Thoughts on a life spent in the martial arts. Based on observations both in and outside the dojo (in the theme park we call "life") the comments are intended to be pointed to illustrate how Budo can be lived. While beginning students may find much of this useful in guiding their journey as they begin to discover "The Way" of Aikido, much of the intent here is to offer provocative ideas to seasoned players that will cause one to "Think" about the obvious and the not-so-obvious. Aikido is supposed to be "Lived" and not treated like a vacation where you occasionally wander across the mat like a tourist before going home.
How does anyone grow as a person. How do you become something that you are not. How do you escape from the shoe box that you grew up in and become aware of the larger world outside the bubble that you normally exist and live within. How do you become something you are not (yet).
The answer is reasonably simple but it must become a regular part of your life. You need people in your life that are further along than you, people that have a bigger vision, people that are more experienced in the ups and downs of life, people that are out of your league in terms of knowledge and sophistication, people that are more mature emotionally, intellectually, and experience-wise.
Long story short, you need to be exposed to new levels of knowledge, understanding of life, maturity, and experience so that you can go to your own new levels by being around new sources of knowledge, a broader view of life, and deeper information on new topics.
I came to martial arts from a small country town that when compared to a big city was incredibly backwards. We had lots of BBQ and Tex-Mex food but we didn't even know what a pizza parlor was and something such as Chinese food or sushi was equivalent to an invasion from outer space ...... and philosophy ......... what in the world was that. Buddhism, Taoism, meditation ..... scary stuff to be avoided and belittled.
So I begin training in Aikido & Judo and am immediately exposed to those, and many other new ideas that changed my way of life. New foods, new ideas, new information, new people all of which taken together opened my eyes. My old attitudes about such things as martial arts, even politics, changed and grew larger in scope allowing me to better understand the good and bad points, the strengths and weaknesses of everything around me including different opinions, and new training ideas. In effect, I became a more worldly and sophisticated person open to exploring new ideas.
However, as an interesting side note, I also became more discriminatory in what I did and accepted; that is, greater knowledge can manifest itself by our having a deeper understanding of everything around and what is desirable, or undesirable and what to accept or not accept. In other words, growing up in a small country town had resulted in a lack of depth and accepting (or denying) many things at their face value, also known as naivety.
A dojo is different from other endeavors. People who go to the same church tend to have the same ideas on religion and philosophy. People who belong to the same book club tend to read the same books. People who live in the same area of town tend to go to the same bars and restaurants and eat the same repetitive selections of food.
Martial artists however generally start training with only one thing in common, learning martial arts and maybe getting in shape but they all come from different backgrounds. Everything else you may know (or think you know), believe in, or have experienced is very likely completely different from everybody else on the mat so every day working with others potentially results in new knowledge and information to be exposed to ....... and then there is "Apre's Dojo" or the social hour after practice as you discuss everything and anything over a cup of sake where you go into "being exposed to new ideas" overload.
So, learn from your training partner and the teachers and begin to grow your horizons. Use this idea as just one more reason to train in Bushido (a word, an idea, and a way of life that I didn't even know existed until I put on my gi for the first time and stepped on the mat).
And ..... pay attention to the Sensei at your dojo. The word Sensei after all translates as "One who was born before"; not necessarily by a calendar but instead, one more experienced in life, more broadly educated, and knowledgeable (in all that "new stuff").
Once upon a time there was a monk without any eyelids who was sitting in a cave and his arms and legs fell off, and when someone asked him what he was doing he replied, "Listening to the ants scream".
I don't know about you, but I'd be looking for the way out of the cave at that point.
It's a funny story but one repeated often in certain Zen and martial arts circles, the story of Bodhidharma and the basis for the Daruma Doll. On the front of the doll is kanji that literally reads to have “eyes open” -- a subtle nod to the Daruma Doll’s Buddhist roots referencing enlightenment and the person the Daruma Dolls are based on.
Daruma Dolls are based on a monk named Bodhidharma who lived in the 5th-6th century. He was known to be highly dedicated to meditation and austerity, which helped grow his reputation. Like many religious/spiritual figures in history, there is the historical person and the folklore that grows bigger with every repetition.
One story is that Bodhidharma spent 9 years facing a cave wall in deep meditation with his eyes wide open, never blinking. His striving for enlightenment was so intense that his arms, legs, and body atrophied and fell by the wayside but his spirit remained firm. Because of this parable, Bodhidharma grew in popularity through all of Asia and finally in Japan. He’s also credited for introducing Zen Buddhism, Zazen meditation, and green tea.
The doll has two eyes, both without pupils. The idea is to decide upon a desire or goal, paint in the left eye, and then when the goal has been accomplished paint in the other eye. Once both eyes have been painted in signifying the accomplishment, then the doll is taken to a temple to be burned so that the spirit of the doll may be released. To be honest though, even after I have achieved the goal and paint in the second eye, I keep the doll on my office shelf as a reminder of what perseverance can accomplish; and I have more than more one.
In life, we all tend to set a goal and look up one day, possibly years later, having not only not reached the goal, but maybe not even remembering having set it. A function of the Daruma Doll is to serve as a reminder of the goal and its' eventual attainment.
We have recently adopted the idea of giving a doll to every new deshi with the suggestion of setting as their personal goal that of being promoted to black belt. Then, once they reach 1st degree (Shodan), we give them a second Daruma Doll with the suggestion of reaching the end of the 1st tier of dan ranks and being ready to start work into the 2nd tier. A little known rank organization in Aikido is that Shodan through Yondan is the 1st tier (basically lower ranking black belts) and Godan and up is the 2nd tier or senior instructor/Sensei ranks.
While life is known for getting in the way of our life-goals with some things simply being out of our control (what's that saying .... accept what you can't change) making a personal goal and commitment to yourself is important. It's one thing to break a promise made to someone else but it's entirely different when we break a promise made to ourselves.
Part of training in Bushido and part of becoming a Bushi (warrior) is learning to set goals and develop life organization and personal discipline to reach (that goal). Failure to do so can negatively influence our opinion of ourselves (at a deeper level) and hinder our reaching our full potential in life.
Learn something new about yourself? Sorry Dude. That’s outside my comfort zone.
Lately there have been more than a few commentaries floated around out there that speak to the changes in the Zen community and how current Western thought has corrupted the realization process including the learning and the finding of our true self; that realization being replaced by social and cultural ideas of the moment. Unfortunately for Budo, those changes have also impacted martial arts in much the same way.
In the viewpoint of some (true) Buddhist practitioners, Zennists as-it-were, one of the ideas behind following the teachings of Buddha is that of overcoming appearances and behavioral affectations in our lives that prevent us from understanding and realizing that our true nature (who we really and truly are, what our purest base essence is) is not what we think.
Are we truly honest, or do we dishonestly spend our lives using situational ethics? Are we a great parent, or do we just show up at birthdays while our spouse/nanny/grandparent does the tough work and the heavy lifting? Are we moralistic, or do we steal the pencils at work and are we stingy with the tip for the waitress? How we think of ourselves (or said another way how we “think” we act towards and relate to everything and everyone around us) and how we really act when viewed objectively can be two totally different things. Think for a moment of “posturing”, “virtue signaling”, or being “smugly moralistic”. Also consider the concept of “situational ethics”.
There is a word not often used but it just fits …… zeitgeist (“spirit of the time") or the entire pattern and picture of what is going on out there culturally, spiritually, religiously, and intellectually during a defined time-period in popular culture.
Do we follow the zeitgeist; or do we swim upstream against the current like a spawning salmon in search of who we “truly are”? Put another way, are we in search of the truth about our spirit despite what the social norms of the moment may be. One is easy while the other difficult; and there lies the inherent conflict in the choice.
One of the themes or foundations of the current zeitgeist could describe the authentic Buddhist-Zennist practitioner who struggles with overcoming appearances (both sensory and mental) as being an “anti-realist” or going against the flow of popular culture. The goal, the true goal, of their study is to one day achieve the state of being a Buddha which goes beyond appearances and is what Bodhidharma was talking about when he said to understand your true nature become a “Buddha.” He also said: “Seeing your true nature is Zen. Unless you see your nature, it's not Zen”
Zen, esp. Western Zen these days, is no longer a kind of anti-realism but, instead, has been turned upside down being pro-realism as if to declare, “Live in the here and the now — there is nothing transcendent to realize. You are already a Buddha. You become and are fully self-realized not by doing the work of Zen but instead, by taking up social causes, saying the right things, owning the right things which at one time was referred to as “Keeping up the Jones’s” and gathering material possessions but today it has perhaps become wearing a “Che Guevara” t-shirt and marching for justice, drinking only sustainable coffee from socially active coffee shops, voicing support for the “cause du’joire”, eating vegan, and not wearing animal products.
None of those of course have a thing to do with true self-realization (they are only social ideas) but in the new perversion of “Zen” that is all it takes to “Become Buddha”. If followers of the way were truly becoming Buddha then they would immediately understand that they were self-deluded and not self-realized and that social ideas have little to do with self-realization.
To understand and comprehend the breadth, depth, and the sense of this is to understand the current Zeitgeist which has morphed into a kind of personal despair called postmodernism which is a new kind of nihilism designed for personal destruction in a very Nietzsche-esque’ fashion. The discovery and internalization of your actual identity, of your true nature is sacrificed in favor of wallowing in feelings, appearances, and affectations, joining the right crowd and being seen supporting the right causes.
We should describe this nihilistic life as “realized worthlessness”, a life status in which the normally seen Modus Operandi is drugs and alcohol, posturing, smugness, and arrogance that is sometimes backed by overeducation and credentialing signifying an “intellectual superiority”; basically, a self-medicated or self-therapeutic way of life that is little more than an attempt to alleviate the pain of a meaningless existence by demonstrating moral superiority over others.
A teacher is supposed to teach the student something that they do not already know, rather than what the student expects or wishes to learn. Students who want to be taught what they expect Zen Buddhism to be when it is not that way, and who cannot tolerate a teacher who takes them beyond their comfort zone, are little more than beginners, ignorant ones at that. They will never advance because they came to Zen and Buddhism with their minds already made up as to what those are (or should be). Worse yet, they base their opinions on articles or books written by non-Zennists,, or they have had “deep” conversations with others who are also beginners and who themselves are equally into posturing, virtue signaling, and their own affectations; something that the current Zeitgeist refers to as “living in a bubble”.
For anyone to learn, to become Buddha, or as I prefer to say, becoming a “Zennist”, they must be accepting of the truth that their assumptions about Zen and Buddhism have to be abandoned and that what they think to be The Way, is only an illusion.
And so it also is with Budo.
The very term Budo in and of itself is misleading. Martial arts in Japan up until the Meiji Restoration, were more correctly considered as being Bushido, and of being koryu or old flow; Budo not really coming into play until the dictates of SCAP or Supreme Command Allied Pacific occupation forces which for a time outlawed the practice of martial arts and ways until a more sportive form of “Budo” instead of “Bujutsu” could be formed; ergo “kenjutsu” became “kendo”, “Aikijutsu” became “Aikido”, etc.
The term Bushido can be hotly debated (primarily due to Nitobe’s writings that many believe distorted its origins) but there are writings that refer to the overall concept as far back as the 1600’s. Bushido can be described as the “outward appearance” of behavioral norms for the Samurai, but the truth of koryu is a martial system that contains educational pedagogy designed to teach the psychology of combat and of life and death, strategies of combat whether individual vs individual or divisions of Samurai, and techniques of fighting that were designed to ensure victory (read “total incapacitation of the opponent” or death).
This was the reality of being Samurai whether during the waring periods or the times of peace in which even dueling was prohibited (but still done none-the-less).
Concurrent with the decline in Zen and the degradation of the work necessary to “Become Buddha” is the view of Aikido and of other martial arts systems as being less than what they were. Discussion of death is frowned upon and is not very marketable in today’s climes. Teaching technique as being functionally used to disable or kill the opponent is discouraged in favor of “blending spirits” and improvement of “body, mind, spirit”. Even the milder term of “self-defense” is frowned upon in many cases because the martial arts are either baby sitting children or becoming “self-realized” adults.
While koryu forms emphasized those aspects of martial arts such as life and death and how to perform those for ourselves or on others, the truth is that they also could result in improvement of the individual as evidenced by Mushashi’s writings in his final days for example after a lifetime of shugyo. They were not automatically mutually exclusive and could be and were taught side by side. Kamakura Zen is an example of how to face life, how to face death, and how to leave the temple as being “more” than we were when we walked in as a monjin (standing at the gate) and petitioning to become a deshi (disciple).
Learning how to consider and to face death (and its natural corollary of life) doesn’t mean that you run out today and kill the first person you see. Most martial artists never use their skills in anger but they find through years or a lifetime of study that the study in and of itself makes one a better person overall who becomes more peaceful because of the deep understanding of what violence really means. Ignoring the truth of Bushido and of Zen only creates someone with an incomplete view of the reality that they pretend to seek, but are really not as they work to self-validate their distorted views of who they are and of what "their" reality may be in their eyes.
Once upon a time in the west …… or the east ….. or wherever ….. folks wandered into a dojo looking for the magic of Budo (self-improvement and all that), for the intellectual challenge of learning something never before seen in their home town (“Can I wear a Samurai topknot under my Stetson?”), or to learn a practical method of self-defense (aka, how to not be shoved into the lockers at high school and be given 1st spot in the food service line for enchilada Friday in the cafeteria).
New prospective students walked in, asked good questions, showed interest, signed up, and like many of us stayed with the same Sensei for decades; leaving only after having squeezed the sponge dry and hitting a high-enough rank to be able to honestly make the claim that they actually trained and learned and knew something.
Today those folks are still out there but it seems that they are there in lesser numbers as many applicants to today’s dojo seem not as interested in learning; just in gaining rank or status, or in checking off one more box on their punch-list. They visit class to observe and ask whether we teach the technique they saw in a video game (yes, I’ve had that specific question put to me). They send an email with a photo attached and, in the photo, they have colored hair, tattoos, and enough piercings to start a jewelry store. I don’t care about the hair (one of my Japanese Sensei had purple hair and I was told that only descendants of senior Samurai families could color their hair like that as it close to being a sign of royalty). Tat’s don’t bother me as I have two already and am looking at a third (my wife and daughter both have more tat’s than I do).
Then they never make contact again even after an open invitation is extended, which begs the question …. why the photo if you never intended to show up? Why the “personal touch” of too much information including your sexual preference (yes, I have even had that given me before …. but why …. because I didn’t ask and really don’t care). Do you always send photo’s to strangers? The dojo email and messenger app are not dating apps are they, so why treat them as such?
Sometimes visitors show up and they don’t have the colored hair or the tat’s but they have the piercings complete with nose rings and ear plugs. One guy came in and his first night in the dressing room everyone noticed that he had pierced nipples so it was no wonder he complained about the pain when we taught grappling one night. One guy showed up in a dress with his hair in French braids hair down below his shoulders and in the braids, he had woven metal bells. Oh my, how he jingled when he walked. When told that the bells in the hair had to go (might hit someone in the face when training) and that the nose rings weren’t safe (might get hooked by someone’s finger and jerked out, don’t need blood on the mat) and that the ear plugs might get torn out (don’t need that blood on the mat either) he was offended and left. Oh well. One less future problem to prepare for.
So, do you want to train or not? Or are your personal affectations more important than learning something new and improving who you are as you progress?
We old-sters (maybe “Mat Fossils” is a better term) no longer understand a culture in which people seem to think that rank is simply gifted and not earned, that rank and status are more important than becoming a better human being by improving mind, body, and spirit, or not comprehending that adopting a “martial arts” mindset of sorts is a necessary part of learning some pretty sophisticated and powerful material.
We no longer understand how someone can walk into a dojo claiming to want to learn but bear personal affectations (with the concurrent attitudes) such that training is neigh-on impossible; and yet they still expect to be allowed on the mat and to be promoted in quick time no-less.
Yeah, yeah …. now the naysayers are going to tell me that martial arts have always been about rank and that if someone trains even a little bit then they should be promoted just because they tried. Well, martial arts have always been about rank but only in the sense that the rank signifies the work put into gaining the overall knowledge and ability, along with the growth (and improvement) of their body, mind, and spirit.
So yes, they’ve always been about rank but not to the commercialized levels we see these days where dojo drop their standards just to get money paying bodies in the door; and certainly not with the strange humans walking into the dojo. So what we’re seeing (not all the time mind you but on occasion) are prospective students coming in with a life-style that contradicts the requirements of actually training; and that life-style reflects the idea of entitlement as-in, “If I show up for class once in a while and remember to wash my gi on occasion, then I’ll be promoted even if I’m not really up to speed on the material”.
This attitude is even being seen (for some time now) in corporate America where I was told the story of a man who straight out of university was hired at a large corporation (with what was likely a 6-figure salary) and on his first day at work was seen sporting an ear-stud. His new employer could be accused of having no sense of humor as he was apparently told that if he showed up the next day with the ear-stud that he shouldn’t bother coming in at all; so much for that posh overpaid executive position.
When you sign up at a dojo and become a deshi (a word that roughly translates as “disciple”) you are expected to adopt certain behavioral aspects. The color of your hair is not important. The number of tattoos is not important. What is important is understanding that body piercing can be dangerous and is therefore not desired; along with the realization of the need for good hygiene and the correct clothing (a clean gi & hakama, trimmed toenails). Becoming a disciple doesn’t mean joining an abbey, becoming a Marine vegan, it doesn’t mean carrying the gi bags of the senior students, but it does mean devoting yourself to learning and adopting the means by which you can learn. Basically, it means following the forms and the rules that over decades, centuries in fact, have proven most effective in allowing you to learn and to become the martial artist you have decided you to be.
Enclothed cognition is the psychological concept that states that how you dress affects how you think. In other words, dress like a samurai and start to think and behave like one. This concept is one of the key ideas behind a study of koryu and indeed of all serious martial arts that are structured to change who you are by giving you knowledge and abilities that you’ve never had before. Thinking in the patterns that the reishiki describes and the kata flows in will over time change the way in which you view the work, which will lead to understanding how the Samurai had to think when using the movements in actual combat. Understanding the mind-set leads to a change in how you in turn consider exposure points in your kamae, and openings in the opponents’ kamae. “Becoming” the kata, performing the kata in the way it was designed, doing the work as an “old flow” system makes it effective in adapting to combative exchanges as it came from battles that likely had limited outcomes (you die, I die, we both die, we’re both chopped up so bad that we wish we had died).
In a sense this is what combat consists of; kamae that either offer an opening (in the attempt to appear weak and draw the opponent in), kamae that are strategic (such as Mushashi’s concept of “open on all sides”), or kamae that allow you to “spring-board in” so-as to advantage openings in the opponents posture. Not taking the concept seriously and attempting to make the kata “yours” by changing the way you view and perform it in order to suit some personal idea nullifies its’ effectiveness.
Aikido is one of the worse but all martial arts today seem infected with the idea that a student is supposed to study (to some degree, or not), learn something (how well may be debatable) and then at some undesignated “future time”, understand the art form such that they can, “make it their own”. They totally miss one of the central themes of koryu which is that you don’t change the art to fit you; the art changes you to fit it including body posture and movement, reaction to stimuli, and mental attitude. This is a key component behind the concept of actually “learning” something instead of “being exposed” to it.
Sensei, as they screen prospective deshi for admittance to the dojo have to learn to ask questions of dojo visitors in an attempt to discern whether the monjin (person standing at the gate) will be a serious player or just a tourist; a nice tourist but still, just a tourist. By working to analyze intent and commitment which is done by subjectively judging their adaptability and willingness to drop affectations (thus becoming a deshi) the Sensei can understand who to focus the most attention on (and who to look out for); understanding of course that there are beginners that at some point become seriously devoted to the entire idea of koryu and budo. Flexibility in judging and categorizing deshi, combined with understanding the issues at hand is invaluable to any serious sensei.
As the saying goes, “To acquire something you’ve never had before, you have to do something you’ve never done before” and the same holds true for both senior long-time players, and beginners.
Life is not for wimps; or so they say. I believe that. I really do after the last couple of years. Aside from the normal politics, economic and jobs issues, international war and pandemic scares, there’s the other 500-pound gorilla in the room; health.
I had an interesting discussion with an old Aikido student recently in which he shared how someone he knew (a relative I think) views life and aging. If I can get this right; you know you’re getting old when all the actors, actresses, and singers you grew up start dying off because they are older than you. For me that’s guys like John Wayne and David Bowie.
Then you really start feeling old when your family starts dying off since everyone (except possibly your brother, sisters, and cousins) are older than you (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles). Then you really, really start feeling it (the grim reaper staring over your shoulder) when all your high school graduating class starts to go. And then the only thing worse is the loss of a child or the loss of your sibling’s or a close friends’ child who are supposed to outlive you, but for whatever perverse reasoning the universe has up its sleeve, they pass before you do.
He told me that theory of life and death and then he said, “At some point you look up and realize that it’s over and you have no future”; in effect implying that once you hit a certain age that you are basically (not to pun movies or tv shows) “Deadman Walking” or “Walking Dead”.
I thought about it at that point and half-way considered that maybe he was right. I had just turned 68 and according to the insurance mortality tables for a man born in 1951 I, having just turned 68, shouldn’t live past 72 ½ even though today’s male life expectancy is 78 ½. Then I mentioned to him that last year alone three of my wife’s relatives, five people I went to high school with and two of my neighbors had all passed. I found the high school deaths on-line from the mortuary in my hometown where they still lived but who knows how many others passed in other parts of the country that I don’t know about. What I do know is that every 5 years my high school reunions are progressively smaller.
Well, thanks to him and that cheerful conversation I had to take that one home and think about it over at least 2 really stiff martini’s and then wine with supper. And the next day a cigar on the front porch washed down with a stout beer that was so dark it looked like “death at midnight” (groan) which helped me to process that thought experiment. And then I decided, “Nope. That’s just not right and not even on the mark; not even close. That boy was totally off the mark and I think I am to ignore it”.
Consider: if we measure our future by how much time we “think” we “should” have left and then compare that to the reality of life, the universe, and all that, then really and truly none of us have any future at all and therefore should just live like a monk in a cave and not plan for anything other than “one bowl, one robe, one depressing sutra repeated 10,000 times” shortly followed by a sky-burial.
Think about it. A 3-year-old baby dies of cancer so where was the future that we think the child should have had? Where did that 80 years go? Until the child became ill, he should have already been planning for the next 80 years. It was just the universe striking out that determined his fate; but not knowing when the universe will strike is no reason to not plan for as much future accomplishment and life as you can.
Think about the other end of the time-line. A 70 year old man is diagnosed with heart disease or cancer. Everyone looks at him as being 70 and therefore close to his life expectancy of 78.5 years as per the insurance mortality tables and therefore having no future at all so why plan anything other than tonight’s martini and bedtime?
Everyone forgets however that with a change in life-style that the progression of his heart disease could be stopped and possibly reversed. They also forget that depending upon what the cancer diagnosis was, that the 70 year could have another 10 to 15 years to go; maybe even 20. I know of one individual whose father is now in his early 80’s, just got re-married and who was diagnosed with prostate cancer over 20 years ago. Should he have just given up and not have planned for a future?
I know of a man who is a 5-year survivor of pancreatic cancer which is normally fatal within 6 months. Should he have given up and just mentally passed away right there on the spot? Does he know exactly “when” the universe will strike? Should he plan for no future; or make his future until it’s not?
I know of a Sensei who teaches iai, ken, and jodo who was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Hormone treatments keep him going and he plans for future training events and gradings by bringing over Japanese Sensei. Does he know exactly “when” the universe will strike? Should he not plan for a future; or should he charge into his future waiving his katana until he can’t?
If no one can predict how long the 3-year-old has for his future then no one can predict how long the 50, 60, or 70-year-old has for theirs. It’s just not possible to determine the roll of the dice. You can die at 50 just as easily as you can die at 80 so should you stop having a future at either of those ages? Maybe the 80-year-old makes it to 100 (I know at least one of those) and maybe the 50 year old makes it to next week. Should either “not” have a future?
Some say that the older we get the more we’re living on borrowed time. Yes. That’s true, but so is the 3-year-old child, the 20-year-old college student, the 50 year old father or mother of 2, or the 65 or 70 year old with prostate cancer or some other medical condition that may be curable or manageable over a long term that could actually give another 10, 15, or 20 years.
How much life and planning can one live over the next 20 years? Certainly, as much as the 50-year-old and maybe even the college student mapping out his professional career over the next few decades (with him having no idea as-to whether he’ll live that long or die in a DUI car accident after a fraternity rush party). When will any of them be struck by the “Cosmic Concrete Truck”? 20 years is enough time to go back to college and have a second career if you want. If you can’t say with certainty how much time is left, then you can’t say that any single person has “no future”.
Now it is true that all this existential discussion comes to an end at some point. On a long enough timeline, the rate of survival for everyone hits absolute zero and as a good friend who himself is healthy and an active senior teacher in a dojo and who will never see his 80th birthday again say, “None of us are getting out of this alive”.
If you’re still alive at age 110 and possibly can’t get very far away from your couch, then all that future planning may be limited to the next glass of wine and the next tv show. “Hmmm? Red wine or a nice Pinot? Nurse, please pass the water crackers with a little crumble of stilton. Thank you so much”. And if you look up one day at age 30 and are diagnosed with something clearly fatal that is not curable, treatable, or manageable then that’s another story. But for the rest of us, giving up on our future is a nihilistic decision and is to be avoided regardless of our age or medical issues; all else being even.
How long will you live if you’re 5 years old, 10, 20, 40, 50, 70? If you don’t know then you absolutely should be planning on that new job, career change, college degree, vacation, or if you’re in martial arts and are still at Shodan, get cracking on planning for and making 6th dan. If you were planning on quitting the dojo and stopping your training, or if you’re a Sensei running the place and thinking about closing the doors …. just don’t. Find a younger guy to take it over and pass it down and stay on the mat while you plan that next big vacation with the wife and go to Hawaii, or Banff, or the Cayman's, or take that African safari. Who cares if it will take 3 years of planning? Remember; if you don’t know the when and the how right now at this moment, then you do have a future to plan for so stop hesitating about committing every time someone talks about an event that won’t occur until next year.
If you are above ground looking at the green side of the grass instead of under it looking at the brown side of the grass, you have a future that cannot be determined. Make the most of it and just ignore the fatalistic naysayers (and stay away from them too since they are what many people call a “Debbie-Downer”). No one likes a Debbie-Downer anyway and besides …. most of the time Debbie doesn’t take good ukemi so find another uke.
Kagami Biraki, New Year’s for 2020. What’s that mean, really?
Many people look at New Year’s in their personal life as just another holiday during which resolutions on eating, drinking, exercising, communicating better with the spouse, and getting along with the in-laws all become key parts of the New Year; at least for this week, we’ll think about next week (maybe) if we remember.
In the dojo, the idea of Kagami Biraki also gets short shrift most of the time. We talk about making more classes, but don’t. We tell ourselves that we really do intend to begin working on that next promotion, but don’t. We listen to Sensei talk about how everyone needs more mat time in Aikido, or Jodo, or whatever we’re doing at the moment, but we seem to not hear Sensei as he gently (or bluntly) berates the deshi over not showing up for regular class; never mind any special training sessions that Sensei schedules, announces, and then is the only person on the mat that night.
It is all too easy to not take the required commitments of personal time to follow through, so we simply repeat last year for what is supposed to be a new year with new progress, advancements, and improvements in all facets of our existence. At some point we simply must sit down and seriously think about who we are, why we are here, and where we are going. Doing so requires (for least a short time) pushing out of our minds all the superfluous garbage in our daily lives and allowing our “inner-selves” to speak to us, inform us, and guide us.
Some use zen meditation for this time of “calming”. Others may use a chair under a tree. Personally, I use a lawn chair with a cigar and a glass of my favorite refreshment and listen to birds sing and the kids down the street play. Anything that takes your mind off the issues and gives you a time for “only you” to relax (and think) can work as you reconsider the direction of your training and your life goals.
Only by calming our bodies and our minds and listening to “Me” can we truly begin to understand where we are and are going and thereby rededicate ourselves to our martial training and the improvement of our mind, our body, and our spirit.
When you bow onto the mat the idea of self-deception is likely not the first thing that you think of. But once you sit long enough to be honest with yourself, it very well may be a part of your training that you may not even be aware of.
Why do you train?
I personally started off looking for self-defense, then stayed around for the camaraderie, then fell in love with the sophistication of how the ryu’s were constructed and the process of how to learn (and teach them), and then after learning how koryu was designed to mold you to fit it (instead of the other way around) got serious about mat time and research time and reading everything I could. My goal was to change who I was, to increase my self-confidence, suppress and control my ego-tendencies, learn humility, make new friends (I met my wife on the mat when she was a kohai) and become a Person of Power.
Person of Power? Yes, although it’s not what you may think. I would define a Person of Power as someone who walks across the mat like they own it, not are afraid of it. Humble, but confident. As little ego as possible, but total belief in ones’ self. The ability to control the moment by actually BEING “in the moment” and not walking into oblivion (like someone with paper bag over their head). Not seeking conflict but dominating and controlling it if it arises via martial skill sets. Someone who follows Bushido (and the tenants of modern-day Budo) but not as a rogue warrior. A teacher, not a bully. A person who reads and researches, in addition to simply being an athlete. A guide and leader, not a control freak.
In short, becoming a complete human being by living a life in balance (ningan keisei, bun bu ryodou, a tatoo I have on my back). I wanted to become that “complete human” by encompassing both the physical and the mental/spiritual, the sword and the pen.
If you are going to be a martial artist and make the most of the opportunity to “grow into yourself” and become the person that you were meant to become; if you are going to advantage what a dojo can offer you, then it will be required that you develop honesty within yourself, and about yourself. It is probably the most necessary quality required for understanding a few of the prime questions of life; who I am, why am I here, where do I come from, what do I want, where am I going. Why do I do what I do?
Developing a clear-eyed view of self is critical if you are not to have an over-inflated sense self-worth, or equally disastrous, an underestimation of your worth. The fact of the matter is that we all have positive facets of our personalities and character that are to be understood, developed, and appreciated; but we also have negative aspects of our character that need to be changed, suppressed and controlled (filtered as-it-were) or simply erased.
I have been in the martial arts for 50 years now and for myself and many players that I trained with, taught, and still know, the single biggest benefit of the training has been to address the self-doubts that can bother you in the middle of the night. The problem however can sometimes be the lack of courage to look inside and see the questions; a requirement before one can see the answers.
The more time spent in looking at the why’s (of why do put on the white pajamas and the black skirt), the greater the chance that you will become aware of why you train. Once those answers are found (or merely suspected) the greater the likelihood that you will be able to communicate with kohai on the mat and in turn assist them in their own process of self-discovery and martial development as you work yourself through your personal life-progress, all the while assisting them with theirs.
Yes. We are indeed there for our own training. However, as sempai or tori or as kohai or uke, we are not there to show how good we are, find fault in others, or bolster the ego of our self or our training partner. We are there to learn the art, discover our abilities, understand who we are and why we are there, and to work with junior players and assist them in the same path of discovery.
If we don’t commit enough of ourselves (be sincere and go to class) or we give too much (become fanatical about it all) we simply fog up the mirror we should be looking into and end up failing to advantage of any of the learning opportunities; basically wasting our time in the dojo and by extension, our lives.
On occasion we have a Black Belt meeting at the dojo and most of the time if they’re in the training hall we’ll invite the Ikkyu’s since they are “almost” Yudansha. At one we had recently, I talked at length about why I started training in martial arts and why I continued; all of this as part of a larger discussion on why we have been working on transitioning the dojo to new management as I get older. While I’m still in good shape (better shape actually than many half my age) and can still take a lot of ukemi and throw a lot of ukes around, coming up on your late 60’s (with the early 70’s just around the corner) should give one pause to plan for future eventualities.
Our Tribal Elder (very much a term of respect) and a man in his late 70’s has a saying; “None of us are getting out of this alive”, a statement of fact in that each of us has a life span that thus far science has not found means by which it can be viably extended (with good health and quality of life). Another way to look at it is a quote I saw once stating, “On a long enough time line the survival rate for everyone drops to zero“. (author unknown)
Martial arts training has many, many benefits including gaining flexibility, strength, agility, overall fitness and aerobic capacity, faster reflexes, and that’s before considering things like self-confidence and self-defense ability.
One item that I mentioned to the attendees in passing during the meeting was the gift my Sensei gave me many years ago. As he put it, “I have given you the ability to become an old man, and not be intimidated by young and arrogant men”. So, what did he mean by that?
Knowing self-defense and having the confidence to know with certainty that you can use it means “never having to say you’re sorry” (unless you consciously choose to). You walk into a store and accidently bump into someone and you apologize. Then the party you apologized to becomes accusatory, belligerent, and in effect (through their voice and body language) demand that you not just apologize but grovel. If you are an old man who has never had any formal training in martial arts (or extensive experience in just plain old fashion street fighting) then you will likely grovel since you are afraid of being hurt. The idea that the person facing you has his own issues of insecurity to deal with is beside the point. He’s still an a__hole and a bully abusing someone weaker than he and deserves to be ignored (in the least) and maybe pounded (in the most).
So what does that do to your self-confidence and belief in yourself; all that groveling? It pretty much destroys the spirit of the inner “you” and once that pattern of groveling is established due to your lack of ability and having no self-confidence in being able to handle a bully, it goes on until reaching the point of you flinching any time any younger person raises their voice to you. You begin to live fearfully.
So this was the gift my Sensei gave me; the ability to face off with someone literally half or even a third my age and not flinch nor back down unless the situation calls for it and I consciously decide to do so via rational reasoning. The years on the mat, the ability that gives you, and the self-confidence that engenders, means that you can dispassionately take a mental step backwards and make that evaluation. Do I pop him, or do I talk him down, or do I just wave my hand at him and say “whatever Dude” and walk away. Being able to make evaluations of conflict potentialities objectively and not under the pressure of fear and panic is of infinite value to us all.
Having the confidence of knowing with absoluteness that you can slam him into the floor so hard that his eye-teeth shoot out his butt means that it’s difficult if not impossible to make you fear anything he says or does. This is valuable not only in life and as an older person, but also for younger people in tough business negotiations and client meetings where aggressive body language and direct (but “polite”) accusatory language is commonly employed.
This gift my Sensei gave me is simply too valuable to allow to vanish, to disappear, or to just fade away in the twilight. It has to be carried on from generation to generation, especially at dojo that still teach classically and that focus not on sports, or kids, or trophies, or the current fad of the moment, but instead on things that actually work and that will produce true bushi.
Lordy, lordy, some of the technicolor gi’s I’m seeing these days along with aluminum weapons moving faster than realistic martial physics would allow, and jumping, screaming students that look like a windmill in a hurricane, are just beyond belief, as is children wearing black belts at age ten, and instructors teaching “no-falling” martial arts like Aikido. How does one “teach” Aikido if no one falls down or is thrown? How does one build self-confidence in the student when everything taught is for show, flash, and glitter.
So my goal these days is to set the dojo up such that it can survive without me and will be able to carry on sharing the gift with new generations. My Sensei passed on four years ago and he set his dojo up to live without him. All Sensei must accept the responsibility to pass the torch to the next generation just as all our lineages show back to before the time of Ueshiba, Kano, and Funakoshi and more importantly, all the deshi must accept the gift and commit to pay it forward.
The greatest gift any Sensei can give someone is the ability to grow old and not be afraid of the young and arrogant.
A monk lives a life of single focus. The Buddha’s purpose in founding orders of monks and nuns was to provide an environment in which spiritual development and discover of “self” or “not-self” would be made easier by not being part of the outside world with all the distractions that entails.
The outside or lay community would provide the monks with their basic needs including food and clothing and any expenses that they might incur in their study which could last years if not an entire lifetime. In this way the disciplined, simplistic and orderly lifestyle was and still is conducive to meditation and finding inner peace on the way to kensho and satori and learning to enjoy the fact that all life is suffering. Isolating and targeting that goal (or “non-goal”) was therefore easier since all of their existence was centered on that idea.
This is the source of the old Zen phrase, “One Bowl, One Robe”, representing the only physical and non-spiritual needs of the full-time monk. I would expand that to include, “One Bowl, One Robe, One Bieru” in order to also take into account a little after-hours activity or some of that apres’ temple I’ve read so much about .
For those of us not into chanting about the glories of suffering and robe-wearing, having to make our own way in the world, make a living, and support the family gets in the way, intrudes as it were, on our having a long-term goal, a prime reason for not being able to train in martial arts like we might desire; thus the rationale behind the common saying, “Life gets in the way of what I really want to do”.
Compare that single focus in high school or university (that of education only and then whatever fun we want to find) to having a full time job and working towards career advancement, family, and then attempting to train consistently in martial arts. One reason for finding it difficult making it to the mat is a lack of the fiery energy you had in your youth where you felt you could literally do it all and still have enough fire left inside to go to the beach and drink that entire case of bieru’s by yourself, and then get up the next day and do it all over again. As we get older so many thing intrude on our consciousness and time that we wear ourselves out trying the make all the targets on our agendas and calendars thus leaving little of what is “us” for the mat. Then, a lack of energy caused by too many irons in the fire creates a lack of physical activity which in turn causes weight gain, a lack of “wind” and we tire easily, and a corresponding lack of energy.
Another issue is that of begin out of school, having a job and for quite possibly the first time in our lives, some money in our pocket. Thinking about that two week vacation to the California wine country or taking the kids to Disney suddenly looks so much more attractive than a week at a gasshuku working day and night while skinning your knees, sleeping dormitory style on a bad bed, getting cracking in the head, being choked out, and then going home exhausted.
The solution for all these “reasons” for not training is becoming more efficient in how we organize ourselves. When I first moved to Houston, I had a job where I had extensive travel and worked downtown. When I was in town I made as many classes as I could by packing a protein drink and an energy bar in my briefcase. I didn’t go home after work and before the dojo that night. I worked late to get ahead on assignments at the office and free up time, and then went straight to the dojo after consuming the snack at the office. I knew myself well enough to know with certainty that if I went home first, had a meal and then sat down for five minutes that I wouldn’t get back up and would miss keiko and then use the excuse of, "Well, I'll just go tomorrow night".
The other organizational strategy that I used was to write my training times in my calendar in red which told me to not violate those “business appointments” unless something more critical came up (such as a family emergency, illness, or some other issue). I ignored invitations to Happy Hour or dinner out because those social events are always best done on non-work nights anyway. I always wrote in important family times (birthdays, anniversaries, holiday events) and of course planned around job issues. With some consistent practice at this balancing act, it became easy after a while and stressing out over any one area gradually disappeared since I was meeting the needs of all three.
I was always reasonable in this and split time between work, dojo, and family but always made time for all three. Anyone who thinks that you have to become a monk and live a life of “One Bowl, One Robe, One Bieru” is wrong. You can live a life of “One Job, One Gi, One Martini” quite well and have time for family too. All it takes is a broader focus and some organizational skills.
When I started this blog years ago I promised to write about interesting, or intriguing, or strange things in Budo; things that hopefully make the reader cant their head to one side like a Pug and say, Huh?” Things that make you stop and think for a second is my intent so here is today’s momentary descent into, “The Budo-verse”.
Back in the gym after two or three years of broken promises to myself and just pure outright laziness. Promised my Head Hatamoto that we’d “do stuff” at the ‘doj and throw each other around so must get back into fighting trim. Not all that easy at age 65 but it’s still there. Just have to reach for it and do the work.
Worked out, had a “healthy breakfast” at the whole food shop inside the gym. Pretty convenient and they had plenty of black coffee to boot with a go-cup. My health club isn’t quite as nice as the old-world “Gentlemen’s Clubs” in London; you know, the ones where you do your workout, and then go to the lockers as your man-servant hands you a gin and tonic to cut the edge off those 1,000 sit-ups, and then you perambulate to the steam room as you waddle naked across the locker room, and the shower attendant hands you your fresh, hot, monogrammed towel and the green bar of English pine soap, while you admire your pumped, buffed, and waxed nakedness in the mirror.
No. Not quite that nice but maybe one day …………..
So on the way into the office, the skies turned black with this weather front coming through with massive rain and spectacular lightening shows. Satellite radio went into a “fem-ale” mode with song after song (by Toni Braxton, Anita Baker, Norah Jones, Tina Turner ……. Old School kind of tunes) so it was a smooth drive in with ‘tunes, nice weather, hot coffee, and good traffic for a change. Stress-less, not stress-free but close so the mind drifted into thinking about conversations I had heard around me that morning at the gym about people always wanting something from you and pushy salesmen (apparently this is a week for carnival barkers) and I remembered several occasions at the dojo where someone, ostensibly looking at training, actually wanted something other than Budo. They wanted things but used “visiting the dojo” as the wedge to get into the door and to try to put me at ease for the “close”.
I sometimes think that the world outside the Budo-bubble or the Bushi-verse looks at a dojo as a means of recruitment for whatever they are hawking, selling, thinking, doing, or hallucinating about. And sometime they can be pushy so a Sensei, who has the best interests of his deshi at heart (and who is concerned about the viability of the dojo as being a “way place of learning” and not just another pit stop on the road to mediocrity) has to be direct, sometimes to the point of rudeness and everyone once in a great while, threatening to do some serious bodily harm if they can’t figure out that they are simply not wanted.
Bwahahaha. I’ve been an insurance broker and agent for about 20 years now and got my start as a professional telemarketer after I left commercial banking. Even when I was in banking before going into insurance full-time back in ’97, the big corporate banking centers I worked at actually put us through classes in how to sell and close, to how profile the prospect, and how to gauge, evaluate and control different personality types either as a loan officer, a risk management officer or as a problem loan & liquidation officer (I was all three at times).
I’m the last person in the world you want to try to manipulate for a sale of anything and everyone once in a while, I’ll just screw with them, just because ………………. “Sure, I’m interested. Tell me more. Tell me more. But what if …… tell me more ………. But would you want your mother to do that?” ….. but, who developed this and did they make any money?” ….. Have fun with it and interrupt their sales script, which throws them off. Then you get to watch them try to recover so you hit them again.
So …………….. the occasions that popped into my mind during the drive in that were the most unusual and that had the best set-up as in the carnival barker coming in, talking martial arts and then slowly and gently trying to slip the ‘shiv in were …………..
Fellow sends an email asking if he can visit and the email says that he lives and trains in another martial art here in Houston; but that a good friend of his, an Aikido Sensei from Europe is in town and wants to visit several dojo to see what Aikido in the US and Texas is like. So I say sure, come in Saturday. They both come in, sit and visit, ask questions about Tomiki Aikido and I explain how Tomiki set it up, how the curriculum works and mention that Tomiki Ryu has strong self-defense focus and a heavy flavor of Kodokan Judo with how we work the off-balance on the attacker and enter for the technique. This was all information that I already knew the European Sensei didn’t know as he had never seen Tomiki Ryu before.
So during the conversation, the fellow that had sent the original email made mention (after I had to ask several times) finally ‘fessed up that he did another martial art that consisted of punching and kicking and some throws of various types and that he had students and was building a dojo here in Houston. My thought was …. hmmm but I said nothing. Then he asked if he could train. I said no, that I don’t take visitors and that only active students could get on the mat, not visitors, not people who weren’t already Aikido Players, and esp. not visitors from other styles who would be there only that class period. His response was, “Oh, a cynic”. Strange I thought, but knew immediately that he wanted to try his art against Aikido; something I had no interest in. Last time someone talked that game I told them that I’d ask one of the police officers in the class to come over and convince them of the error of their ways. Then as a test, I turned to the Aikido Sensei from Europe and asked him a simple question; to wit, can you see the Daito Ryu, self-defense, Judo influences. He got a sorta’ funny look on his face and said, “YES. I can really see the Judo influence”. I couldn’t tell if he was surprised at the techniques or what.
So, while they were both pretty courteous and not rude and not outright challenging, I interpreted it as checking out the competition by using the European as the excuse. Then, the very next day, I received an email from the visitor that he had emailed my senior Hatamoto to visit his dojo; an effort at recruitment as I interpreted it. So the entire email, visit, conversation was, bottom line, an effort at recruitment as I had several people who had experience in what he was teaching and he must have thought that he could interest them in visiting/joining his school. No biggie to me. I only want deshi that are interested in our program anyway.
The strangest attempt at recruitment however was the night a stranger walked in unbidden with no advance notice. He had a strange aura about him and seemed a little distant but curious. We talked and he said that he did some martial arts informally (my first thought was “Oh Gawd. Another guy working out with his brother-in-law in the garage by reading books and watching You Tube”). It turned out that he was claiming to be one of the few individuals in the country who knew “Viking Martial Arts”.
Bwahaha. Hokay then. Thor’s Hammer Ryu. This must be a joke. Nope. Not a joke. So after prodding him as to what he was looking for he stated that he wanted to learn Aikido and grappling to improve his Thor Ryu. Then I made the error of asking him what he did for a living.
And for the first time I about fell off my stool. He ran a sex-club where everyone traded spouses and they had bondage rooms where the audience watched and had martini’s and bacon wrapped shrimp as someone was tied up and …… er …… ah ….. “abused substantially” as the cameras rolled. So after sagely remaining silent for a minute or two, I just had to ask. “So. Thor. How do you find clients? customers? mattress divers? WTH do you call them?” He didn’t think that was very funny but interesting enough, his expression never really changed so that told me that he’d done this before. His response was, “We have to be discreet. We just offer that we do this and then allow people to approach us and join. We love to have visitors to the club to see what we offer”.
Didn’t take too long to figure out that I was being invited over and by extension, the entire dojo. Well I thought, nothing like trying to join a martial arts dojo with 50 or 60 people who are physically active and in good shape so-as to have a fresh batch of recruits because he was overweight and didn’t look to me like much of catch for a discerning female with life choices available to her.
So he left and the next morning I went on line and looked up his sex club. Sure enough. There it was, less than a couple miles away from the dojo in the back of an unmarked strip center and Google Earth showed blacked out windows with no sign, only the suite number. His photo was there on the website along with a bunch of other people and the site had photos of the “mattress room” (wall to wall), the bar (lots of interestingly clothed & unclothed bartenders in the photo, "Ah ... say there partner .... what are you stirring my drink with?"), the bondage room (no people in this one but the ladder, handcuffs and pole in the middle of the room with chains were included). And, lo’ and behold, a group photo of people at the beach at Galveston, wearing Viking clothes and horned (horny?) helmets and carrying wooden shields and swords at what was noted as being a “Viking Wedding”.
So, if you run a dojo, then keep some things in mind.
At some point, at some time, and one day, you very likely will find yourself dealing with these people. Keep in mind that these are the extreme examples. Door to door protein or internet ISP salesmen are a dime a dozen. These were the ones that were good at what they do. They are the ones that you have to watch for. Don’t let them in no matter how badly you need new deshi. Lying down with snakes never has a good result and if you feel guilty somehow about saying no, then remember the story about the frog and the scorpion. Otherwise, you may lookup and find deshi quitting the dojo because they came to learn martial arts from you, not be recruited by Thor the Viking Sex ‘Perv.
