(Continuation of Post – Great Potential – Great Function)

 The Great Learning – from Soul of the Samurai – Thomas Cleary

 The Great Learning, or Daigaku in Japanese, is a Confucian classic. One of the famous lines of The Great Learning cited in Zen teaching is “The Way of Great Learning is in clarifying enlightened virtue.” In Zen terms, this clarification of mind is what the sword master calls entering the house and meeting the host. It is the gateway to elementary learning. When you go to a house, first you go in through the gate; thus the gate is an indication that you’ve arrived at the house. Going through this gate, you enter the house and meet the host. You get to the knowledge by going through the gate. Therefore, learning is the gate, not the house. When you see the gate, don’t take it for the house. The house is inside, past the gate.

Flashback:

The training conducted in Raeford, N. C. to ultimately compete to win a spot on the U.S. Parachute Team was a 365 day per year effort. My coach had ideas of how the body moves which were very unorthodox for Americans at the time – (still is actually). I had to trust in the process. I listened. I had to make hundreds of jumps just practicing parts of what would ultimately be put together as a whole. I spent over a year on just “the parts.” No one else did this. Others started by practicing the whole “set” right off, training to get better through repetition.

One “part” was learning to gain more speed before the actual gymnastics part of the jump (Style Set) started. My coach had me start the jump completely different than normal. Normally, you exit the airplane and fall away in a tight ball until you have enough speed, then you start your maneuvers. This “fall-away” takes about 15 seconds of your total 26 seconds of airtime before you have to open your parachute. The normal fall-away was “safe” because you could see your “headings” on the ground to line up each turn. This is critical because if you’re off your headings you are eliminated. But my coaches theory was that a vertical dive would be better as you can gain speeds of up to over 200 m.p.h. (a faster start- means a faster gymnastic set. You are judged on speed and precision.) I started practicing this vertical dive. It was very scary and unstable to come up out of the dive and still be on my heading and then slam into the first turn. It looked like this; I would exit the airplane, line up on the heading, then flip over into a head down dive – just head and shoulders vertical straight down. Now, I was looking backwards at the horizon. I could not see the headings. I had to “see” from the back of my head – intuitively. It feels like the bottom just drops out underneath you – it’s so fast. No one else in the world started the Style jump with the dive. My coach’s theory was that by starting with the dive you can gain more speed and the judges would not be able to determine when you would start the turn, hence getting perhaps one hundredth of a second on the stop watches (hundreds of a second could ultimately make a big difference in your time). The risk for this was that you could be way off your heading when you came up out of the dive because of wind drift, which would essentially eliminate you. So the dive was a big risk.

I spent literally hundreds of jumps just learning this one part. Just perfecting the dive. The dive essentially means nothing as far as judging the Style set (it just gave more speed to start). So, to not have the dive work, would mean many months of spending time and effort on something that ultimately may not do any good. Years later I realized – - this was “the gate.” It took many months, but the dive started to become comfortable. I learned to get a sixth sense on whether or not I was drifting in the air and if I was still lined up on my heading. I began to “see” with the back of my head. I had eyes throughout my whole body – I starting getting used to the speed.

Ultimately, this was the lesson of “The Great Learning.” I realized that the dive was just “the gate.” It was not “the house.” I spent hundreds of jumps at “the gate.” It was the entrance “to learn.” This part of the training taught me that “the gate” is the time to develop. These preliminary steps are what gave me the ability to take on the even more difficult lessons I was facing when I finally entered “the house.” The dive eventually became automatic, then it left my mind. It became spontaneous without thought. I could now enter “the house.”

In your own sports practice or endeavors – -look for “the gate.” One day you’ll enter “the house.”

My Best,

Maria Camille