Many Reasons for Practice
my experience, limited though it may be, with Japanese martial arts, tea, and Zen, suggests that Earl's (much earlier) posts about enjoying each human activity in their "self-so-ness", to borrow a term from Watts, is right on the money.
my tea teacher was fond of saying that people practise tea for a variety of reasons. to argue that tea has one singular purpose is to devalue all other legitimate reasons for practising. in particular, he told me that people who see tea as an exclusively Zen practice deny themselves the chance to appreciate other facets of tea.
Watts also wrote quite clearly that, for the Zen practitioner, one sat for the sake of sitting, not for the express purpose of reaching enlightenment. the sitting position is an effective training expedient, but it possesses no intrinsic "spiritual" value. similarly, i practised tea, aikido, and jojutsu for the sake of practising. it seems to me that living in the Eternal Now has a lot more to do with concentrating your whole energy on each activity you perform rather than weighing each activity down with the desire to experience "enlightenment", like trying to catch your own shadow. whatever reservations David has about Watts as a Zen commentator, Watts strikes me as a reliable source of insights, even from what Watts calls his third perspective, neither awestruck Zen nor rigourously scientific.
IIRC, the late Kisshomaru-doshu said of aikido, "The purpose of training is, at the end of your life, to be able to look back and say, 'I trained'." trained sincerely, trained openmindedly, trained as though your life were at stake ... that, to me is the heart of martial arts. if it is Zen, then it needs no discussion, for the Way that can be spoken is other than a permanent Way.
Jeff Hamacher
Those who speak do not know,
Those who know will not speak ...
So I guess that means I don't know a thing!