We have all been there. Already on the freeway. In the slow lane. We are coming up on an on ramp and someone else is getting on. They are doing thirty miles an hour and working their brakes. They will do this until that moment they make the transition from the input lane to an actual traffic lane. Once they are in the traffic lane they stomp the gas and as soon as their vehicle is up to eighty miles an hour they stay there until they get off the freeway. Further, once that shift from entry lane to actual lane occurs, they will not use their brakes again unless forced too. All lane changes will be done with the accelerator.
Man has a mental inertia. Once this momentum is set it is hard to shift. It is difficult to change. What’s worse is that this software can be so well written into us that we don’t even realize that we are doing it. It takes an outside act in a lot of cases for the programming to break. You’ve probably been there too and seen it in action. When the same person is getting on the freeway and they are just about to make that transition from entry to lane, but another car is in the blind spot of their own vehicle they might hesitate between the brakes and the gas pedal as the program has been interrupted and has to be turned off to allow for direct input and access to the situation. There in lies the limitation of most minds, because they soon return back to the programming. The situation of having to interact directly has made them nervous or angry and confused them, the data that would have been useful to save, to incorporate into their previously established conditional responses is lost. Forgotten to the negative impact it had on them. That is to say, the event was not traumatic enough to alter the personality and the programming (as an accident would be), but was ‘embarrassing’ enough for the mind to dismiss it as irrelevant.
This sort of living is fine for the average person. But you are not an average person. You are an artist. Martial, sure, but artist none the less, and your responsibility as a unique individual, with limited time, and limited resources, it go in the only direction you can truly afford to go: inward. You have a dictated quest to question your own personality, your own reasons, your own actions. You have a requirement to become a thinking person, not an acting person, but a conscious, rational, individual in a sea of lemmings.
Programming, conditional response, limited capacity for introduction to new values/ideas, makes one predictable. And being predictable makes you a slave or even possible fodder / food for others.
Let me give you a ‘martial’ example.
We do ukemi (flowing / receiving) and kaiten (rolling) in our art. Observing the class doing backward rolls I noticed that every time students would sit down with their left leg out they would roll over the left shoulder. There is nothing inherently wrong with this as it is completely feasible that rolling on the outside is the best roll. But they do it subconsciously. If they were to put out the right leg, they would roll over the right shoulder. Again, nothing wrong. But a thinking opponent familiar with the roll would only have to witness this behavior once and realize exactly where his enemy was going to arrive. He would know how, for example, the hips of his enemy had to turn, which direction their torso was facing as the roll began. The direction of the head. The location of the arms. Etc. When doing the roll, then, one should learn to do the roll from both hips to both shoulders. Also, looking at the angle going out as the roll is processed: is it straight back, 60°, 45°? What is the intended consequence of the roll.
This is just one example of taking control of the situation, instead of just letting the software practice badly. I should study on this diligently. You see much like the guy who only knows how to use the gas pedal on the freeway, my art should not be a matter of building inertia. I am the master of this ship. I pilot it not simply by the course of the winds (the fluctuations of the mind), but by the direct interaction with the vessel.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, May 10, 2010
The value of Kamae
©NamdevKLD
Most of us watch training videos. We watch to see what interesting and crazy things those silly people have dreamed up when it comes to devastation to the human physique. All of us have watched martial arts training videos from other forms of martial arts, perhaps to learn, perhaps to mock. Much of what others do is similar, after all, in the end there are only so many ways a body can be moved or controlled. We are all built from the same mold and what works on me will most likely have a similar affect on someone else. There are exceptions to some of these rules, but mostly a broken neck will surely end the confrontation.
What I find funny is that we all watch the vid’s and come across things like the postures (kamae) and have ourselves a little giggle. Why not, they look silly, don’t they? Sometimes teetering on a precarious, off balance punch, sometimes doing things like standing with one leg in the air (thank you karate kid). We then say, sometimes out loud, “that is so f*ing unrealistic!”
I have been guilty of this in the past myself...even in my own martial art. Arrogance, thy name is absolute. Humility is a thing highly underrated in martial arts. After all, it is not part of a martial art’s nature for the participant to actually assume he doesn’t know everything. That’s one of those things that comes with age I guess.
A kamae, by the most primitive definition is a posture taken up by the martial arts student. It is best available to anyone who’s ever watched boxing, or MMA or better, martial arts movies. A boxer or MMA fighter’s ‘lead’ is what most of us call a kamae. We see that lead foot standing out before the other and the arms up in a defensive position and him rocking or moving on his feet, but always when his feet land, returning to this basic position. That’s what we think of as kamae. In movies of course, they take up a wide difference of kamae from Horse to Bruce Lee’s Dokko variations. And worse, they, the movie versions, will hold that kamae until the very moment of the attack and then flutter through a flurry of punch / kicks / throws and end back in that kamae. As if before the kicks and punches they were a still lake then the chaos of the fight and right back to the quiet body of water.
This is bullshit. Kamae maybe obvious when we stand still, but the reality is that we are always in kamae, every single second of every single waking moment. We are not stuffed animals, nor chiseled granite statues. We are flesh and blood, living, mechanical, transient beings. Our brains are fluttering from thought to thought, from position to point of fact. We change every single moment. It is our very nature to be change right down to how often hair regrows or how often skin is shed. We even have the ability to change the way we remember, to think, to ponder. How then, can such a thing ever be reflected as a stagnant statue of obvious position? Does a bird in flight ever stop being in kamae? His very wings are perfectly in place, doing exactly what they are meant to do with each stroke through the air. Animals have the luxury of mushin so they don’t get caught in the minutia of thought and worse, get trapped by standing still.
Now, does that mean you shouldn’t practice kamae? Hell no. In fact you should slow it all down to a point that it barely moves and you feel how your starting kamae moves you from position to position and you are in fact flowing through a whole series of different kamae until you decide to stop flowing through them.
A general sitting in the ranks of his advancing army is well aware of ‘kamae’. His moving army represents a shape, a position is space and time. He, hopefully, has build a strategy and is attempting to apply a series of tactics by using his armies ‘kamae’ to defeat the opponent. Now, in war, the general can see what his right flank is doing and what his center is doing. He can witness it from a larger, top down view, so that he himself does not get caught up in the fray. In other words, he can see enough of the big stuff, that the individual bullets or fists or knives moving so fast do not distract him from the whole of his strategy. If for example, he sees his left flank being overpowered and pushed back off the field, he can push his center forward turn his left to the right and hopefully pincher the opponent. Now as an individual, we should always see ourselves not trapped in the time it takes to fight, but instead, look at our own ‘kamae’ as way to move into better position and do the most devastation to the opponent without increasing the net harm we will receive. And remember, you will be hit.
My OODA loop is pretty slow, I admit it. So I use kamae as a way to create better defenses through the act of moving and evading and keeping my foot soldiers before the enemy so that when my ability to orient and act catch up, hopefully I have moved enough of my army into a position to act quickly and disrupt their OODA loop. Start looking at kamae as part of your holistic* necessity of your strategy.
*Makes me sad that the word Holistic has lost its true meaning, which is an idea that holds all the properties of a given system and must only be explainable by the combined, collective pieces and that no single piece can define or explain the behavior of the whole. “The whole is more than the sum of the parts”
Most of us watch training videos. We watch to see what interesting and crazy things those silly people have dreamed up when it comes to devastation to the human physique. All of us have watched martial arts training videos from other forms of martial arts, perhaps to learn, perhaps to mock. Much of what others do is similar, after all, in the end there are only so many ways a body can be moved or controlled. We are all built from the same mold and what works on me will most likely have a similar affect on someone else. There are exceptions to some of these rules, but mostly a broken neck will surely end the confrontation.
What I find funny is that we all watch the vid’s and come across things like the postures (kamae) and have ourselves a little giggle. Why not, they look silly, don’t they? Sometimes teetering on a precarious, off balance punch, sometimes doing things like standing with one leg in the air (thank you karate kid). We then say, sometimes out loud, “that is so f*ing unrealistic!”
I have been guilty of this in the past myself...even in my own martial art. Arrogance, thy name is absolute. Humility is a thing highly underrated in martial arts. After all, it is not part of a martial art’s nature for the participant to actually assume he doesn’t know everything. That’s one of those things that comes with age I guess.
A kamae, by the most primitive definition is a posture taken up by the martial arts student. It is best available to anyone who’s ever watched boxing, or MMA or better, martial arts movies. A boxer or MMA fighter’s ‘lead’ is what most of us call a kamae. We see that lead foot standing out before the other and the arms up in a defensive position and him rocking or moving on his feet, but always when his feet land, returning to this basic position. That’s what we think of as kamae. In movies of course, they take up a wide difference of kamae from Horse to Bruce Lee’s Dokko variations. And worse, they, the movie versions, will hold that kamae until the very moment of the attack and then flutter through a flurry of punch / kicks / throws and end back in that kamae. As if before the kicks and punches they were a still lake then the chaos of the fight and right back to the quiet body of water.
This is bullshit. Kamae maybe obvious when we stand still, but the reality is that we are always in kamae, every single second of every single waking moment. We are not stuffed animals, nor chiseled granite statues. We are flesh and blood, living, mechanical, transient beings. Our brains are fluttering from thought to thought, from position to point of fact. We change every single moment. It is our very nature to be change right down to how often hair regrows or how often skin is shed. We even have the ability to change the way we remember, to think, to ponder. How then, can such a thing ever be reflected as a stagnant statue of obvious position? Does a bird in flight ever stop being in kamae? His very wings are perfectly in place, doing exactly what they are meant to do with each stroke through the air. Animals have the luxury of mushin so they don’t get caught in the minutia of thought and worse, get trapped by standing still.
Now, does that mean you shouldn’t practice kamae? Hell no. In fact you should slow it all down to a point that it barely moves and you feel how your starting kamae moves you from position to position and you are in fact flowing through a whole series of different kamae until you decide to stop flowing through them.
A general sitting in the ranks of his advancing army is well aware of ‘kamae’. His moving army represents a shape, a position is space and time. He, hopefully, has build a strategy and is attempting to apply a series of tactics by using his armies ‘kamae’ to defeat the opponent. Now, in war, the general can see what his right flank is doing and what his center is doing. He can witness it from a larger, top down view, so that he himself does not get caught up in the fray. In other words, he can see enough of the big stuff, that the individual bullets or fists or knives moving so fast do not distract him from the whole of his strategy. If for example, he sees his left flank being overpowered and pushed back off the field, he can push his center forward turn his left to the right and hopefully pincher the opponent. Now as an individual, we should always see ourselves not trapped in the time it takes to fight, but instead, look at our own ‘kamae’ as way to move into better position and do the most devastation to the opponent without increasing the net harm we will receive. And remember, you will be hit.
My OODA loop is pretty slow, I admit it. So I use kamae as a way to create better defenses through the act of moving and evading and keeping my foot soldiers before the enemy so that when my ability to orient and act catch up, hopefully I have moved enough of my army into a position to act quickly and disrupt their OODA loop. Start looking at kamae as part of your holistic* necessity of your strategy.
*Makes me sad that the word Holistic has lost its true meaning, which is an idea that holds all the properties of a given system and must only be explainable by the combined, collective pieces and that no single piece can define or explain the behavior of the whole. “The whole is more than the sum of the parts”
Monday, April 19, 2010
Learning to think with your senses
©NamdevKLD 2010
Human beings have five direct tangible senses: vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell. But, of course, you knew this. Right now as you ‘read’ this your brain is processing each symbol and translating it to an understandable form, then stringing the connected symbols together until you have a perception of the meaning behind the word, the sentence, the paragraph. In the end, though, you are not thinking with your eyes. They are merely the receptive tool used by the brain to collect information about the outside world. The eyes themselves get little or no thought during the entire process of reading this. Of course my eyes aren’t being thought about as I read, you are thinking, that would just be crazy complicated for my brain (albeit super-brain) to keep track of so much at the same time. And you would be correct in your assumption. I don’t need to think about focusing or moving my eyes. These actions are controlled by other parts of my brain on a subconscious level. But these motions are flesh, neuron based actions. I’m not taking about the flesh and blood action of the brain. The motor of the brain. No. I'm referring to the mind. The complete, active mind. The full identity of the mind. The whole self.
I’m also not making some grand metaphysical leap that a million years of quiet meditation would just barely reveal. The senses don’t think*. They are senses, conduits for the mind into the tangible universe. What I’m talking about is taking steps into your awareness. To become a participant into your perceptions.
We tend to only care about the data being input. If my eyes see something move quickly I react. If my stove is hot and I touch it I pull away. If something is loud, I cover my ears. So many of my actions are in fact subconscious reactions when it comes to my senses.
As I’m listening to someone speak, my ears are not actively part of the conversation, because my mind is busy translating the verbal symbols and worse…the mind is already busy creating replies to what is heard. The enlightenment crowd would call this ‘normal’ living as unconscious living. That you are unaware of your true self or more importantly, your true self is not living in the moment.
There in lies the principle: learning to think with your senses so that when you are touching, listening, seeing, they are in a sense a direct connected extension of your mind at that moment. As a martial artist you should immediately see the potential for such open direct connection to your underlying consciousness.
I will give you an example. When working with an Uke you might find that you need to visually assess the position of his hands during a joint manipulation. You might then have to check your angle and your distance, and process the necessary time it will take you to move from point A to point B. These actions are all based off of one sense: Your sight. The other four are laying there asleep. What must be remembered is that the universe deals in absolutes. Energy not used to work as Kinetic energy is lying in wait as potential energy (assuming the absence of Entropy). For example, your sense of touch isn’t simply the act of feeling something surface and knowing if it is hard or soft, warm or cold. It is far more complicated than that. It tells you the relationship of the object in question, its orientation in space, its distance from you, and a multitude of other things your visual cortex can work out, but at a slower pace. And this is the crux: Each sense takes time to do a task that is not native to its purpose.
We have all done it. Held something in our hands that was unfamiliar to us and we were forced to take our eyes to the object and literally ‘feel’ it with our eyes. The mind is capable of processing the ‘feel’ of the object through the other sense, but it is not a native action and this takes a bit more reflective time.
As a martial artist, it behooves the individual to start to use the other senses for their native purposes. The process of doing so is really very simple and it only requires that you be aware of the learning process going on under the surface as you let the other senses do their thing. The first thing to do is slow way down. Babies are magical at this, as they learn to co-ordinate their actions, by learning to walk. A slow moving baby teetering on his feet is better balanced than a baby trying to run across the carpet when first discovering the ability to stand. We’ve all heard it before: Walk before you run.
Next and in conjunction to slowing down, use the sense from a correct distance. Touch is a clever occupier of space. Let it manage the distance for you. Imagine going to a car race and standing at the edge of the track and only being able to see the cars zip past your little section at two hundred miles an hour. You wouldn’t be able to even tell who was winning. Or, as we’ve all seen, having your ear right to the speaker at a concert. Whatever he’s hearing isn’t music. Nor would it be music if he was two miles away. Find, by slowing down and paying close attention to what the sense is telling you, the right distance. And lastly, when you have to trust another sense to objectify the findings of a more native sense, tell yourself your findings. This means, that you do not simply accept the findings. You mind is a clever animal, it will dismiss the native sense for the more tangible findings of the other sense, thus diminishing the importance of the native sense. For example, you pick up a rubber ball and normally you'd feel the texture of the rubber ball, and look at it, saying, 'oh that's how it looks'. Thus diminishing the value of the texture to a visual response so that the next time you see that texture it's connected to your eyes not your fingers. So if you feel that you need to look, say at a hand position relative to your own, tell yourself what you were feeling while you were connected to the hand: "I feel his fingers and they feel like they are pointed down toward the ground". Let the sense of feel be responsible for the entire action and the eyes were simply a witness to the act, not the primary sense for the whole outcome.
Lastly, we are visually based. It’s sad, but it’s pretty much our underlying reality. It takes a lot of training to undo this 80-20 rule (Eight percent of our input comes from our eyes). This is mostly because touch, smell, taste, aren’t really used, expect to tell is about pleasure and pain. You need to break yourself of that one and return those three senses back to a state of being part of your every day participation in this life. Start thinking with your hands as they type. Notice the texture of the keys, the distance to each keystroke, the pressure of your knuckles as you push down. Participate in the action not just the consequence.
*The senses don’t think. Interestingly enough, there is a theory that applies the idea that the whole body is part of the mind complex. Not simply the gray matter, but the entire nervous system, right down to the pain receptors in your toes, are part of the cognitive, interactive, mind.
Human beings have five direct tangible senses: vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell. But, of course, you knew this. Right now as you ‘read’ this your brain is processing each symbol and translating it to an understandable form, then stringing the connected symbols together until you have a perception of the meaning behind the word, the sentence, the paragraph. In the end, though, you are not thinking with your eyes. They are merely the receptive tool used by the brain to collect information about the outside world. The eyes themselves get little or no thought during the entire process of reading this. Of course my eyes aren’t being thought about as I read, you are thinking, that would just be crazy complicated for my brain (albeit super-brain) to keep track of so much at the same time. And you would be correct in your assumption. I don’t need to think about focusing or moving my eyes. These actions are controlled by other parts of my brain on a subconscious level. But these motions are flesh, neuron based actions. I’m not taking about the flesh and blood action of the brain. The motor of the brain. No. I'm referring to the mind. The complete, active mind. The full identity of the mind. The whole self.
I’m also not making some grand metaphysical leap that a million years of quiet meditation would just barely reveal. The senses don’t think*. They are senses, conduits for the mind into the tangible universe. What I’m talking about is taking steps into your awareness. To become a participant into your perceptions.
We tend to only care about the data being input. If my eyes see something move quickly I react. If my stove is hot and I touch it I pull away. If something is loud, I cover my ears. So many of my actions are in fact subconscious reactions when it comes to my senses.
As I’m listening to someone speak, my ears are not actively part of the conversation, because my mind is busy translating the verbal symbols and worse…the mind is already busy creating replies to what is heard. The enlightenment crowd would call this ‘normal’ living as unconscious living. That you are unaware of your true self or more importantly, your true self is not living in the moment.
There in lies the principle: learning to think with your senses so that when you are touching, listening, seeing, they are in a sense a direct connected extension of your mind at that moment. As a martial artist you should immediately see the potential for such open direct connection to your underlying consciousness.
I will give you an example. When working with an Uke you might find that you need to visually assess the position of his hands during a joint manipulation. You might then have to check your angle and your distance, and process the necessary time it will take you to move from point A to point B. These actions are all based off of one sense: Your sight. The other four are laying there asleep. What must be remembered is that the universe deals in absolutes. Energy not used to work as Kinetic energy is lying in wait as potential energy (assuming the absence of Entropy). For example, your sense of touch isn’t simply the act of feeling something surface and knowing if it is hard or soft, warm or cold. It is far more complicated than that. It tells you the relationship of the object in question, its orientation in space, its distance from you, and a multitude of other things your visual cortex can work out, but at a slower pace. And this is the crux: Each sense takes time to do a task that is not native to its purpose.
We have all done it. Held something in our hands that was unfamiliar to us and we were forced to take our eyes to the object and literally ‘feel’ it with our eyes. The mind is capable of processing the ‘feel’ of the object through the other sense, but it is not a native action and this takes a bit more reflective time.
As a martial artist, it behooves the individual to start to use the other senses for their native purposes. The process of doing so is really very simple and it only requires that you be aware of the learning process going on under the surface as you let the other senses do their thing. The first thing to do is slow way down. Babies are magical at this, as they learn to co-ordinate their actions, by learning to walk. A slow moving baby teetering on his feet is better balanced than a baby trying to run across the carpet when first discovering the ability to stand. We’ve all heard it before: Walk before you run.
Next and in conjunction to slowing down, use the sense from a correct distance. Touch is a clever occupier of space. Let it manage the distance for you. Imagine going to a car race and standing at the edge of the track and only being able to see the cars zip past your little section at two hundred miles an hour. You wouldn’t be able to even tell who was winning. Or, as we’ve all seen, having your ear right to the speaker at a concert. Whatever he’s hearing isn’t music. Nor would it be music if he was two miles away. Find, by slowing down and paying close attention to what the sense is telling you, the right distance. And lastly, when you have to trust another sense to objectify the findings of a more native sense, tell yourself your findings. This means, that you do not simply accept the findings. You mind is a clever animal, it will dismiss the native sense for the more tangible findings of the other sense, thus diminishing the importance of the native sense. For example, you pick up a rubber ball and normally you'd feel the texture of the rubber ball, and look at it, saying, 'oh that's how it looks'. Thus diminishing the value of the texture to a visual response so that the next time you see that texture it's connected to your eyes not your fingers. So if you feel that you need to look, say at a hand position relative to your own, tell yourself what you were feeling while you were connected to the hand: "I feel his fingers and they feel like they are pointed down toward the ground". Let the sense of feel be responsible for the entire action and the eyes were simply a witness to the act, not the primary sense for the whole outcome.
Lastly, we are visually based. It’s sad, but it’s pretty much our underlying reality. It takes a lot of training to undo this 80-20 rule (Eight percent of our input comes from our eyes). This is mostly because touch, smell, taste, aren’t really used, expect to tell is about pleasure and pain. You need to break yourself of that one and return those three senses back to a state of being part of your every day participation in this life. Start thinking with your hands as they type. Notice the texture of the keys, the distance to each keystroke, the pressure of your knuckles as you push down. Participate in the action not just the consequence.
*The senses don’t think. Interestingly enough, there is a theory that applies the idea that the whole body is part of the mind complex. Not simply the gray matter, but the entire nervous system, right down to the pain receptors in your toes, are part of the cognitive, interactive, mind.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The sacred Warrior path
The new students are always looking for challenges, to have fun, to participate in the camaraderie of the adventure or to assume control of the helm and lead the ship into what waters they believe the whole expedition should be heading. Although it may seem like a good time for the teacher to participate in the movement of the students, to be fluid, to alter and adapt, I believe that the teacher should remain as focused on his own warrior craft as possible. That once the doors close and class begins, the teacher becomes serious about the craft. I see the possibility of a great disservice to both the student and the teacher if this basic tenet is not followed.
Omote
When a student begins to sand box or question or participates in below a standard of respect in the dojo he is being inauthentic to his desire to learn. His behavior, even in jest, diminishes his intention. It lowers his standard of attention, his ability to learn, and his intention of retaining information gleaned. At the same time it, inversely, increases his attachment to his ego, by self perpetuation of his internal self loving perfection, thus increasing his judgments of situations and skill sets that he may not fully understand. The more he is allowed to play around, the more possibility that he will simply not respect the teaching nor the time there and will in fact miss the real, deeper, point of the whole. The omote, that is, what is seen, for the student is the process of learning a martial art. For them, at this stage, discipline should almost be paramount.
The problem arises when you attempt to institute a strict ethical approach in a martial arts dojo. In another time or in another place, such reverence of the place and the teachings were made possible by the realization of what the undesired end could be: that is death. New students to the martial way were raised with the warrior intuitions and strict moral upbringing, coupled with the everyday experience of war and fighting that came with true self determination.* The current society is so designed to eliminate ultimate self determination by outlawing and the subtle undermining of personal growth. This isn’t a judgment, simply an observation of the facts. By removing the constant threats of old, our modern society has bred a child like adult, whom spends much of his early adult years playing like a child in his adult body. This translates into how the body is used, how it learns, what value it applies to those things it learns, and more importantly, the value-less-ness of those things it did not learn. For those things that get lost are hard fought to impress upon unwilling flesh later.
Those students that are sandboxing, asking a lot of what if questions, who struggle and fight back against techniques, are designed by our society to behave this way, and as a teacher, you should help them to see that they aren’t even really seeing themselves, not fully. Like looking into a series of foggy mirrors trying to find your one true reflection. The teacher’s job is not simply to offer a martial art. The art itself is a tool and nothing more. But his job is to help the student become a human being. A true, self determinate, independent, lover of life, defender of his ideals. The true teacher is a mirror breaker. Taking us back to our first image. That’s how important we are to the teacher, that he takes on the ‘karma’ of all those broken mirrors right along with us.
The problem is that the student whom practices these behaviors is not trying to rise to the teacher, but is instead trying to bring the teacher to his own level. A student of first year math has no right to take a course in algebra; his presence in the class would be disruptive. He’d be lost, question everything, and basically find no value in the whole proceeding. Is a white belt really much different? The difference is, we are suppose to have the patience and love for the beginner’s heart, to help nurture his unique nature and foster in him a true grown up human being. Can you see the conundrum this creates? Where in the student, by his nature, is drawing the whole downward and the teacher is attempting to elevate the situation. Of course in any closed system, black body radiation is very efficient. In other words, the teacher radiates at a black body, whom simply reflects with little absorption.
Ura
For the teacher, his desire to offer the student the best possible education in regards to his martial training can be all consuming. This leads to cases of getting to what if scenarios, jumping into the sand box to play with the students, and so forth. I cannot speak for all teachers, for some might find this method of teaching beneficial. Some styles, some purposes, some warrior creeds may in fact desire this approach. I can only reflect my limited viewpoint and the few notch hole observations I’ve made of this vast battlefield. It is my opinion that teachers should not sand-box, or fall prey to the ‘what if’. Unless, they fully intend to go 100% on the student. The teacher must always exhibit his intention to fully perform the techniques, the approaches, the desires of the school and most importantly: his own Warriorship. If at any time he softens, to allow for the student to postulate or play, then he is doing damage to his own identity. By giving room to others whom will take advantage of the situation for their own benefit.
The teacher needs to remember that the student has signed on to learn, not just the throwing of fists into the air, but all the underlying, metaphysical, aspects of what is going on in the dojo. Where the Warriorship leads. I have a friend who teaches Yoga and it disheartens her when she finds students returning to her classes that haven’t realized that Yoga is a spiritual practice, that it’s not simply a place to become limber and socialize. That the yoga studio is a place of reverence, a kind of temple. It may not be a church to me, but it is a great spiritual path to her and I respect that and would assume that those entering her doors should quickly learn that there is a penance to be paid and homage to be adorned. The same is true for every Endeavour that a student undertakes. Whether that is martial arts or basket weaving. There is a seriousness, a meaning, a point to the adventure. Every step of our lives is … Our life and it should be serious. One of my favorite Hindi says is, “Before your birth, god inscribed upon you your allotted number of breathes. It is yours to decide how to use them.” I have a limited scope, a finite time. Why waste it with half truths and half-hearted foolishness?
It therefore is necessary for the teacher, in order to maintain his own path, to not engage in things that would bring him away from his identity. Sandboxing, what if, etc. leads the teacher into someone’s feign where most likely he will be flanked and crushed. Remain true to your strategies, stick to your tactics. Do not, never, let the student pull you down to his simple mathematics. It’s not your fault he doesn’t know Pythagoras and sometimes the only way to show him that there is more than addition and subtraction is to simply dump the entire system of Algebraic geometry on him and watch him squirm. It’s not mean, it’s not cruel. Often times our egos get in the way of ourselves. I disagree with ego killers, I submit that the ego is necessary for existence. That it is an intrinsic part of our being and that no matter how hard you try to destroy it, it will simply evolve to be the thing you called destroyed. I can’t think of a single person who can outthink himself, for you are only as smart as your own capacity. How can I fool my own thinking, let alone a part so fundamental that it has access to the whole of my mind? I believe that the folly of the ego is that it can become a monster, unchecked, without restraint. That is the creature of desire of wanton waste a warrior should beat with a stick until it dies (overly dramatic visualization intentionalized) .
The point is simple: The teacher at his core, should live up to his ethos, not offer the conversion of sacred ideas to bland passing phases in hopes that those who see can look past the obvious rape of the basic foundations of the idea and see the real meaning. In the end, the opposite is always true and the sacrifice is lost to history leaving only event as evidence of it’s every happening. From there the event takes on what ever meaning an individual requires it to, thus, the sacred is lost. Warriors protect their own sacred selves.
* - Our modern society is repulsed by war, so they seem to think, more so than our ancestors. We forget to realize that not to long ago a group of guys, a few thousand men, could seize an entire nation, simply because they wanted too. Those times aren’t dead. Selfish desires of power haven’t ended. In fact, they have increased as we have been vilified and stripped of our freedoms. A warrior ideal, that is, the realization of self-determination over social responsibility via guilt (nothing wrong with being socially responsible, but it should come from the enactment of the Golden Rule, not from fear of reprisal or scorn) his highly needed in our current world. We need real, excuse the brash statement, Jedi knights, whom are determined to place more than themselves, more than their gods, more than their governments at the center of all things. Truth seekers.
Omote
When a student begins to sand box or question or participates in below a standard of respect in the dojo he is being inauthentic to his desire to learn. His behavior, even in jest, diminishes his intention. It lowers his standard of attention, his ability to learn, and his intention of retaining information gleaned. At the same time it, inversely, increases his attachment to his ego, by self perpetuation of his internal self loving perfection, thus increasing his judgments of situations and skill sets that he may not fully understand. The more he is allowed to play around, the more possibility that he will simply not respect the teaching nor the time there and will in fact miss the real, deeper, point of the whole. The omote, that is, what is seen, for the student is the process of learning a martial art. For them, at this stage, discipline should almost be paramount.
The problem arises when you attempt to institute a strict ethical approach in a martial arts dojo. In another time or in another place, such reverence of the place and the teachings were made possible by the realization of what the undesired end could be: that is death. New students to the martial way were raised with the warrior intuitions and strict moral upbringing, coupled with the everyday experience of war and fighting that came with true self determination.* The current society is so designed to eliminate ultimate self determination by outlawing and the subtle undermining of personal growth. This isn’t a judgment, simply an observation of the facts. By removing the constant threats of old, our modern society has bred a child like adult, whom spends much of his early adult years playing like a child in his adult body. This translates into how the body is used, how it learns, what value it applies to those things it learns, and more importantly, the value-less-ness of those things it did not learn. For those things that get lost are hard fought to impress upon unwilling flesh later.
Those students that are sandboxing, asking a lot of what if questions, who struggle and fight back against techniques, are designed by our society to behave this way, and as a teacher, you should help them to see that they aren’t even really seeing themselves, not fully. Like looking into a series of foggy mirrors trying to find your one true reflection. The teacher’s job is not simply to offer a martial art. The art itself is a tool and nothing more. But his job is to help the student become a human being. A true, self determinate, independent, lover of life, defender of his ideals. The true teacher is a mirror breaker. Taking us back to our first image. That’s how important we are to the teacher, that he takes on the ‘karma’ of all those broken mirrors right along with us.
The problem is that the student whom practices these behaviors is not trying to rise to the teacher, but is instead trying to bring the teacher to his own level. A student of first year math has no right to take a course in algebra; his presence in the class would be disruptive. He’d be lost, question everything, and basically find no value in the whole proceeding. Is a white belt really much different? The difference is, we are suppose to have the patience and love for the beginner’s heart, to help nurture his unique nature and foster in him a true grown up human being. Can you see the conundrum this creates? Where in the student, by his nature, is drawing the whole downward and the teacher is attempting to elevate the situation. Of course in any closed system, black body radiation is very efficient. In other words, the teacher radiates at a black body, whom simply reflects with little absorption.
Ura
For the teacher, his desire to offer the student the best possible education in regards to his martial training can be all consuming. This leads to cases of getting to what if scenarios, jumping into the sand box to play with the students, and so forth. I cannot speak for all teachers, for some might find this method of teaching beneficial. Some styles, some purposes, some warrior creeds may in fact desire this approach. I can only reflect my limited viewpoint and the few notch hole observations I’ve made of this vast battlefield. It is my opinion that teachers should not sand-box, or fall prey to the ‘what if’. Unless, they fully intend to go 100% on the student. The teacher must always exhibit his intention to fully perform the techniques, the approaches, the desires of the school and most importantly: his own Warriorship. If at any time he softens, to allow for the student to postulate or play, then he is doing damage to his own identity. By giving room to others whom will take advantage of the situation for their own benefit.
The teacher needs to remember that the student has signed on to learn, not just the throwing of fists into the air, but all the underlying, metaphysical, aspects of what is going on in the dojo. Where the Warriorship leads. I have a friend who teaches Yoga and it disheartens her when she finds students returning to her classes that haven’t realized that Yoga is a spiritual practice, that it’s not simply a place to become limber and socialize. That the yoga studio is a place of reverence, a kind of temple. It may not be a church to me, but it is a great spiritual path to her and I respect that and would assume that those entering her doors should quickly learn that there is a penance to be paid and homage to be adorned. The same is true for every Endeavour that a student undertakes. Whether that is martial arts or basket weaving. There is a seriousness, a meaning, a point to the adventure. Every step of our lives is … Our life and it should be serious. One of my favorite Hindi says is, “Before your birth, god inscribed upon you your allotted number of breathes. It is yours to decide how to use them.” I have a limited scope, a finite time. Why waste it with half truths and half-hearted foolishness?
It therefore is necessary for the teacher, in order to maintain his own path, to not engage in things that would bring him away from his identity. Sandboxing, what if, etc. leads the teacher into someone’s feign where most likely he will be flanked and crushed. Remain true to your strategies, stick to your tactics. Do not, never, let the student pull you down to his simple mathematics. It’s not your fault he doesn’t know Pythagoras and sometimes the only way to show him that there is more than addition and subtraction is to simply dump the entire system of Algebraic geometry on him and watch him squirm. It’s not mean, it’s not cruel. Often times our egos get in the way of ourselves. I disagree with ego killers, I submit that the ego is necessary for existence. That it is an intrinsic part of our being and that no matter how hard you try to destroy it, it will simply evolve to be the thing you called destroyed. I can’t think of a single person who can outthink himself, for you are only as smart as your own capacity. How can I fool my own thinking, let alone a part so fundamental that it has access to the whole of my mind? I believe that the folly of the ego is that it can become a monster, unchecked, without restraint. That is the creature of desire of wanton waste a warrior should beat with a stick until it dies (overly dramatic visualization intentionalized) .
The point is simple: The teacher at his core, should live up to his ethos, not offer the conversion of sacred ideas to bland passing phases in hopes that those who see can look past the obvious rape of the basic foundations of the idea and see the real meaning. In the end, the opposite is always true and the sacrifice is lost to history leaving only event as evidence of it’s every happening. From there the event takes on what ever meaning an individual requires it to, thus, the sacred is lost. Warriors protect their own sacred selves.
* - Our modern society is repulsed by war, so they seem to think, more so than our ancestors. We forget to realize that not to long ago a group of guys, a few thousand men, could seize an entire nation, simply because they wanted too. Those times aren’t dead. Selfish desires of power haven’t ended. In fact, they have increased as we have been vilified and stripped of our freedoms. A warrior ideal, that is, the realization of self-determination over social responsibility via guilt (nothing wrong with being socially responsible, but it should come from the enactment of the Golden Rule, not from fear of reprisal or scorn) his highly needed in our current world. We need real, excuse the brash statement, Jedi knights, whom are determined to place more than themselves, more than their gods, more than their governments at the center of all things. Truth seekers.
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