Not Yet Nirvana

I read the news of the attack that took place at Turkey’s largest airport on Tuesday, June 28, 2016. Scores of people were killed and hundreds were wounded. I was at work complaining about still working at my age, complaining I wouldn’t be able to afford the vacation I wanted, moaning about having to cut back on going out to dinner and fearing whether or not I would be able to continue my lifestyle when I do retire in four years. It’s absurd. People’s lives were shattered on the day I was working and thinking about my daily life, my wife, my friends, my family, and what to do on the weekend. It’s not that I didn’t care. I did care, I was outraged, I was saddened, and I closed the newspaper. How do we live in a world where tragedy occurs all the time? Worse, yet, much of the horror that happens does so in our name. The carnage is caused directly or indirectly by the very leaders, we elect. And it’s not all man-made tragedy. There's the capriciousness of nature to conte...

I look at my favorite musicians whom I’ve followed since the seventies and I notice something. They look old. Most of them are around sixty-eight years of age. And they’re gamely out there and still touring, (albeit much smaller venues for the most part, although David Gilmour sixty-eight and Paul McCartney seventy-three, still pack stadiums). The photos that pop up in my Facebook feed from time to time show my rock idols as they were in the sixties and seventies with long flowing hair, clear skin, mesmerizing eyes and you can feel the energy emanate from the photo. I remember with fondness, the summers of warm breezes bearing the musky scent of hashish and pot, the taste of sweet wine, the ambience of love, as my beloved music crashed over us in a tonal tsunami. But when the pop-up photos in my feed show side by side pictures of my favorite stars from then with current photos of them now, my dreams come crashing back to earth. They are old! What is worse is the realization tha...

This blog is based on excerpts from my book: The Spiritual Energy Way . This was a book I wrote about martial arts, specifically, Seishindo , a curriculum I developed over thirty-eight years of studying martial arts and nineteen years working as a correctional officer. In the last segment of the book, I related martial arts tenets and philosophy to everyday non-martial art life. This excerpt talks about self-esteem and confidence. It is acceptable in martial arts to adopt any particular " kamae " or posture, as an expression of one’s self in an emotionally artistic or stylistic manner provided it is either a sound stratagem in and of itself or the individual is so adept at the posture that she can make it work. Couldn’t the same be said of how we present ourselves in daily life in a non-martial context? When I was teaching women’s self-protection, I taught participants how to not present themselves as an opportunity for targeting. Statistically, women are more likely...