Tuesday, August 10, 2010

You or the fluid and energy of creation

Do the foothills rise in a single day to be mountains?
Do clouds appear from nowhere and bring the storms?
Do new planets blossom into existence in a breath?
Then how does it seem that a man
Can be so
That he believes himself complete
When he is yet unripe?

The seed comes to the earth in humility
Only in patience
Through
Time
Does the fruit sweeten.


As usual, the lesson is all on me. I don’t feel that most of what I say is really anything but the rambling idiocy of reflection that I need to say, that is, be heard by others. I say most of this because it becomes a singularity to my mind if I can bridge the distance of beleaguered thoughts and entwine what appeared to be broken synapse. Here I am again.

I have discussed what I feel about the idea of teaching. That is, any alteration, and submission by the teacher for the student is a kind of disservice to both parties. Recently another aspect of this came to my attention. Normally, as well, I’m talking about new students. As new students, by their very nature, tend to have a lot of preconceived notions and no-none-sense mentality. After all, this isn’t a religion, and those willing to participate come with a pragmatic, eyes open feeling. They tend to, therefore, look at it from a very corporeal manner. And they should. There is in martial arts a loss of the genuine over time, but, this is the case of all things involving man. That is, the loss of the pragmatic and the creation of dogma.

Today, though I’m talking about senior students. It is hard sometimes to not talk over Sensei. Not that I know more than him, not by a long shot. But sometimes, I remember some antidote that he used once before that would fit the situation and I feel that it would benefit the class. I mostly bite my tongue and stand there waiting to be thrown by him again. Apparently, I have not landed on my head enough to have killed that insatiable side of me that demands the attention. And that little gremlin is a greedy bastard. But, as I said. I mostly do not.

One thing I never do, is to assume that I know what the real lesson of the class is. That is to say, that if we are doing a particular technique, training situation, etc. I do not try and expand or expound on where I believe that it is going. I will absolutely not start teaching something beyond what we are already doing. It is not my class. It is Sensei’s class. I may have some trouble staying my tongue, but I would never presume to believe that I have the right to take over his class and start teaching his students the way I feel is best for them.

This, by the way, is not to say, do not teach. On the contrary, do, teach often. Teaching is one of the best ways to really learn something, because it forces you to actually examine the process by how it came to work for you. Also, teach in your own way. I’m simply saying, that if it’s not your class then don’t step on the teacher.

As a teacher in such a situation I actually find myself getting upset. Especially when I see fancy, fast, over the top, painful, exuberant, complex ideas being used against a white belt that’s into his first month of class, who probably isn’t getting a single important thing from any of that. Now, I know, plenty of people come from the ‘throw the boy in the ring’ mentality. I know I did. When I was younger getting knocked down, getting the wind knocked out of me, getting hurt, seemed like the ‘manly’ way of learning to fight. Of course it did, for after all, everything we do from riding bicycles to playing video games to making love comes not from outside instruction but from direct contact with what ever the object is. We are good at learning this way. As I got older I realized that there were giant gaps that entire fleets of enemies could storm through, not only in my physical form, but MOSTLY in my mental form. I had never once looked at fight the strategically. I’d got into them, then ended, and then the bragging or the feeling sorry for one’s self started. The process of learning had been reduced to a few minutes of pain, and that fed on itself, until eventually, all of the learning was just about issuing pain. Boy, that’s useful. Not a single important thing stuck.

Hopefully I’ve made this point clear before, but I feel that tactics and a simple strategy far outweigh any ‘ground’ fighting (See Art of War). Because of this, I feel that technique is not an end all be all. That learning to punch hard is not the great equalizer. That being able to get into or out of a side mount is not always the best place to be for a conflict. They are all useful, like any tool is, but they are just that. What is important is the tools. Learning them.

It’s hard to explain, because we are a creature of definitions and tangibility. When I say tool, you think hammer, wrench, or maybe the guy who is dating your ex. What I mean is so much more than that. A tool like a hammer is already created. It was designed, mastered, set in ‘stone’ as it were a long time ago. The definition is set. And you know that if a nail needs to be pounded down or extracted, a hammer is the right place to start. But what if you had an object that didn’t have the right tool? You, and I would go into our tool box (already designed and created tools) and try every single one. Yet, none of them work. Most of us would be stuck, because of our need for the physical identity of the object to fit into a preconceived concept already established by normalized rules. Sorry, it’s the way we are designed. It is a hard pressed road to break yourself of this. But, martial arts (art in general actually) does just this. It breaks conventions, if, and this is important, you study hard on the most important aspects of the whole thing: e.g. You. The whole of you, right down to how your blood flows when you punch or kick.

If you are training with some one that’s not interested in themselves, but simply beating up on others, then you should think about training with someone else.

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