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Zen And Shooting Research Project


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Ty emailed me a copy of his research paper. Which I enjoyed reading, and I know some of you will as well.

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Ty Marbut

11/16/05

Brahma to Buddha final research project

The Zen of the Front Sight

The Focus, Detachedness, Inaction, and Complete Faith of Competitive Shooting

Some of the main tenants of Zen meditation, particularly Zazen, are things seen throughout common activities in the east and west. These activities can range from active to inactive, religious to profit-bearing, entertaining to boring and etc. One such manifestation of tenants of Zen meditation in the lives of Americans is in the collective competitive shooting sports. In several of these sports, being able to successfully practice many of the facets of Zazen is absolutely key to being able to shoot well in the context of that mode of competition.

In America today, there are many denominations and types of competitive shooting. We still have Bullseye, the handgun accuracy sport. We have High-power, the long-range iron-sights only accuracy sport. We have the shotgun sports, including Trap and Skeet. We have the Biathlon, comprised of cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. We have Cowboy-Action shooting which brings back to life the themes of the old west right down to the western dress. We have rodeo shooting and quick-draw, both of which use cartridges loaded with corn meal instead of bullets to show off the gun handling skills of the participant. But the most developed of shooting sports, and perhaps the most skill-intensive today, are the "practical" sports: practical pistol and practical rifle. These sports combine both speed and accuracy with handguns and rifles respectively. Speed and accuracy are weighted evenly so that it is not enough to go fast and not have good hits, and it is also not enough to shoot slowly and have the best of hits. In this way, the participant must be a master of the Yin and Yang of shooting; he must have good accuracy even under the fastest of shooting in order to succeed. Probably the most common saying or maxim in the practical shooting world is, "You can't miss fast enough to win!" or, as Julie Goloski put it in an e-mail, "you can only go as fast as you can see your sights." (e-mail)

Of Practical Pistol and Practical Rifle, the handgun sport is certainly predominant in America today. The United States Practical Shooting Association, based in Sedro-Wooley, Washington and headed by Michael Voit, is the national governing body of one of Practical Pistol's two denominations and has tens of thousands of members nationwide. The two denominations of this sport in the U.S. are IPSC, the International Practical Shooting Confederation, and IDPA, the International Defensive Pistol Association. These two types of Practical Pistol are very similar and differ only in some minor rules and procedures. In Concord, NH there is an IDPA club but no IPSC club. In Missoula, MT there is an IPSC club but none of the other type. [following info]

Practical Rifle is a sport made up, it would seem, mostly of IPSC shooters who also like to shoot rifles. It uses standard IPSC rules, though interpreted for rifle shooting. For example, you can't holster a rifle as you would between shooting in IPSC. It can deal with quick, shorter range shooting (i.e. open sights - sighting devices with no optical enhancement component, such as a telescopic sight, or "scope" - at closer ranges - ranges at about 100 yards and under) as well as long-range time-intensive shooting at ranges of between 100 and 500 yards (i.e. using very accurate, optically-sighted rifles, probably from a prone or other very stable yet cumbersome shooting position, and with a long time between shots, though time still counts here). This sport is not so highly publicized or organized in the U.S. currently, and has no national governing body or competition system.

In IPSC, competitors are ranked nationally according to how well they shoot a nationally uniform course of fire, called a "Classifier", compared to (as a percentage of the points-per-second, the overall measure of how well one shoots a course of fire) the highest points-per-second number achieved in the U.S. These highest numbers are almost always achieved by a Grand Master shooter, one who is ranked in the top 5 percent in the nation, points-per-second wise, and of these there even a few who stand out as the best of the best (of the best). They are, in IPSC, like Michael Jordans or Shaquile O'Neals. They shoot professionally and all of their income stems from their shooting, whether through teaching, competing, writing, etc. They are like the highest bodhisattvas - they teach and are also the best. Of these, two have had intensive e-mail correspondence about the subjects outlined in this paper. One is Julie Goloski, winner of countless championships and national titles, including being the two-time World Speed Shooting Championships Iron Sight Lady champion and the two-time IDPA Ladies National Champion. The other is Bruce Gray, also a world-class IPSC Grand Master and high-level practical shooting instructor, author of the article "Zen and the Art of Hitting Stuff".

In IPSC, themes of limitless focus, focused counting, detachedness, inaction, and complete faith show themselves often. They have been studied by the best of IPSC, IDPA, and other practical pistol shooters as things seriously a part of their shooting, and things from which they can benefit greatly. They also show themselves in Practical Rifle and other shooting disciplines in some of the same and in some different ways. This leads one to believe that ideals such as limitless focus, focused counting, detachedness, inaction, and complete faith, arguably the true body of Zen meditation and practice, are necessary parts of successful shooting in Practical Pistol and Rifle shooting, if not of all shooting, particularly of shooting to be the best in the nation.

In Zen culture and practice, there has long been an interest and practice of the sport of archery, as well as that of swordsmanship. Both of these are similar to competitive shooting in that they are practices of abilities symbolizing things that are not the most Buddhist of activities (i.e. fighting, killing, and general lack of compassion). No matter, they are still arts that can exercise some of the highest applications of the aforementioned Zen tenants. There is no reason that the modern American Buddhist might not be a competitive shooter, as he would probably find the same things as he did in the study of the art of archery: It requires complete focus, detachment, and faith.

Complete faith is a very basic part of shooting. This comes from channeling all of your focus into your own action as opposed to wondering, for example, whether on not the gun is sighted in. The gun must and will be sighted in before a competition. One personally does this so that they know beyond a shade of doubt that there is nothing to worry about. This distraction is no longer a problem, and the shooter can then focus on his own shooting rather than the gun's shooting. This would fall under the first of the three pillars of Zen set forth in the Three Pillars of Zen. Your knowledge of your own shooting imperfection - understanding of your missing pieces of skill - would then be the second, the doubt, and the third and final "pillar", the determination to resolve the doubt, would be one's effort both to do well with what skill one has, but also to practice to gain more skill, thereby lessening the doubt (Three Pillars of Zen, ch. 1, section 10). Furthermore, combating doubt also complete faith in the opposite of doubt. If doubt here is one's own lack of skill, then faith should be directed towards one's known skill because any deviance from faith in skill that one knows he has yields more doubt. Gray says that in his competitive application of Zen, “it is a tool made of faith and grace that allowed me to better use the good faculties and skills that God had already allowed me to develop." (e-mail)

One very major issue in shooting of all forms of shooting is what is called a "flinch". This comes, essentially, from anticipation of the shot before it actually goes off. Obviously, if one flinches, the gun will be moved off target to some degree. About this, in his article called "Zen and the Art of Hitting Stuff”, Bruce Gray says:

To combat a flinch you need to develop an unshakable faith in your trigger control skill, and an equally hard faith in the belief that if you focus on and align the sights and press through as you practice, you absolutely will hit the target." (Zen and the Art of Hitting Stuff)

Focus is another thing that the practical shooting participant cannot go without. Gray says that the best competitors have "qualities of focused mind and calm composure." (e-mail) On one hand, the shooter must always be absolutely concerned with safety, and in a way this is the greatest focus of the conscious mind except while the actual competition shooting is going on. At this point it becomes a subconscious issue which is controlled by the conscious mind. This means that, while the conscious mind is still attached and mindful that there is a safety aspect going on, it is functionally executed by the subconscious. We must have faith in our ability to be safe in shooting or, because safety is the greatest concern by far, all concentration on our shooting ability will be lost, which can just become a safety and ability spiral in an intense competitive frame of mind. Goloski says, "Negative thoughts, feelings and attitudes breed more of the same." (e-mail) Again, the best exercise "focused mind and calm composure" (Gray e-mail) in such a situation.

When the buzzer sounds on the stage, I find that my focus is absolutely the shooting aspects of that particular stage. Sight alignment, trigger control and target engagement. In that sense it is zen-like [sic.] for a fraction of a second as I shift focus on the sights, then the trigger, then the target acquisition, then the movement, etc. (Goloski e-mail)

In another practical sport, Practical Rifle, focus can be intensified beyond that of the pistol discipline. In the rifle sport, focus on the movement and absolute control and stilling of the body are key. In pistol shooting, between the size of the targets and the usual range, each target comprises, at the very least, more than one degree of the shooter's surroundings; that is, if a line were extended to each side of the target from the shooter, the angle between the lines would certainly be more than one degree of the circle of which it would be a radius. In rifle shooting at, for example, 300 yards, a standard distance, the game now comes down to minutes and seconds rather than degrees of vision. A target 3 inches across, which would be a reasonable target size for such shooting, would be only one minute, or one sixtieth of a degree, of a degree of angle. Focus on the tiniest feelings from the trigger squeeze and the motion of the crosshairs or sights over the target is absolutely essential to being able to hit anything. Also, focus on stillness of the body is essential; on an average length rifle, at the trigger, assuming the rifle is pivoting somewhere towards the end of the stock, a minute of angle at 300 yards would equal somewhere between two and three thousandths of an inch of deviation left to right or up to down.

This previous example is not the most extreme of instances of stillness practiced by world champion shooters. In the biathlon, the shooter has been skiing an intense cross-country ski race for several minutes before he is required to shoot. He must go from a state of extreme and frantic, though skillful and ordered motion to a completely still and focused state. The best of these shooters, while maintaining all of the traits that have yet been mentioned, actually find the rhythm of their heartbeats and time their shots according to this rhythm, between beats, so that their pulsing blood won't disturb the rifle's aim.

It is not hugely uncommon to have a gun malfunction in shooting, especially when shooting a semi-automatic firearm, but this is a part of what one should be concentrating on. While you have faith in the firearm, if that faith is violated, one must be able to rectify the problem safely, under time, and out of the pattern of the other things he is doing. Calm mind, calm composure, readied concentration - all of these things are running actively in the successful shooter's mind at all times.

Another division of focus in competitive shooting is focus on numbers and counting. This is fairly simple; you need to know how much ammunition you have loaded in your gun. Practical sports always have a time element, and there is no reason to waste time trying to figure out why, when you pull the trigger, the gun doesn't go "bang". this means you have to know how many rounds of ammunition are in the gun to begin with, whether in a detachable magazine, a cylinder in a revolver, or an internal magazine in a rifle. Also, in IPSC, for example, the best two hits on each target are counted for score. On most courses of fire, you can shoot all you want, but it just takes more time. This means that, unless you know you have a miss, you should be shooting two shots at each target. It's not incredibly hard to count to two over and over, but it is absolutely essential to do this, and there have been people on countless occasions who, upon being distracted from this concentration on, "1... 2 - next... 1... 2 - next..." have either wasted time on unnecessary shots or, worse, forgot to finish a target, meaning very big penalties points-wise.

In such a competitive environment, and often with spectators watching, it is very hard to keep one's self "in the room" or, as the case may be, "on the front sight". (In shooting we talk about the "front sight - that is, the sight at the forward end of the barrel of the gun - because the human eye can only focus on an object of one depth at a time, and while it would be nice to be able to focus on the rear sight, front sight, and target all at the same time, the correct choice is the front sight because it is simply and significantly the most accurate.) To detach one's self from outside influences, as well as from his ego, is very necessary. The most successful shooter "set aside the results-oriented goal of "winning" in favor of focusing exclusively on the process-oriented path we'll we follow to get there." (Gray e-mail). Complete concentration on the act of shooting is fundamentally contradicted by focus on the goal or on the act of winning.

To actually [detach your ego from the act of shooting], you just occupy the ego with something safe it can do to help, rather than letting it take over in a doomed effort to make it happen and be the star of the show "now that it counts." (Zen and the Art of Hitting Stuff)

Essentially, detachedness is, as Gray puts it, "Training our minds to stay focused on what is, in the present moment" (e-mail) In describing the practice known as "dry-firing", or firing without ammunition, or in this particular case, visualizing the sights with the eyes closed while one does this, "If your mind puts a target down there for you to look at instead of your sights, ignore it. That tells you something of what you have been paying attention to previously, and that’s a good thing to realize." (Zen and the Art of Hitting Stuff)

Then, one day, after a shot, the Master made a deep bow and broke off the lesson, "Just then 'It' shot!" he cried, as I stared at him bewildered...

"What I have said," the Master told me severely, "was not praise, only a statement that ought not to touch you. Nor was my bow meant for you, for you are entirely innocent of this shot. (Zen in the Art of Archery, 52-53)

Inaction is something also involved with flinching and anticipating the shot. When I teach shooting of all types of firearms, I teach that one's trigger squeeze should be so smooth and gradual that it should actually be a surprise that the gun goes off. In a way, this is just applying pressure, and when the gun goes off, to the shooter, is indeterminate. Just like the Zen Master in Zen and the Art of Archery, one should let something other than his self release the shot. Whether the shooter realizes that "it" released the shot is inconsequential. It is most important that one does not actively make the shot, but rather that the trigger break when it breaks. In Zen and the Art of Hitting stuff while talking about practice of inactive shooting, we hear that, "The gun will fire, at least once or twice in that first session, without conscious thought making it do so. Those are the shots you'll remember."

These tenants of Zazen and general Zen meditation do amazing things for the competitive shooter. Keeping himself focused in a Zen state allows him to be safe, accurate, efficient, and detached from his ego. The best shooters utilize these abilities as much as they can during every competition. Truly, the Practical Shooting sports bring about some of the most focus in people than anything else they do in their lives - this is certainly the case with me.

Now, as a shooter, no matter how trained one is, to reach his full potential he must understand and fully practice these tenants. Someone who achieved this discipline in the art of archery once said:

He must dare to leap into the Origin, so as to live by the Truth and in the Truth, like one who has become a pupil again, a beginner; conquer the last and steepest stretch of the way, undergo new transformations. If he survives its perils, then is his destiny fulfilled: face to face he beholds the unbroken Truth, the Truth beyond all truths, the formless Origin of origins, the Void which is the All; is absorbed into it and from it emerges reborn. (Zen and the Art of Archery, 89-90)

Sources Consulted:

E-mail Exchange with Bruce Gray (attached

E-mail exchange with Julie Goloski (attached)

Smith, Huston. The Illustrated World's Religions

Harper Collins. San Fransisco: 1994

Kapleau, Philip. The Three Pillars of Zen

Foreword by Huston Smith

Beacon Press. Boston: 1965 (Japan), 1967 (U.S.)

Herrigel, Eugen. Zen in the Art of Archery.

Vintage Books, New York: 1989 (a division of Random House)

Gray, Bruce. "Zen and the Art of Hitting Stuff".

GrayGuns Inc. dryfire packet

GrayGuns inc.

Practical Fundamentals Competition Course w/Guest instructor Bruce Gray

http://www.sigarmsacademy.com/selfdefense/...?cid=118&type=2

11/16/05

JulieGoloski.com

http://www.juliegoloski.com

11/16/05

http://www.uspsa.org

11/16/05

http://www.idpa.com

11/16/05

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One of the best articles on Zen I have ever read. Easy for the beginner to understand and quite fullfilling for and experienced Zenist.

I used Zen In The Art Of Archery for years while I shot competitively. Once you find the Zone you realize how simple things are to just let them happen.

Reading this article brought back many wonderful memories.

Thanks for sharing it with all of us.

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Wow, Ty? Is Ty in calfornia? Then I know him...he always wear Harley (sp?) Davidson shirts and never even imagzined he is into it.

My favorite free article (book, actually) on zen is

Mindfullness in Plain English

I have struggled with "totally empty yourself" method of meditation. It is too difficult. Focusing the breath is much easier. But sitting needs so much motivation more so than drifire. You can see the progress in dryfire. But sitting.... I read scientifc articles like How meditation change your brain physically but alas.... So, actually sitting 20minitues once a week is a great acomplishment for me for now.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Wow, Ty? Is Ty in calfornia? Then I know him...he always wear Harley (sp?) Davidson shirts and never even imagzined he is into it.

My favorite free article (book, actually) on zen is

Mindfullness in Plain English

I have struggled with "totally empty yourself" method of meditation. It is too difficult. Focusing the breath is much easier. But sitting needs so much motivation more so than drifire. You can see the progress in dryfire. But sitting.... I read scientifc articles like How meditation change your brain physically but alas.... So, actually sitting 20minitues once a week is a great acomplishment for me for now.

This is profound stuff, very fascinating, thanks for sharing.

I have tried to filter out distractions during prayer, it is harder than it seems on the surface.

Edited by triggercontrol
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  • 3 months later...
You are welcome

, it is harder than it seems on the surface.

Boy isn't that so? when you think about getting rid of "thoughts" then you think, therefore thoughts never goes away.

Something a yoga instructor taught to help with the process of emptying that I found helpful was that rather than trying to eliminate the thought, or dismiss it. Accept it.

Say to yourself "OK the the thought is there, but I will deal with it later." Then it goes and you are free to stop thinking about it. Otherwise you spend your thoughts thinking about not thinking and never clear your awareness of the "monkeymind".

Edited by Rapt
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