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Be ready to release your mind...Funakoshi's 6th principle of Karate...
Here's some quotes on what Funakoshi was getting at...
Rene Descartes said...
"It is not good enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well".
Margot Asquith (on Stafford Cripps) said...
"He has a brilliant mind until he makes it up".
Arnold Bennett said...
"Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission".
Frank Zappa said...
'A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it's not open".
Plutarch said...
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled".
Desiderius Erasmus said...
"ManÂ’s mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth".
To me, the mind is not what most people think it is...
...that being some great store house of our waking and dreaming reality, and proxied with the control of our feelings, emotions and consequently our actions or reactions to external stimuli.
For example, when something happens in our lives that frustrates us, and we let the mind run with the emotion, it quickly ratchets up into anger and if we let it continue, it ultimately manifests into physical violence.
Now most people can control their anger before it manifests into physical violence, while most children having undeveloped awareness and perceptions, cannot...
I believe, it is this awareness of the mind and its thoughts, that allows anyone, but in particular Karate-ka, to use the mind as a tool rather than letting the mind use the person to perpetuate it's own emotional musings...
When Fuankoshi stated that a person has to release the mind, I believe he meant to dissassociate themselves from the thoughts of the mind...
...once that is accomplished, the person is completely free to take the appropriate action no matter what the circumstance he/she finds themselves in...
Hope that makes some sense...
RJF
