Seeing - Hearing

The eyes must see all sides; the ears must hear in all directions. I have covered a lot as to what I feel meets the meaning of the line on "eyes." I have kind of talked about hearing in all directions but thought it time to provide a bit on "hearing" in this post.

The first time someone reads the English translation of the ken-po goku-i they tend to think of it literally. Lets say this is a "basic" or introduction to the ken-po goku-i but would be limited if we accepted that as the only meaning of these statements. As an introduction it gets you started and hopefully "thinking."

Hearing to me also denotes hearing all facts, idea's, thoughts, discussions, theories, etc. from all points regardless. It does not matter who they are, what system they practice or if they are considered, from your perspective, right or wrong. Even comments and statements that appear on the surface as something we should immediately discount/discard there is always, "ALWAYS," something within that is or may be true or lead to truth. I call this data mining. You may dig and get dirt and rocks yet somewhere in all that debris is gold. Even a small bit of gold is worth the effort.

Hearing is actively listening to the environment, to people, to media, and to anything that will give up the gold. You may have to dig a lot but perseverance and diligence will get you plenty.

I titled this post seeing and hearing because an intricate component of actively listening is to use your eyes to see all sides. Sides that are not visually obvious. In active listening the eyes must see all sides of the body language and facial expressions to determine the sincerity of the speaker, etc. If you watch a DVD both hearing and seeing comprise discovery of those tidbits of gold that panning pull out from water and other stuff as it flows past on the pathway of discovery.

If you are participating in a budo dojo then your ability to see and hear, everything, from Sensei or any other senior is critical to learning. The brain needs constant reinforcement to encode correct data to memory and seeing/hearing is the only way coupled with questioning. Maybe this is why Tatsuo Sensei said little and passed along the ken-po goku-i, much like discussed in my post on the old masters instruction method it becomes a matter of self discovery.

Think of it this way, what will be retained longer? Your own discovery and acceptance OR because Sensei said it was so? Something to think about ...