Karate, an ancient Martial Art originating in Japan, means “Empty” in Japanese indicating that it does not require weapons other than parts of the body.

Mushin is a Japanese word, which means in English “without mind’. The expression also denotes a state of “no-mindedness”, that is, a mind not focused or fixed on any thought or emotion and therefore, open to everything It is a mental state into which a highly trained martial artist is known to enter during fight.

It reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite show, The Last Samarui, where Tom Cruise was being creamed when he was drilling with wooden katana. His friend told him not to worry about other people’s mind and also not to worry about his own mind…become “no mind”.

When I first heard that, I didn’t quite understand it, but after a while, I realized what he was saying was achieving the state of Mushin.

Achieving A Calm Mind

The capability of a martial art practitioner to remain composed in the face of attack is also known as “Karate beyond technique”. The question is how important it is to keep calm in a street fight?

Those kicks and moves that many people think are part of karate are not really effective in actual situations.

Many people getting trained in karate want to be trained on self-defense and techniques to fight and are not interested to know about ‘Kata’, which means keeping calm, meditation and other similar aspects.

Besides being trained to move fast, methods to avoid blows, cool temperament, meditation and visualizing the moves of the opponent are very important in karate.

In fact, these basic principles are not limited to only karate; they apply to all types of attacks, ‘armed’ or ‘unarmed’. Sometimes people face unexpected attacks on the street. In such situations, you should always be one step ahead of the opponent.

You should be able to grapple with the situation quickly and in order to achieve this, self-control or a calm mind is very essential. It takes years of regular practice and commitment to attain all the skills in any martial art, including karate.

However, in hustle-bustle of the present day world, most of the people do not have either the time or interest for long training sessions. Such people would like to learn practical steps in self-defense or lessons on street fighting, which explains how to overpower an attacker at the earliest using elbows, knees or sometimes, even teeth!

But is this the right way of thwarting an attack? There may not be anything wrong with this approach as long as there is no violation of the laws. Some people even believe that keeping a calm mind or ‘visualization’ when faced with an attack on the street does not work at all.

However, experts in karate assert that mental balance or composure is very useful in defending a sudden attack on the street. Those trained not to lose cool under pressure, and keep calm will have better reflexes.

Only students who have reached a certain level of training in karate can appreciate the importance of keeping calm under a tense situation such as an attack on the street. This implies that physically fighting is not the only option in a combat.

As Sun-Tzu mentioned in his book, The Art of War, “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill”. The ability to keep cool and talk to the adversary is far more effective to everyone concerned than getting into physical fights.

In fact, many Special Armed Forces around the world and other task force teams fighting terrorists advocate the importance of keeping calm in training sessions. Even most conventional karate training sessions begin with Moksu (meditation) to calm the mind before taking up physical training sessions.

In addition, the concept of Moksu originated from the Samurai warriors of Japan, who were connected with Zen Buddhism in one form or the other. This concept of Moksu was used by them for calming their minds before and after the battle.

Mushin (no mind) is attained when a person’s mind is calm, free from thoughts of anger or fear during a street fight. As a person is free from rambling and disruptive thoughts, he is totally free to take on the opponent without hesitation and without getting distracted by such thoughts.

At this point, a person acts on what his trained natural reaction or intuition suggests rather than what he thinks should be the next move. As the proverb says “The power of the mind is infinite, while brawn is limited”.



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