LogFAQs > #886131761

Lightning Bolt posted...

Historically it's been an extremely cooperative thing, though, so hard to pull off alone.

Yeah, but I'm not really talking about what is generally referred to as "battle trance", wherein large groups sort of zone out into the same rhythm. What I'm talking about is more like Blademasters in the Wheel of Time series, who sort of turn their focus internally and quell their own emotions and awareness (which in turn was probably inspired by various ideas in Buddhism and samurai philosophy), filtering out everything (including physical pain and other distractions) other than the perfection of your own strikes and your opponent.

http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Void

In fact, now that I bring that up as an example, I'm reminded of the concept of wu wei, as well as this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Going down these lines, samurai might be the best model to work from, especially the more romanticized later-period samurai (ie, Tokugawa-era), where you have the mentality that the true warrior has perfect focus in all things, whether a battle, a duel, or writing a haiku or painting calligraphy. That sort of mental state occasionally known as "ego-death", where you basically blot out everything but the moment you exist in and focus the totality of your effort on whatever it is you're doing. The sort of thing where you have someone talking about being "one with the blade" or whathaveyou.

But I'm still kind of stumped on any real world examples to really call on as a descriptor for that sort of thing (other than the aforementioned samurai, which unfortunately carries a few too many connotations of its own to really work for this as a more generic term for "cold" berserking). Most meditative forms of ego-killing I can think of tend to be less militaristic and more philosophical.



synth_real posted...

You'd have to look to something like people that work themselves into a trance and firewalk or Shaolin monks, something of that nature.

Shaolin definitely touches on the idea, especially with the combination of Zen Buddhism and combat, though that falls more into a Monk's purview than a less-nimble, tankier class build (like Barbarian).


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