Meditation & the Martial Arts (Studies in Rel & Culture)

Rating:
Summary: Attention, everyone!
Review: This is a great book that makes clear connections between the practice of martial arts, the emphasis on focus and attention in various religions, and the need for this kind of focus in the modern world. As the author put it in an interview I found online (http://www.killingthebuddha.com/oral/sp_exercises.htm):

"Anyone who does the martial arts has asked himself or herself about the investment of time. I live in a decent neighborhood. I have been mugged exactly once in my life, and I ran -- I didn't engage in any kind of martial encounter. I leave my family and spend a lot of time on practices that are not natural to me.

"As this book evolved, it became more and more a reflection on our contemporary situation living in a high-information society. I read about what these people wrote about the struggle to maintain attention in cultures so different from our own, and I ask myself, "Could they ever have conceived the world that we live in, with cable TV with 190 channels and the World Wide Web?" There is this incredible battle, backed by economic power and remarkable technologies, to capture our attention and then shape our habits and our behavior. It seems to me that there is a real struggle here. One has a limited amount of attention to invest, and the competition for it is extraordinary -- in ways that these spiritual writers could never have imagined.

"So I see these disciplines -- it doesn't have to be martial arts, but can be some other kind of meditative discipline -- as being exercises to equip a person in the 21st century to deal with this crisis. And I really believe that it is a crisis. You can see what is being invested in industries of diversion."

Fantastic stuff!