Kata & Koan Preview: Sea-Monsters In Your Ocean

          Wow!
Course # 1 in my Kata-RX For Wellness & Mindfulness Program is now FREE!
Use this link to join for FREE – https://kata-rx.teachable.com/p/preview-kata-as-moving-meditation

========= Now, for this week’s installment, “Kata & Koan Preview – Sea Monsters In Your Ocean”

I’m toying with a new video series to help you practice your Kata-RX with me. In my personal practice I often combine my Kata-RX with a thought-provoking reading; a form of meditative koan, if you will. (See note 1) I find the combination of Kata and koan (or thought provoking concept) produces a far-reaching physical and mental experience. Now, you can too.

You can practice your Kata-RX with the video. As you perform your Kata-RX you are immersed in the sounds of nature. As you absorb the sounds and beauty of the kata environment, the koan triggers your mind to enter a deeply contemplative state. The result? Well, the best description is for you to try it. The first step is simple – enroll in my FREE first course. In as little as a half hour, your well on your way. Use this link to join for FREE – https://kata-rx.teachable.com/p/preview-kata-as-moving-meditation

Here is a preview of what I’m toying with. This video uses a reading from John Steinbeck – “We need Sea-Monsters . . . “ You can see the full text of the narration below.
Enjoy the video!

To further enrich your enjoyment of the Kata-RX here is the text of the narration in the video. It is from John Steinbeck’s “The Log Of The Sea Of Cortez” (Penguin Books, New York, NY) p.27-28.

Men really need sea monsters in their personal oceans.
For the ocean, deep and black in depths, is like the low dark levels of our minds in which the dream symbols incubate and sometimes rise up to sight. . . And even if the symbol vision is horrible, it is there and it is ours. An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completely dreamless sleep.

One historical note. Those of you that are not new to this site know that this is not something new. In 2009 when I first launched my “Sanchin For Everyone” project, I devised my “Sanchin Pilgrimages” combining philosophy, ideology, scientific theorem and other such semi-knowable concepts with kata. Here are some early examples https://senseijohn.me/category/a-sanchin-pilgrimage/
From that starting point, I developed my kata concepts one step further with a more broadly defined Online Group Kata sessions, https://senseijohn.me/category/thats-ok/

During the pendency of my producing more koan videos, you may use some of my past submissions to tailor make your own meditative Kata-koan experience.

I look forward to seeing you in class.

Sensei John Szmitkowski

Use this link to get the first course for FREE – https://kata-rx.teachable.com/p/preview-kata-as-moving-meditation

Endnotes:

1. For those of you not familiar with a koan, the general definition is

a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.

A classic example is the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
For me, the meditation and contemplation of such traditional koans are unsatisfactory, unfulfilling and unenlightening. I prefer something less esoteric to meditate on. One of my favorites is shown in the above video.

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