Martial Arts
“Act, and you shall have dinner; wait, and you shall be dinner”. — ancient Klingon proverb
I had the good fortune to study martial arts with some very good teachers, particularly a Japanese sensei and two exceptionally good Chinese sifu. I learned four things:
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Real fighting is very different from the Hollywood fantasy. The brutal reality is that in a real fight, you may be injured for life. You may end up unable to walk or see again for the rest of your life. It does not matter how good you are, in a real fight especially in a many-to-one fight, you will get hurt. The best way to win a fight therefore, is to avoid one. Forget your childish pride - walk away before things escalate.
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There is always someone faster, stronger, better, has a better lawyer ... or who carries a gun. So in terms of defending yourself, it is best to forget martial arts and learn to run really really fast!
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Unless your attacker is very, very good there is always an opening into which you can punch, kick, or stick a knife. Even if you are not very good, watch for the opening - it is almost always there. But you usually have only one chance - if you miss, the knife will be used on you. Ugh!
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The highest goal of martial arts is to defeat yourself. That is to say, to vanish, to see that the mind, thoughts, emotion are not you. To become easy, relaxed, pure attention.
Of course this is the antithesis of what is usually taught, where only winning testosterone-fueled battles seems to matter. Better in that case to buy a gun, don’t you feel?
Touring around from place to place over the years, I used to go to various dojos just to see what there was to see. In most - almost all in fact - there was some teacher who had learned a few tricks, passing on his lack of knowledge to students whose fervent wish was to be the badest, meanest, mightiest fighter out there. All the while trying very hard to pretend that that was not their real motivation. Some dojos were violent - filled with some rather angry military folks and led by what IMHO where little more than pathological killers, who called themselves teachers. I have seen a few of these “teachers” break students’ bones just to prove that they could. Stupid! Other dojos were filled with street fighters honing their skills, the teachers talking long about ’the Way’ whist showing them how to gouge out eyes quickly before moving on to the next attacker. The antithesis of this was what I would term the ’flaky’ martial arts classes. Here a few people would do some gentle stretching under the guidance of a newage teacher of some sort who had taken a few lessons in say, China, and thought he was ready to pass on his sacred art.
But the more common dojo was small - a handful of dedicated students, and one or two teachers. Nice folks getting some exercise, camaraderie, learning a little about self-defence, and becoming more self confident and self aware as the years of training went on.
In most of these dojos there was a distinct hierarchy - belts of various colours or uniforms denoted accreditation, and supposed level of accomplishment. Yet in my experience this accreditation was very similar to the
accreditation given in schools and universities. That is to say it implied a level of skill which was rarely there. I can give a small example of what I mean by this: I once was asked to spar with a high degree black-belt in Judo, who had also won a gold medal at the Olympics. Now I am pretty hopeless at martial arts - uncoordinated, slow, a general embarrassment to the discipline. But even with my total lack of proficiency it was almost trivially easy to knock this person down, and to avoid being knocked down by him. So much for the accreditation process
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Most of the black belt holders I met did not seem to me to be very good. Quite the opposite in fact. Just as with most of the so-called ’spiritual’ masters I have met. Or academics for that matter. In other words, there are lots of folks who can paint or play the piano, but there are not too many Rembrandts or Mozarts out there. So belt rank really does not mean very much.
One exception to this was a native Hawaiian whom I met many years ago. At a very young age his parents took him to Northern China where he studied with one of the very few Cha’an sifus to have escaped Mao’s genocide of anyone with intelligence. When I met him, he was quite old but so unbelievably good at what he did that there was no opening. It was impossible to reach him. When I first met him he was quietly watching a demonstration by some high rank Karate folks who were breaking boards and such. He laughed good naturedly at the whole thing, especially when one of these folks would let out a mighty yell, and break a thick block of ice with a mighty whack!
I asked him why he was laughing. In answer, he waited until everyone had left, then walked over to where the Karate black belts had been practising. He lifted some of the heavy blocks of ice they had been using, piling them on top of one another. He piled up eight of nine of these, making a stack about five feet high. With a wink to me, he walked over to the pile and very gently with just one finger, lightly touched the top-most block of ice. The entire pile, all the blocks of ice, exploded as if a bomb had hit them. He walked off laughing. Later I saw as we relaxed over coffee, that he was always alert, always radiating absolute attention, and never, ever dull or asleep. He was supremely at ease and at peace within himself. The epitome of what a martial artist could or should be.
He and a few others I have met since then, taught a higher version of their art - as a means to truly encounter and demolish the idea of a ’self’. As a means of awakening, in the Buddhist sense of that term. Their art was an entirely spiritual practice. It was never used to cause harm, but rather help others to find peace within their own hearts. They used the discipline of a martial art to discipline their thoughts, feelings, and life until they no longer needed to hold on to the idea of an individual self. This is what they taught. They were completely, and utterly, at ease and at peace within themselves. Very, very rare.
Martial arts, true martial arts, can be used to heal and help, as easily as they can be used to harm and destroy. The choice of which you will do, depends upon your attachment to the world.
Finally, a word about the yin-yang symbol. Think of yin as drawing back yang as drawing forward. Most folks take the yin-yang symbol as being about duality. That is, the symbol means that the world is composed of opposite (yin-yang, push-pull, left-right, good-bad, fluffy-notfluffy, etc.). And that each pair of opposites as a little bit of its opposite within itself - yin has a little bit of yang within it, yang has a little bit of yin within it.
One of my martial arts teachers used to say that our task in martial arts was to walk the line between yin and yang. So that when an attack comes it is our job not to be the opposite force, but rather to move so that we become the line between polarities. In this way he said, the attacker has nothing to grab on to - whether he attacks with yin or yang, he can find no handhold. When you stand on the line between yin and yang, the attackers entire force has nothing to attack except himself. Well, some folks like to think about yin-yang in that way.
For me personally, I see the yin-yang interplay as a motor. When I move through a Kata (a practice form) I alternate between yin and yang, constantly moving, ever changing. Like an armature in a generator alternating between two magnetic poles to generate electricity. Movement through a Kata is like this - we alternate between yin to yang and back again over and over, which generating energy (called “chi” in China, “prana” in India, “Ki” in Japan, and “quantum jitter” by physicists, etc.). As you move through a Kata, the yin-yang motor operates, generating moving Ki. So long as you pay attention and do not wander off, the energy flows easily and uninterrupted. Anyway, that is how I would interpret the yin-yang symbol - as Ki in motion.
Update:
Someone wrote to ask me how far I had gone - what degree of belt did I hold. Ha ha. Well, while in the hospital with a serious illness, doctors told me I would never walk again, never be able to talk again, never be able to read or write again, never be able to understand speech again, never be able to be a research scientist again, never be able to properly control my hands and arms, play music, have a normal life, and would also probably be in pain for the rest of my life.
I feel that it was my martial arts training which helped give me the strength to keep going, not to feel sorry for myself, and to continue to notice the joy and beauty still and always available in every moment. So that is the degree of belt I have
