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Mind-of-no-mind: In mokuso it is about focusing the mind on breathing at the hara. In moving meditative practice it is often about focusing the mind on the move and movement. These all lead us through the initial level of martial arts. It is tantamount to learning to breath and focus. As in martial arts when one achieves a certain level of proficiency they are taught to let go, to allow the mind to become no-mind. What does this mean? Takuan, in the Japanese Art of War, tells us how we move our mind from a fixated focus for training, learning, experiencing and understanding to one that achieves great things with no fixated focus yet a focus that allows the mind and body to work smoothly, freely and creatively without interference of the mind, i.e., achieving no-mind.
Takuan tells us that if you put your mind anywhere, it will then permeate your entire body, spread throughout your entire being - the self, and the results are, “When you need hands it works your hands, when you need feet it works your feet, when you need eyes it works your eyes. It is present wherever you need it, it makes the functions you need possible, i.e., the procedural creative intuitive sub-routine/function driven zombie like brain code. If you allow the mind ti fixate on one thing, it will be consumed by that one thing and thus create havoc and chaos resulting in deficient functioning in action.”
You want your mind to achieve no-mind so that it flows freely and pervades then entire body and whole being - being wholehearted is no-mind. Your mind should be like water. Not remaining at any one spot while the mind fixated is likened to ice. One allows you to wash your hand, your feel or your face while the other is fixated or frozen removing such freedom.
If you melt the ice into water, so that if flows freely and wherever needed like the cracks and crevices as it seeks its true level you can once again wash your hands, feet or face according to the situation and moment of need. Melt your mind and use it like a flood throughout the whole body, send it where you want to and put it to use as you will - this is called by Takuan, “The Basic Mind.”
It is the basic mind mokuso and moving meditative aspects of kata, martial arts, takes you. You focus and fixate to analyze then you unfocus and remove fixation to achieve fluidity of mind thus body in actions or non-actions, etc. You mokuso with breathing of the hara then you let go of the focus and allow the breathing to mokuso with your entire being and body, the true martial way.
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