SHACK 182 GOOD OLD DAYS

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Many senior citizens like to say 'it wasn't like this in our days' or 'if only my Arthur or Gladys were alive'. If we always live in the past we are living only in memory and not what is happening now and so we might misread the information and its gets filtered and assessed through the sieve of memory and altered to suit present day occurrences and the consequences and unhappy outcome unless in the company of like minded folk.

Not all of the above can be said to be the past in a way.  For instance coming back to Judo and The Way in Tao if it becomes as in Judo an Olympic Sport where it uses weight categories and the training in the gym of resistance exercises muscle gain and physical dominance and skill perhaps not cultivated so much then we have mere grappling and that is OK if you wish that but it should be called another name Japanese Wresting as other forms have their name, Greco- Roman, Sumo, Catch, Free Style, Folkstyle and Collegiate, Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland and a host from many countries.

 So Judo and Kungfu as taught by my teachers were linked to Zen Buddhism and Tao and were primarily based on meditation and was a spiritual pursuit as in distinction to a religious one. So yes I feel it one of the good old days that is good or rather appropriate. 

I  might be accused of being pedantic and not living in the now of things. The now is in meditation and empty mind, the mind full of thoughts is a mind of lots of facets and innovations built from experience, the mind that acts from being is a mind that adapts and that is alright, however if one lives with just technical and mechanical means, that is how one becomes It seems Judo has followed the ego---strength, power, medals, trophies, dominance and not caring about the finer elements 'giving way to defeat' that is mainly counter defense, so one takes part in a kind of dance and uses the momentum to cause off balance and is relaxed and feels the other persons 'mind and intent' Judo and Kungfu as a meditation.

It seems wars, cheating, corruption, violence and so on is the name of the game today. win at all costs-----take professional Soccer with its huge salaries and sacked managers if the teams fail to produce results---many a player and manager crack under the strain of always winning---many other celebrity players of sport such as tennis, golf, motor racing, horse racing and other games are stretched to limit of human endurance and their bodies break down under constant injury.  Soldiers and Police face the same strains as this mania for success produces crime and adulation for celerity status. 

SHACK