The most powerful force to maintaining a good immune system is the power of positive thinking and not allowing yourself to be unnecessarily drained emotionally by worries and fears.
When you're happy, your immune system is at its strongest point. And when you think negatively, or when you hate, or allow yourself to grow emotionally out of control, you are weakening your immune system.
It is quite possible to speed up the healing process to the part of the body that is injured. This all has to do with the release of chi.
Thought control is the ability to direct mind and attention anywhere. Your ability to win is dependent upon the power of your concentration. Winning is a state of mind.
The Frisbee is a round disk. That's the somethingness. But it has another side; it has a nothingness which you cannot perceive with your physical mind or your senses.
In the game of Frisbee you throw the disk to someone else. The point of Frisbee is perfect communication. The person at the other end of the field is receiving an impression, a vibration from you.
The more perfectly you can refine the process of Frisbee, the tighter your energy is and the more you become one with the nothingness of the Frisbee, the nothingness of the play.
Your ego interferes, your sense of self. When you let go of the mind, the Frisbee will take its own path.
When you unite the nothingness of your mind with the nothingness of the Frisbee, then the Frisbee is not a Frisbee, and you are not you.
You are trying to pierce the veil, to break through the Frisbee so that it doesn't exist, to break through the football so it doesn't exist, and to break through your opponent so they don't exist.
Transform yourself. It is not the opponent that will change, or the Frisbee. They will change in relation to your change. You must change.
Zen and Buddhism have produced martial arts, because of the Buddhist injunction against weapons.
Most martial arts have to do with the mind, ultimately. The ability to be unafraid, to walk away from a fight without fear - that is control.
If you are afraid of other people take a martial arts class. The best way to overcome fear is learn to be proficient in martial arts.
The best martial artist doesn't win fights, but avoids fights. Martial arts is a way of gaining basic self-mastery of your mind, body and emotions. It can also be very useful in combat situations.
Use the practice of mind and body; in order to make those moves perfectly, you have to pull your mind out of its mundane thoughts and awarenesses and bring it into the body movement.
As you gain more discipline over your body, you will find that a corollary discipline will develop in the mind because the two really go together.
Those who are already adept at some disciplines of the body will find that the study of Zen and meditation will give you much more control than you now have.
In order to succeed on the athletic field, it is necessary to succeed in daily life. Your spirit and your life must be perfectly trimmed for the chi to flow properly.
Physical perfection, working out, adds to your spiritual perfection if that is your intent.
Sports and athletics can be a path in Zen, in concordance with daily practice of zazen meditation. You need to move with your spirit, not just with your body.
In Zen we strive to bring both the mind and the body into perfect combination, so that there is no intrinsic difference between them.
It is easier to develop the mind through meditation than it is just through athletic practice. If you put the two together, it will be unbelievable.
In the Zen of sports and athletics, we seek to bring discipline and control into our physical movements, but at the same time to eliminate the self that gets in the way of perfect play.
In the West, we think of sports and athletics as individual achievement, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat; it all revolves around the ego. This has nothing to do with the Zen of sports and athletics.
