Mokuso is a Japanese term for silent meditation. The first kanji reads as “Moku” and means silence or stop and the second one is “So” and means to think or focus. Mokuso is a common way to start and to end a training session in the Japanese Martial Arts and especially Aikido.
Mokuso is an exercise. To do it you have to sit in seiza in a first place. Close your eyes, straighten your back, lower your shoulders and feel the way your pose is natural. Make sure your body doesn’t disturb you while you are trying to meditate and then leave your thoughts. It’s not easy, not even hard, you just have to get it once and there will always be a road back to the point. You try this way and many others until you understand a without-thought feeling.
One of the suggested ways to start is to concentrate on breathing, nothing else. Not something you do during in your usual life every moment but to feel it deeply and to try to get your abdominal breath with your low part of the body where your center of the weight is. A belt of your training form is your helper, it’s right on point where you have to put your breathing. Then you can evacuate your thoughts, feelings, concepts and emotions. After a while, there will be no need to be thinking about breathing too.
Once again, Mokuso helps you stay with your training in the best possible way. It is also a good step to be able to reach mushin. A state of mind into which trained martial artists are said to enter during combat. Reaching a mushin can be done in everyday training starting from Mokuso. Enso is good to be mentioned in that post. Enso is a circle that is hand-drawn to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create. During Mokuso your body is still, during Enso you draw a circle, and during Mushin you can train or fight.
So how will this all help? Imagine you make your solutions without any affections of the anger, ambitions, fear, etc. Your performance anywhere would have a constant grow and mistakes count you make would decrease.
A lot of different interpretations of the same things are known these days. For example, a technique for answering any requests outside yourself only on the next day. Using this technique gives you a time to think about your responses, a possibility to make it clean. Same in the combat, on the job, in the business, with your family.
Starting with the Mokuso makes you free from the past and the future. You learn to get the point faster if you do this on a regular basis. Work yourself out and go deeper inside to understand how much difference you can make with your mind. Enjoy the process – it’s the only way to get better.