Intuitive Action

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In martial arts it comes down to an intuitive mind to achieve proficient and successful actions and this trait comes from the concept of mind-no-mind. To achieve spontaneous intuitive insights, actions under duress for instance, you have to have an ability best described by the concept of “Jokes.” In a split second you have to understand a joke you experience that is described as a moment of ‘enlightenment’. This moment must come spontaneously and it cannot be explained by explaining the joke or by an intellectual analysis of the joke. 

You can only get the joke and spontaneously laugh in that split second through a sudden intuitive insight into the nature of the joke and only then do we experience the liberating laughter that the joke is meant to induce to the listener. 

To achieve such spontaneously insight into the type of actions you train toward you have to develop and enhance our natural instinctual insight through a technique like mokuso, a meditative method often seen done in dojo before training begins and after it ends. The basic goals of such practices and techniques is to silence our mind from extraneous chatter, to silence our thinking mind and to shift our awareness from the logical and rational mind toward the intuitive mind of consciousness. 

There are many forms of meditation both static and moving much like the practice of sitting seiza and statically sitting still and meditating mokuso. Often to focus the rational mind to the intuitive mind is achieved by directing our concentration of attention to a single item such as a concentrated and direct focus on one’s breathing. Other methods include the focus of attention on the body in movement while performing a spontaneously set of moves without the interference of any thought. This rhythmic movement can lead to the same feelings of peace, serenity and tranquility characteristic of the more static forms of meditation; a feeling which may be evoked also by other physical disciplines as practiced and performed in sports, i.e., karate of a authenticate nature promotes practice through the concept of mind-no-mind. 

Mokuso is thought as a separate and distinct practice from a cultural view but in truth tends to be a principled aspect and trait of the entire practice, the full spectrum of a martial art, in training and applications. It is this concept of mind, body and spirit that encompasses intuitive actions often pulled from our procedural memories toward actions appropriate to situations of grave stress ridden needs. 

This explains why such esoteric studies such as Zen and Buddhism along with the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching are tied and intertwined with the study of traditional, classical and authenticate martial arts like karate of Okinawa. 

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