictional references, are found in Buddhist architecture. Japanese stone lanterns as seen in Zen gardens and Buddhist temples have five divisions which represent the five elements, although the five segments can be hard to discern. The bottom-most piece, touching the ground, represents chi; the next section represents sui; ka is represented by the section encasing the lantern’s light or flame, while fū and kū are represented by the last two sections, top-most and pointing towards the sky.
Another common symbol of the five elements is the gorintō, a stone tower of modest size used mainly in Buddhist temples and cemeteries. It is composed from bottom to top of a cube, a sphere, a triangle, a crescent and something resembling a lotus flower, shapes that also have the meaning described above.
(Source: mushindojo.org)
fantastic
(via wordslessspoken)
1 - Spend more time in direct contact with nature Want to boost your conscious awareness? Turn off the TV, ditch the X-Box, and go hiking in a state park somewhere. Go trail running. Plant a garden. Or just take your dog for a walk! Spending time in nature heightens your senses, opens your heart and expands your sense of connection with who you are and the miracle of creation. So make an effort to spend more time in nature, and if you can manage it, move to a farm or ranch where you can actually live in nature. 2 - Eat more high-vibration living foods and superfoods Raising your consciousness means raising your nutritional standards, too. You’re never going to attain a high level of self awareness if your brain is running on junk food, chemical preservatives and artificial colors. Those are things, in fact, that destroy awareness and cognitive function. The highest-vibration foods you can get for awareness expansion are wild-crafted foods you go out and find yourself (in a forest, a field, etc.). The second highest foods are those you grow yourself, usually in a home garden or a sprouting machine. After years of studying and teaching nutrition, the pattern is obvious: People who live on low-vibration foods (junk foods, fast foods and processed foods) have diminished consciousness and impaired cognitive function. They tend to have narrow, selfish minds and are incapable of assessing information from a wide perspective. They live on microwaveable dinners, they drink diet soda, and they vote for whatever political candidate the media tells them to. They are, in essence, “zombies” who operate more as brainwashed consumers than conscious human beings. The junk food poisoning of our modern world is one of the most astonishing un-reported stories of our generation. I plan to cover it more here on NaturalNews, by the way, to reveal the links between the junk food supply and the downfall of complex civilization. For now, focus your effort on increasing your consumption of high-vibration foods, meaning living foods, sprouted foods, wild-crafted foods and home-grown foods. 3 - Clean your clutter to clear your mind Is your house a jumble of clutter? Do you have so much junk stacked up everywhere that you only have a narrow pathway through it all from your bedroom to your kitchen? The more clutter you have in your home or office, the more cluttered your mind tends to be. Eliminating that clutter is key to finding some peace in your own home. I’ve struggled with this, by the way. The situation becomes even more complex when you practice preparedness food storage like I do. As the boxes, cans and other gear stacks up, it’s not easy to get it all put away in an organized manner. The thing I’ve found that works best is a heavy-duty steel shelving unit (purchased at a local hardware store) combined with high-quality storage bins. I use Post-It tape and a permanent marker to write labels on these bins. The tape is sticky enough to stay put, but easy to pull off if you ever want to change the label. My bins are labeled with titles like: Flashlights, Batteries, Compass & Navigation, First Aid and so on. 4 - Observe your decisions as if you were your own life coach Instead of just making decisions and taking actions from your own first-person point of view — I want a cookie, I feel happy, I feel angry, I need a job — zoom out and take the greater perspective of being your own life coach. In other words, view your actions and decisions as if you were your own consultant. If you have a particular outcome you would like to achieve in life, ask your inner consultant how that might be reasonably achieved. For example, if you want to lose 50 pounds of body weight, improve your skin and experience a better sex life, your consultant might give you a reasonable course of action involving dietary strategies, daily exercise, and a reduction of stress. But when you view your life from your own (first-person) eyes, it’s tempting to say, “I want to eat a pizza,” or “I don’t feel like exercising.” That’s why letting your consultant have a say in your life is a wise strategy. In terms of consciousness, the mere act of invoking your inner consultant is, all by itself, a meta-level advancement in your perspective (and therefore, consciousness). To be able to observe your own actions from the perspective of an outside consultant is a necessary step to grokking the world through the eyes and hearts of other living creatures. It is the gateway to empathy, in other words, and empathy is the gateway to lasting peace. War can only be waged from the perspective of “I” that lacks the greater awareness of connectedness among all living things. “I shoot you” is the mantra of modern warfare, and yet all by itself, the statement is illogical from a higher perspective because “you” and “I” are bound together in non-material ways that transcend our material bodies. 5 - Increase your commitment to spiritual practice No matter what your particular spiritual practices, deepening your commitment to spiritual awakening will automatically raise your level of consciousness. Whether you go to an organized church or simply practice your own personal form of spirituality, enhancing your commitment to that practice will reap rewards beyond the material. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you have to go to church to be considered spiritual, by the way. If God is everywhere, then he’s also in your living room. A church may be beneficial in many ways, but it does not have a monopoly on connecting with the spiritual realm. For some people, a “spiritual practice” may consist solely of meditation or even taking a vow of silence. The point of such exercises is to turn your attention inward, to better know your inner self as a step toward connecting with your “higher self” (or spirit or soul or even God), which is both divine and non-material. Regardless of the particular terminology or spiritual practices you prefer, deepening them will have a profound impact on your level of consciousness awareness in day-to-day living. Remember, we are more than material beings. And there is much more out there than the crude matter into which we typically find ourselves entwined. If you are not spending some time each week exploring the bigger questions of consciousness, philosophy, life and the after-life, then you are missing out on the most important part of having a conscious mind in the first place.
(Source: mushindojo.org)
People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t.
Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input.
In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. That’s intriguing because those sections of the human cortex, or thinking cap, normally get thinner as we age.
“Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being,” says Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. “These findings are consistent with other studies that demonstrated increased thickness of music areas in the brains of musicians, and visual and motor areas in the brains of jugglers. In other words, the structure of an adult brain can change in response to repeated practice.”
(Source: mushindojo.org)
AMERICA’S airport security agency, the Transportation Security Adminstration, claims to have caught a ninja trying to slip through airport security. Well, not exactly, despite the title of the agency’s celebratory blog post, “Not Even Ninjas Can Evade Airport Security.” Here’s what really happened: a passenger who was trying to fly to Chicago brought with him a book called “Ninja: The Shadow Warrior”, the inside of which had been hollowed out to hold what appear to be some pretty serious ninja knives.
I did a little research and it doesn’t seem as though this book was designed to contain knives—the passenger presumably hollowed it out himself. Is that really something you forget you did? The TSA does miss things, but a ninja book containing knives would have raised all sorts of red flags. More important, though, is that it’s not very ninja-like to hide your ninja knives in your ninja book. Last time I checked, ninjas aren’t supposed to draw attention to themselves. Ninjas definitely aren’t supposed to “voluntarily surrender” their weapons, as this one did when confronted by airport security. It sounds like someone needs a refresher course. The TSA’s Blogger Bob, who now has a last name, Burns, admits that the agency “didn’t catch an actual Ninja,” but what they “did catch was a passenger who claimed they forgot this stealthy Ninja book was in their bag. Hmmm….” Hmmm indeed.
(Source: mushindojo.org)
When Facebook was founded in 2004, it began with a seemingly innocuous mission: to connect friends. Some seven years and 800 million users later, the social network has taken over most aspects of our personal and professional lives, and is fast becoming the dominant communication platform of the future.
But this new world of ubiquitous connections has a dark side. In my last post, I noted that Facebook and social media are major contributors to career anxiety. After seeing some of the comments and reactions to the post, it’s clear that Facebook in particular takes it a step further: It’s actually making us miserable.
Facebook’s explosive rate of growth and recent product releases, such as the prominent Newsticker, Top Stories on the newsfeed, and larger photos have all been focused on one goal: encouraging more sharing. As it turns out, it’s precisely this hyper-sharing that is threatening our sense of happiness.
For the full article please visit Huffington Post
(Source: mushindojo.org)
“To be able to survive and live in the midst of this constant change, it is important to comprehend that which is the essence. To this end, I believe it is important to vary this theme of change every year.” - Hatsumi “The mind follows the ten thousand circumstances and shifts accordingly; It is the shifting that is truly undefined. Follow the current and recognize your nature; No rejoicing, no sorrow.” - Manorhita “What is the original nature of mind?” Vasubandhu answered, “It is the emptiness of the six sense bases, the six objects and the six kinds of consciousness.” And hearing this, Manorhita was awakened. The six sense bases are seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and so on. The six objects are forms, sense, sounds, and so on. The six consciousnesses are the acts of hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, and so on. What does it mean for these to be empty? This word emptiness in sanskrit is Śūnyatā. Śūnyatā is really a wonderful, tender, limitless embrace. It’s always complete. It is without having to strive, without having to not strive. Another implication of emptiness is empty of any fixed position or state of being. While this is an important lesson for life, the ten thousand changes in combat are the actions and strategies of your opponent. If you pay attention to every punch, kick or technique, your mind gets taken and trapped in following each thing. The same trapped mind occurs when you focus on performing your own technique or style. You will be surprised when something unexpected happens. This will lead to your defeat. If instead you allow the mind to dwell in emptiness, for example - looking at the opponent’s eyes but not focusing on them (some suggest looking at the spot where the lapels of the gi cross) - you will react naturally as the situation dictates. Anything your opponent manifests will just appear to be part of the natural flow and not surprising. By paying attention to the non existent, you will be able to see the existent quite well.
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Adults class is Tuesdays and Thursdays 9pm-10.30pm
Kids class is Fridays 7-8pm