Karate: The Art of Empty Self

Description

Violence is too incessantly portrayed as a heroic cultural ideal, one that accepts fighting as an honorable solution to conflict. This attitude has allowed human beings to justify solving the problems of relationship by aggressive, combative means.

Karate, as a martial art, is meant to be practiced as an art, so as to end conflict by nonviolent means, not just by having the confidence to not fight, but, more essential, to end conflict at its source within the human mind. This paradoxical intent becomes clear when one begins to be aware oneself, which the art of karate gives the student the opportunity to do. In understanding oneself, the student comes into direct contact with the origin of conflict, the foundation of violence. This war of words with oneself is the essence of the art, the principle the reason is, serious people study karate.

Karate: The Art of Empty Self isn’t a manual on self-defense. Nor is this work a philosophical or intellectual interpretation of the martial arts. As an alternative, this book clearly addresses, as no martial arts book has done before, the underlying intent of karate and the martial arts. In simple, straightforward language, it inquires into the roots of conflict.