Mokuso (Meditation)

Some martial arts classes begin and end with Mokuso or meditation. Why is this a common part of club discipline when clearly in the 25-40 seconds allocated by the senior student is clearly inadequate to achieve any level of meditation? In short, I'm not entirely clear and it's not  a topic I've wanted to stray onto with my Sensei when a better use of his time is improving my technique. I suspect there are a number of reasons why we pseudo-meditate at the start and end of each class? Perhaps because it's traditional, it provides a nice beginning and end to the session, setting down a marker of where serious training begins and the rest of your life stays behind and lastly it's important in some way to developing your art and as such, should be represented within the class. So lets focus on the last aspect. There's an entire culture behind meditation derived from Zen Buddhism about attaining higher levels etc, but karate is not about religion. We know this because Gichin Funakoshi said so and he also said "The ultimate aim of Karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of the participant." In setting down his principals of karate he based them heavily on Bushida (the Samurai code of conduct) and the Zen school of Buddhism where meditation is central. Meditation in simple terms clears the mind - freeing the body from the slowness that accompanies fear and tension and allowing the body to react automatically (without conscious thought) to new situations. So overall quite useful for combat. However, it can't be done in 30 seconds - even by the most enlightened and certainly not by me. So it's inclusion in most Western classes is symbolic. However, I do think it is worth doing at home on your own (it's not really a group activity) and working at it because as well as being a useful asset to martial arts training, it also will reduce stress in general and that can only be a good thing.