Distance

“Grandfather, Owl?” asked the child.

“Yes my little bird?” replied Grandfather Owl.

“You are plump. You are happy. Never a night do you not return with supper”, said the child.

“Yes, yes, all true, so true,” said Grandfather Owl smiling a memory back to life.

“How?”

“What? What’s that you say? How, what?”

“How do you always return with food?”

Grandfather Owl, sighed, ruffling his feathers and then settled back to his perch.

“My little one. I merely see the mouse and attack. What else is there?”


Distance as Metaphysical

Distance is defined as: The space between two things.

A lot of us have come to assume this a concrete subject. The space between A and B is the distance. We forget that it is space and instead attribute a much more lasting quality to it. We think of distance as a real item. How far is it to get to work sticks because of the time it takes to complete this task. The time becomes the distance and since the passage of time is readily felt by our sensory inputs, we can make this distance something greater than it truly is: a mere definition of space. It is because of this that it's multi-dimensionality gets lost.

Forget what you know about distance. Forget it as an object, think of it as the emptiness all around you, after all, everything in every direction is at a distance to where you sit, reading this right now. Make these 2 dimensional measurements irrelevant to your fighting nature.


Distance as physical

In the fighting world, we think of ourselves as an object in space, occupying a place in the physical universe. This location is easy for us to define, as it is apparent to our conscious minds. The opponent, also, must live in the same dimensional universe, and thus occupy a location in this plane of existence. How close the opponent is to our physical location defines how much of a threat they are to us. Weapons, such as sticks and bombs, are designed to eliminate the space advantage (and to increase lethality). In this way an unarmed opponent thirty feet away is at a distance at which the person does not have to be fully invested in the fight. There are more options. Distance is life, because it institutes time on which options can be applied.

The physical distance between A and B are important, but there are subtle distances at play here too. The distance between A’s fists or kicks, the distance between B’s center of gravity to the ground, the distance between parallel strikes and the ground.

Distances are based on lines (or arcs – but for simplicity we’ll stay with lines) These lines are all angles from 0° to 179° (any other angle for us is a reflection of the rest and may only serve to confuse the reader). These lines of movement, of direction while moving through space to change distances are important to remember and recognize while learning how to move and maintain space so that you can continue to create time for yourself and maintain your balance. The lines themselves have global distances as well: the distance from fist to fist, from fist floor, from fist counter strikes. All these angles reflect other distances. Study on this.


Distance universality

“But Grandfather Owl. They must see you coming!”

“Then why is it I never starve?”

The Three Hearts That Ride Six legs

Part I – The First Heart

Balance

Put down the pen for a moment and look around you. Look at the world. Be it man made or natural. Be it skyscraper or tree. Be it airplane or bird. Look at the way everything exists. Most things symmetrical, most things have similar designs on all sides, especially in nature. Nothing naturally exists where one side is not balanced by the other. The physical universe is so designed.

Balance is defined as a state of equilibrium and more often than not in the martial arts its sole definition is about the physical balance of the body. In most martial artists minds, the idea of balance is about angles, and directions of kinetic/potential energy.

The physical Balance

A human form is so designed to literally teeter on two thin, long, legs. The length of the legs is the sole dictator to how well balanced the wider and heavier upper body are maintained. Muscle mass in and of itself in the legs has no direct bearing on the ability for a being to remain upright. Two men of equal height and equal leg length would have the same tipping point (assuming the contact point were applied at the hips).

Kamae help to lower this balance point by spreading out the legs, thus lowering the center of gravity, and changing the tipping point to a finer angle verses it being much larger when we are standing upright. Most martial artists, wrestlers, and boxers already know this about themselves and do their best to incorporate as much as possible, a lower stance. In the real world, of course, lower stances make one slower to move and limit directional movement. A very wide and low stance limits the martial arts to only a few easily accessible directions. Over time, faster fighting methods have adopted a much more straight up stance where balance is pushed toward the opponent by allowing the upper body to bent slightly toward them, back leg pushing forward into the opponent. Almost as if the martial artist is walking into the wind.

Here in lies one of the key principles of balance: no fight is done in a vacuum. We all have to deal with the other persons potential. His balance as well as our own. We need never consider ourselves first and foremost, but as the whole cycle of the fight in one thing.

Imagine that at my joints a steel pin is placed and on those pins a steel rod is attached. This rod then connects to a steel rod and pin on my opponent. The rods have a damping ability where they can telescope in our out. I control this telescoping, my opponent does not. Therefore when he moves it moves my rods and causes my balance to be effected. If he moves in to strike me, I control my rods ability to telescope and alter their length to ensure my balance does not faultier, but some of the rods do not change length and keep him from advanced fully into my space.

Other times think of balance like holding a fire hose while you fight. It is always pushing you off in directions you have to struggle against. If his energy is the hose pushing you, you push back to maintain your balance.

The mental Balance

Balance is a central ideal in the nature of Warriorship. One does not dive into a heated battle without a strategy. Luck will only get you so far, mostly it will get you killed (or worse). Balance should come to the warrior in different manners. He should be welll grounded mentally. Able to see all sides of a situation. Trees are rooted, but they sway to the changing winds. Yet, even a tree sometimes breaks from to much wind. A warrior should be empathic, and his founding’s, those things he builds his morality on, should be things that are universally unchangeable: love, truth, life and the like.

His balance should begin long before he ever sees a single missile. This is a mental kamae on which one sinks their weight and learns the angles of their own mind. The warriors path should be filled with things that test his mental balance as well as his physical. A road untested should not be avoided, for fear is the ultimate tool of a warriors enemies on which he can unbalance even the best of us.

This doesn’t mean throw caution to the wind and race off to join the Foreign Legion. In fact, quite the opposite. The testing should come in ways that help the warrior understand his balance, not in things that completely disrupt it. Imagine if I told you to learn to fly an aircraft only I waited until we were in a flat stall, spinning out of control to hand over the controls. What good could come of such a test? And worse, who else do you take with you when you crash?

Strength is dealt out with just as much restraint as it is with swords. A balanced mind knows which and where.

The Universal Balance

In the end the warrior is looking to do one thing in particular and by way of doing that one thing uncovering others. He is looking for truth. The universe appears to us on the brink of falling over, to be spinning out of control with us, yet in reality, the closer we come to balance the less we see the universe as even being on the teeter to begin with. That underneath, in the quiet breathes we sense just how grounded and true the universe is. That it is immovable and that nothing can topple it.

Kali dancing on one leg. Saint Sebastian's bound feet. The universe never tips. It can not faultier.

Perseverance

The oceans deep and true
go on forever.
But the oceans, depth begins
one drop at a time.

Each drop eventually finds its way
up
up
into the blue sky.
It evolves, the spirit of change
and the whole of this single drop
escapes the single boundary of the ocean.

It meets other elevated drops
heaven bound they form a cloud
and off they go: a tiny white puff.

Then from My observation point
below the peak of the mountain
the cloud butts himself against her
unmoving
majestic greatness.

The cloud asks, "Can we Pass"
Fuji remains silent.
Yet the cloud persists!

I watch as it tries every advantage
every motion,
every possibility
Never thinking of retreat.

Then other small white clouds join
and eventually the momentum changes
and the cloud redoubles its effort.

Rain, storms, winds.
The cloud pounds Fuji
and the mountain bows
in supplication.

To this day the mountain lowers its head.

---

The nature of perseverance is not only the idea of continuing, but the recognition that growth and knowledge are allies in your struggles against those obstacles that stand in our way.