Maze of the Fire Dragon

Can you escape the maze of the Fire Dragon?
Here is a puzzle for you to figure out:

You are caught in a maze of never-ending passages. Behind and gaining on you is a Fire Dragon! In front of you, down dark passages, around every corner, are unknown dangers. It is certain that you will be burnt up by the Fire Dragon coming from behind if you cannot escape. So what can you do to avoid being devoured?
Solve this puzzle and you will understand the most powerful force
in all Martial Arts training.

Are you ready for this great adventure?

We are what we think;
All that we are arises
With our thoughts—
With our thoughts
We make the world.

—Buddha

This book is also for adults who are concerned that young people develop the understanding and skills to cope with conflict in creative and nonviolent ways.

• Martial Arts Instructors—as required reading for rank advancement.
• Parents—as examples of healthy and humane alternatives to conflict.
• Educators—as curriculum resources for relationship-building skills.
• Counselors—as a context within which young people can learn to understand themselves.

The graveyard was barely lit by a quarter moon. An owl hooted, then flew out of its hiding place, swooping down among the trees beyond. The night was still. He could feel his heart beating in his throat. This was a test of fear.

The other students had vanished. Each one had been told by the head instructor to spend time alone in the graveyard. He could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck.

Don't let your thoughts run wild. See how they try to frighten you. We have talked about death before. Death is the unknown. What you fear is the known, your images of death—not the fact of death! He remembered his teacher's words at their last meeting. They had discussed death—the death of the body and the self, the self which is made up of a collection of thoughts that create "me." But tonight, what had seemed so clear was no longer clear. The student felt alone, overwhelmed by the reality of the graveyard.

He was surrounded by monuments to death: stone blocks with names, dates and last words. The presence of the dead around him, the silence, the eternal end to being alive, appeared as a black fathomless hole. He would catch his spinning thoughts as they began to whirl away into fantasies of ghosts of death. He shivered. Again and again he struggled to focus on what was real, and free himself from fantasy.

Even though the autumn night was warm, he was cold to his bones. The trees took on human-like forms. The owl hooted again and suddenly swooped down from the dark—large wings of prey descending on an unsuspecting nocturnal creature. He could smell the dampness in the soft soil under his feet. The tombstones, eternal monuments to times gone forever, reminded him that there would be an end to all that he knew. He broke out in a cold sweat. An emptiness that no answer could fill overwhelmed him. This was the void, that abyss that all people fear. He was standing in it! He imagined that the dead were pulling him through the earth, ghost hands coming up through the ground, grasping his legs, pulling him down. His body was wet; his eyes ached from trying to see into the night. He was ready to complete this test!

A shadow passed across his vision; the student instinctively went into combat ready stance! Was it real, or a ghost? His heart pumped faster and his muscles tensed. Whatever it was, he was prepared!

Can you tell the difference between what is really there and what you think or imagine it there? Can you recognize an intention to hurt you even before the attacker feels it in himself or herself? This is the ability to be aware of what is going to happen, perhaps only a split second before it does happen. It is one of the finely tuned skills of a master Martial Artist. With this ability, the Martial Artist can end the potential for harm—before any harm can occur. These clear, strong words of his teacher rang in his mind.

The shadow took form. A dark, massive figure emerged from behind the largest tombstone. It rose up out of the ground to a terrible height, towering in the black sky. The partial light from the quarter moon cast a dim eerie shadow across the ground toward the student. The student's body was frozen in combat stance! His legs were concrete and his eyes were fixed in terror on that hulk of a figure.

The student felt a scream emerging from deep down in his gut...It rose up to his throat, but stopped there, and only continued on as a thought in his brain. He watched every detail of the ghostlike figure, waiting for any sign of intended harm. The student's mind suddenly went blank. And as a wave subsides back into the ocean, the overpowering fear of that first moment of encounter subsided. There was only a heightened sense of awareness. It was as if time and the world stood absolutely still.

"What are you doing here?" rumbled an old deep voice from this great statue of death.

"Who are you that is asking?" he heard himself reply, surprised at the command and calm of his voice. It was as if the frightened boy had disappeared—and in his place a confident Martial Artist came forth. The dark figure before him began to take on more human dimensions and lost its superhuman presence. The figure was wearing a black jacket and a large hat that prevented the student from seeing who he might be.

"And who are you?" the deep voice bellowed. The figure seemed to grow taller with this commanding question. The student knew what was being asked.

"Fear dies, I die, then there is no death," the young student said with certainty.

"Good, you have learned your lesson well, young student. You have conquered your 'self,' fear and death—which are one and the same. Do you understand?" the deep voice queried.

"Yes, sir. I understand what you have taught me. I see that this is the greatest challenge in my Martial Arts training," the student returned, recognizing the figure as his teacher.

"Now, do your form until your mind is empty of all thoughts of fear and death, all thoughts concerning yourself. Stay focused on each movement—as if this is the first time you have performed it. Do not practice out of habit, for then your mind will wander and fear will enter. Does this make sense to you?

"Yes, sir!" the student replied strongly. And as his teacher watched, sitting quietly on the grass, the student practiced his form with great care. The physical movements were sharp and forceful. His mind was focused intently on each deliberate movement. His teacher watched from among the tombstones in the graveyard on that partially moonlit night. The feeling of fear subsided, and in its place arose calmness. The night was quiet and still. Two figures in a graveyard: one moving in a focused dance, the other watching intently, both in a timeless moment.

The most important view of this book, and all my books, is that we can understand and end conflict, individually and globally. The wars that have plagued human beings for thousands of years can end if we are serious about understanding their cause.

Too often we have approached trying to resolve conflict intellectually. We turn to authorities—psychologists, philosophers, religious leaders, politicians, sociologists, historians, anthropologists, and on and on—for solutions to the problems of human relationship. I question this assumption!

I think that the only person who can solve our problems is each one of us. We create our own problems and the problems in the world. We have to find out for ourselves what is true or not true, what woks and what doesn't. In looking to authorities for the solution, we can only follow an ideal: an intellectual explanation or a moral commandment. Either one paradoxically creates more conflict because each leads to judgment of actual behavior and the idealization of a desired behavior—which is divisive and only creates more conflict.

The thing that we can do is to examine the problem as it actually happens! And that is in the moment itself—not through hindsight nor foresight, but now, as it occurs. The faculty that is needed that will "solve" our problems of relationship is insight, or intelligence—the ability to see, to observe, to be aware of what is occurring as it happens. In order to understand conflict, we must not theorize or moralize about it. We must come into direct contact with it, observing its movement, its nature and its structure in operation.

The Martial Arts can play an important role in the observation of the workings of conflict for—after all—they are the arts of war, of conflict. A Martial Art, if taught rightly, can be a valuable context within which to explore the actual movement of conflict.