Unka
Kim's
Martial Art
bloggie thingie
bloggie thingie
send us an email
Is often said to be other people, and it usually is, but it's also our own forgetfulness.
My life would be so much simpler without other people in the world. There is a reason why monks go away from society and live a simple life on their own, it is conducive to thought, understanding, forgiveness, love and all that other stuff that's good in life.
Other people complicate things, they knock you off balance, irritate and deliberately poke and prod until you have forgotten the lessons learned in silence.
Our own life can also be a problem, the lessons we learned well in our youth can be forgotten. The sureness of step, the confidence of the body can be lost with age and injury, and that of course means the mind loses its balance.
I noticed and took the time to read this article http://ejmas.com/pt/2010pt/ptart_taylor_1005.html over again this morning. It is something I wrote in 1998 and I was amazed at how much I knew then, and how much I have forgotten. Not the things I was saying, I've believed that since the early '70s and I haven't had any reason to change my mind. I'm talking about the way I understood it then, the way that I apparently slept well at night, and didn't get upset at things, and seemed to "have it together".
I suppose our lives are like mountains, lots of fuss and bother as they get created by continents banging together, lots of rough edges, then the rain and wind smooths things out and for a long time they sit there, massive, impressive, imperturbable, but eventually that same wind and rain wears them down until they're just hills, subject to a lot of disturbance from a little rain.
It's too bad my little mountain peak, bare and windswept for so long, isn't going to get worn down enough to have a nice coat of grass on it any more.
Some fun illustrations here, go to the main blog for more. Guess they do more than jodo in Fukuoka.
http://pinktentacle.com/2010/04/kaikidan-ekotoba-monster-scroll/
And that, folks, is why the martial art forums die. There are a couple of them out there that used to be pretty lively but I rarely am inspired to post any more on them simply because they are becoming less and less populated.
The argument for moderation on a forum is to keep things civil, to cut down on the nonsense and to stop this endless repetition of answering the same old questions and arguments that have already been answered a thousand times before... in other words, to simply refer folks to the archives.
Case in point this morning is a note I got about a thread that was started by a somewhat old question "Why is lineage so important". It's one of my hot buttons so I answered, as did several other folks and a reasonable discussion ensued. This morning Karl Friday made a summary of the arguments and I was inspired to take up a point with him...
At least I wanted to, but a hall monitor 'er moderator decided that was the definitive argument and closed the thread... a not particularly active thread, a rather mild mannered thread, one of the very few going on in that forum, but it seems the moderator is a bit pissed at the original poster because he seems to ask stupid and provocative questions...........
Ones that provoke responses... in a discussion forum.... Hmmm.
Well there is a reason why "freedom of speach" was seen as a good thing after the Enlightenment (ask me about it if you're interested, or check the archives). "Thread closed" is a discussion killer and a forum killer. It's curious that the most heavily monitored budo forums are in the USA, land of free speach. I guess you can have too much of a good thing?
Questions, even stupid and provocative ones, are not a bad thing folks, even in budo. You are not there to shut up and copy, you're there to learn and questions are a part of that process.
Really. I've sat in front of many hanshi during my career and every one of them.... EVERY ONE has said at some point or other, "any questions?". I say it regularly myself when I am teaching, and I expect questions. ANY questions. I am delighted to get them because they bring out the nuance in what we are learning. Sure we go over things that the seniors in the class have gone over a thousand times and it's fun to watch their eyes glass over when a beginner asks something they know all about... and even more fun, (a bit annoying I have to admit) to watch their attention snap back into place as they realize I've said something they haven't heard before... and then ask me to explain it all again for them because they weren't paying attention.
All us iaido types know all about uchiko right? It's that powder in the little puff ball that we tap onto our blades to clean them. Well a beginner didn't know last Thursday, so I told her that it's an abrasive made up of what's left over from the sword polishing process. You scoop the crumbled stone powder out of the bottom of the tray, filter it, dry it, seive it and put it into a silk bag so that only a certain grit comes out onto the sword where it literally polishes away any rust on the blade after a practice.
I then noted that sometimes that isn't enough, that some folks have very acidic skin and that the acid can get down into the pores of the metal where the abrasive can't get it and it can't be soaked out..... I was going to go on to describe sword water (ask me about it some time if you want to know) when suddenly I thought of something I had never thought of before.
When a sword is polished many togishi (polishers) put washing soda in the water to keep the blades from rusting. Washing soda is basic, it's also a powder that goes into solution and will return to a powder when it is dried... Do you see where I am going with this?
Without that question, which I've answered many times before, I might never have had that thought myself.
None of my threads are ever closed.
I don't watch TV news, absolutely never tune into a 24 hour news station and rarely listen to radio news.
I'm reasonably informed about world events, and I mean reasonably in every sense of that word, by reading a national newspaper once a day.
I want edited news, and I want background to that news, I don't have time to do that myself so I delegate it to the newspaper and it has worked for years.
Think about 24 hour news stations for a moment. Is there really that much going on in the world? Of course not, or rather, there is not that much going on that the folks who watch 24 hour news stations would be interested in seeing, or that the producers would be willing to pay to produce, or that the advertisers would be willing to bankroll. After all, I'm sure there are fascinating things going on in the neighbourhoods of Shanghai, Durban and Mozambique but I doubt your average CNN watcher would want to watch it.
The internet is another place I don't get news. I tend not to get a lot from the net but I am as caught up in it as anyone when it comes to certain topics. Photography goes past my eyes in vast amounts. I regularly attend a couple of martial arts discussion groups, but my facebook account sits neglected for weeks at a time since I haven't a clue what facebook is (for).
These tiny infusions of data into our brains which burst constantly all day long may actually be changing the way we think. I know it takes me a couple of days at the cottage before I can actually read a book again. The brain likes it's jumpy information flow, our history as a species likely designed us to be that way... after all you don't want to miss the lion in the grass while you are chasing away the buzzards and hyenas from that carcass.
It has been suggested that the ability to concentrate on one thing for a long time came about with books. Perhaps, but I wouldn't be surprised if a shepherd didn't have long thoughts while watching the sheep day by day (which may in fact explain the large numbers of religions that come out of the pasture and desert regions). I do know that without concentration you don't get the great philosophers and you certainly don't get to understand how they make their arguments toward their philosophies by jumping from wikipedia to about.com to philosophy.com to Stanford University to... Nothing is a substitute to a careful reading of their writings, except perhaps a very good philosophy instructor who has edited it down for you.
Which brings me to my martial arts point. Like with my news, I want my budo in quality not quantity, I want it edited, not now and certainly not in fragments and half-understood bursts of enthusiasm.
In short, I want to listen to an 8dan and not a 4dan. Not that a 4dan isn't a useful person to have around, they tend to be the repository of "how it's done", they know the "right" way to do it and let's face it, they're the Wikipedia of our world. Think about it, how often have you watched a 7dan turn to a 4dan and say "what's the next technique?" Trust me, they aren't asking to test knowledge or to provide experience in teaching... they really can't remember what the next technique is. But the 4dan will know.
A 4dan knows the next technique in their own art and are likely to know the next technique in three more. They know the name of all the teachers in the lineage, where they lived and what they had for breakfast on Tuesdays. In fact they are like the 24 hour news channel or like the internet, they are a vast and unending sea of information bites, much of it repeated at regular intervals and all of it seemingly disconnected from all the rest.
What they aren't, these 4dans, and why, despite their usefulness, I would rather sit in front of an 8dan, is experienced. They haven't digested all that information, they haven't lived with it and used it for so long that they have forgotten where the information came from. They haven't edited it yet. Eventually they will get longer in tooth and ear-hair, they will get so old they start to forget the details and they'll have to start asking their own students what technique comes next... but they'll be able to "do it". They'll know how the weight shifts, how the hip twists, how the little finger squeezes just so here and here and ... really it goes that way? well in that case how the little finger squeezes HERE.
I want the newspaper, not the 24 hour news channel.
Tomorrow I am heading to Toronto for the appreciation dinner with Roy Asa sensei, president of the CKF for almost 30 years and recently retired.
I've been involved with the CKF since 1987 and have heard, for much of the time from then until now, the usual complaints about what the federation should do about this or that. Always, always with the full intent that someone else other than the complainer should be doing something because said complainer had paid their $15, later $20 annual membership fee.
Well I have been involved at or near the top of the iaido and jodo sections since they were organized within the federation and so I have been priviledged to have worked closely on occasion with Asa sensei. I may speak another time about volunteer organizations and the workings of such entities, but for now I'd like to relate a small personal story about Asa sensei and how he got things done.
Several years after the iaido section was organized and running nicely, the CKF realized that there were enough folks around to organize a jodo section. There were 5 or 6 active dojo with instructors and a well established history of instruction from Japan so it became time to create the section and provide gradings in Canada, allowing the art to grow.
At one of the summer seminars, which I "organize" I ended up sitting in the middle of the gym floor discussing the first grading with Asa sensei and with the head of the jodo committee of the ZNKR. It became apparent during the discussions that I was about to become the head of the section. I spoke up saying that there were three or four jodo folks experienced enough and talented enough to do the job, and that it didn't have to be me. The Japanese sensei laughed and Asa sensei simply looked at me like I was slightly slow-witted and said "I know you".
With those words I was both tapped and trapped. There was no way that I could avoid the job or do less than my very best at it. You see, I had watched Asa sensei put his heart, soul and a huge chunk of his life into the CKF and when he turned to me I could do no less than as much as I could to repay that work. I know how hard he worked to make the CKF work, how personal it was to him. By that single statement "I know you" he made it clear that the organization was now a personal concern of mine as well. How could it not be?
We have our teachers of budo and we owe them for those teachings. We also have our sensei in the organization we belong to, and we owe them the same debt when asked.
It suddenly occurs to me that even though I have a lineage (or two) that goes back to before 1600 (according to the records) I have trained with the last two generations and that's it. I have not trained with all those teachers back to 1600 so what's the point of claiming them as progenitors?
Really, we train with the last guy in the line, not the first, so lineage or not, our training depends on the abilities of our teachers.
The value of having a long-winded school? I'm now not sure. Due to the effects of telephone tag I'm not sure I'm learning what the founder taught. In one of my schools I have actually traced a lot of the additions that have happened over the years through later teachers.
The value of having some really good fighters in the lineage? Fighting ability isn't something that passes all that easily down through the years as far as I know.
Bragging rights? Really.
No, obsessing about the lineage is mostly idle thought, not really conducive to good training at all, except perhaps for the stories about how hard the guys trained back then... and how I should get back to it.
Yesterday we spent the day going over "what we did on our summer seminar". In this case my visit to the Oda sensei seminar in Vancouver. I tried to go through all the things that I picked up from sensei so that we could reinforce them and so that those who were not at the seminar would hear them.
Two other students who attended the seminar were present, and I asked them repeatedly if there was anything I was forgetting or that they had heard that I had not.
This can be like pulling teeth.
Just because I'm a high rank and I'm in front of the class doesn't mean that I am omnipotent... much as students would like to think that of their teachers. We need help too folks, help to remember the details, help to remember the timelines, and help to see the things we can't see because we're not there in class.
So as a student, even if your sensei is in the same class as you are, make notes and don't hesitate to speak up in the review class (we all DO have review classes after every seminar don't we???) when asked.
June has slipped away and we're half into July. I am OK folks, thanks to those who have been concerned, but it's been a chore keeping EJMAS and 180 magazine updated, let alone the blogs associated with them.
Having said that, I will make more of an effort here.