| One of the most important things a superior martial | | | | began to see the benefits of sitting, waiting, and |
| artist can have, inside the ring or out, is the gunfighter | | | | cultivating silence. In the silence one could see, could |
| mentality. The best fighters, like BJ Penn and Rashad | | | | perceive, could empty themselves enough that their |
| Evans, have this intuitively in their personality. The | | | | intuitive nature would take over. |
| second place guys don't. | | | | When one is silent, just sitting, when one just relaxes, |
| Interestingly enough, the Gunfighter Mentality used to | | | | the senses begin to work better, and the world begins |
| be part of the training in the classical martial arts. I | | | | to open up. Try it, just sit in a chair comfortably and |
| remember training back in the middle of the last | | | | just relax for a while. The world will start to make itself |
| century, and everything we did was geared towards | | | | known, tell you things, and you will become brighter, |
| this ability. While there were many factors involved in | | | | sharper, calmer. |
| the death of this principle, people like Bruce Lee | | | | Once the student begins to appreciate that his |
| probably drove home the spike. | | | | perceptions, and thus reactions, will work better, the |
| Bruce Lee added the circling strategy of boxing to the | | | | true martial arts can be developed. In the silence we |
| martial arts. The Gunfighter Mentality depends on | | | | used to set our stances downward, sink them into the |
| creating an inner stillness, being coiled like a rattler, and | | | | ground, and search for the best set of the leg, the best |
| here was this fellow acting like Mohammad Ali, circling | | | | position to spring from. In the silence we would |
| and jabbing and destroying the mindset of the | | | | examine the turn of the foot and the angle of the hip, |
| Gunfighter. Now Bruce Lee would have won most any | | | | trying to make every single part of our bodies into |
| fight anyway, but everybody wanted to look like him, | | | | totally responsive and explosive mechanisms. |
| and they gave up the deadly zen stillness of the | | | | Freestyle matches, instead of bouncing around and |
| Gunfighter. | | | | wasting energy, would be subtle shifts of weight and |
| Now stillness is the heart of the matter, when it comes | | | | edgings forward. Instead of throwing a hundred |
| to Gunfighting in the martial arts, and there are several | | | | punches, we would set up to throw one, but every |
| good reasons or this. There was much interchange | | | | ounce of our might would be instilled in that one punch. |
| between zen concepts and karate in Japan, and | | | | And, most important, we walked away from that |
| people who sat in the zen position for long hours | | | | training different people, aware people, patient people. |