Kan: The Intuitive Mind of the Martial Artist discusses one way of thinking, which is applied by masters of far Eastern martial arts, and which is suitable for winning battles.
This way of thinking is optimized to solve the problem of dealing correctly with unpredictable events, when response time is of the essence.
However, most of life, we do not have to deal with such events. We have the time to think with some leisure. Sometimes we are not in a battle situation at all, such as when we are creating a book or a painting or a software application.
In other cases, we are at war but events proceed sufficiently slowly that we can think for several minutes, or even for several days, before making the next move. Business competition is an example of such a war. There is almost always time to convene a meeting of the stakeholders and hash out a plan of action.
I wonder how do zen and other far Eastern philosophies deal with such situations.
Another question, to which I do not recall having seen an answer: every Westerner is familiar with the eerie and unreal feeling, which he has when he tries to grok zen. I wonder how do far Easterners feel when they learn our Western anti-zen philosophy. How do they look at it. With which problems it is better than zen at dealing with.
