Conversation with a Ghost

A long, long time ago when I lived in a different land one of my friends Ernest Rothrock shared with me one of his advanced students training manuals. Within that manual was a description of a training series of Ghost Techniques. In turn it was 5 years before I began to work out what they may have been following those notes and discovered a new twist in my martial studies.

I do not know their genesis, but the idea of the Ghost Technique is interesting, how to move so when your attackers attack reaches were you were standing, you are somewhere else.

They were just a series of movements to shift around an attacker such as you wanted to be directly behind them when their attack was complete, to completely disappear from their sight, or more directly, become a Ghost. The underlying principle was very simple you were to use Magic to disappear.

Magic of the mundane sort, not of Harry Potter’s studies.

I came to realize that Magic was not just for Ghost Techniques, but was the true basis of martial study. The Magician misdirects your attention so you watch one hand and not see the other hand move.

Okinawan Karate in its essence was an art of self defense, how to disrupt an unexpected attacker. It was not crafted to just work in a ring against an aware opponent, too often what Karate is focusing on today, the better ring fighter, or the street fighter wading into the street fight, instead of ways to break an opponent so no fighting is ever required.

Let me simplify this a great deal. Suppose I teach my students an art with one technique, now to break the nose of any attacker 100% of the time. Nobody would attack you if they knew you would be breaking their nose because of that attack. The attacker attacks those they can dominate to destroy. If they start doing so and their nose is immediately broken, it was because of Magic, their awareness did not include the ability that their prey was the hunter. They start the attack and their nose breaks by magic, no matter how that magic is performed.

In actuality my instructors have always been Magicians. As a brown belt sparring with Charles Murray I was never able to touch him once no matter how I attacked, he was always ¼” out of my range, but at any time he could walk all over me. A year after I made my black belt I visited Florida and Charles and I took the time to work out together and my first move nailed his nose, in that case Magic allowed me to do what he knew I couldn’t do – one time. Of course after my Magic was another story. Magic is the only way to describe Tristan Sutrisno ending up standing atop my shoulders before I finished trying to punch him.

The secret is not just training and skill, though the magic doesn’t work without those components, the secret is the way of misdirection, exactly as the stage magician does to the audience.

A person who attacks, does so because they know where you are and are so sure of that knowledge very frequently their attack shifts to an ‘automatic’ attack, not relying on their senses to target properly. Understanding that allows one to shift, move, etc. so you’re not there. It might be as simple as just shifting back a bit so their focused attack just hits air. It may be a movement shift to move outside of their attack laterally. It may be movement patterns in any direction to evade, entangle or counter an attack.

When you think about it a block itself is magic, you’re removing their attack from it’s intended target.

This brings to mind what is the focus of our Karate when we understand the use of magic in all situations?

Our kata studies have thousands of applications and we spend years learning the raw movements and then crafting how they fit many different attacks. That is the shape of how our karate can be used. But that is training, is that the purpose we should be choosing.

There are so many ranges of what an attack may be. Someone beating up another person leaves one set of focus to respond. Someone attacking use when we don’t expected leaves another.

But Okinawa through many instructors and words as in the Bubishi, would suggest we work to use our senses, or eyes and ears, to not be caught unawares. If that is the case and our awareness shows the attack unfolding is the correct response to sing Tennessee Ernie Fords words from ‘Sixteen Tons’. “If you see me coming better step aside, a lot of men didn’t and a lot of men died. One fist of Iron, another of Steel, if the right one don’t get you then the left one will!” Certainly one aspect of our studies leads us to wish that we respond thus.

Perhaps the crafted skill we develop can be better used to evade, to disappear intelligently and avoid the attack and fighting.

Personally I consider fighting the lowest level of our abilities. I concede there is logic in demolishing or destroying an attack under many circumstances. The difference is being unable to do so and thus having to fight derides the skills we work to develop. As a person I do not have a right to ‘punish’ an attacker, even though I do have the right to demolish their attack (which has many levels of meaning all appropriate situationally).

I think it is far better to become a ghost, whenever possible.

The first time I tried using one of Rothrock Laoshi’s Ghost techniques, when my student finished striking I was standing 10 feet behind him watching with amusement his astonishment that I was no longer before him.

In many cases, especially with our newest students, lower level Ghost techniques studies make a great deal of sense, how to learn to evade an attack, how to use their attack focus to allow them to retreat at a direction their attacker isn’t watching. How to not be there.

I’m not going to give a step by step look at my studies, just a suggestion how to use the magic. I find it very useful to look into your eyes, show a grin on my face and suggest “Come on Karate boy hit me, come on really, really hit me…… got it in you?”

And then disappear!

For the record, I’m an aging, slowing, decrepit karate-ka and I know you’re all younger, faster and better looking………………..come on Karate-boy..

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My next post will discuss several basic ghost technique studies for training the newest youth students.

ZEN COMBAT - Jay Gluck - Ballentine Books 1962

Here is a glimpse of the Japanese maratial arts from Jay Gluck's "ZEN COMBAT", originally published in 1962. Note the price on the cover to see how much things have changed.

AXE HANDLES poem by Gary Snyder

AXE HANDLES by Gary Snyder - North Point Press 1983

One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet.
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
“When making an axe handle
the pattern is no far off.”
And I say this to Kai
“Look: We’ll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with---“
And he sees, And I hear it again:
It’s in Lu Ji’s Wen Fu, forth century
A.D. :Essay on Literature” – in the
Preface: “In making the handle
Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The Model is indeed near at hand.”
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: “Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture.
How we go on.

The Slow and the Small

Running a very small adult program these past 25 years has helped me understand one of my personal goals, to try and understand karate instruction prior to 1900, a time when everything was small and personal.

When we were driven in our training to prepare for our sho-dan, that pace was fun, always pushing yourself as hard and as far as you could go. I'm sure at that time that was what I thought the goal of an instructor was, to have a group that could move at that pace forever.

Reality however becomes very different.

Of course we don't live on a small island and all our students are not in walking distance from our program. Today even for a small program students may have to fly home from working in another state, deal with late work hours, or frequent times when they're not available for training from work.

What I've found in the last quarter century, except for a year when there were just two of us training regularily, the rest of my classes have never had the same members there two classes in a row. That doesn't mean the group has quit, but that they're adults who have to balance many issues to maintain their training.

As an instructor you prepare for a class with a specific lesson plan in mind, and then often depending on which students are present, may or may not be able to use it and have to flow to plan 'b'. I find in time my lesson plan isn't for a class but what I focus on for a quarter of the year at a time, and find a way to touch that training over that period again and again.

I've experienced the death of a very good student and then over the next year the departure of most of the older group members, perhaps taking the experience to adjust their personal goals, each of which training over 15 years.

Then the program slows, the most seniors training at a more and more advanced level till slowly new members feret out the existence of the dojo, and suddenly you're in a beginning adult program.

Students really are the ones who control what you can do in a program. As an instructor you can only teach those who are willing to train. You have no control over how they deal with life's ever present reality, the fact that everything else in life is conspiring to stop your training, you can only always be there and teach.

Then slowly over 5 years, as you and your senior students focus on the group, you shift from a white belt program to build towards shodan instruction.

Which is where most of my program is right now.

Begin the shift to dan drilling studies, working on principles behind technique application, working on a very different range of drills for new movement flow, laying the ground work for dan training, and you're still moving at slow speed.

Balancing the groups needs, you most senior students needs and your own desires.

And knowing under the best of circumstances, if no corners are cut, it will be another 5 years before the program fully engages the training you enjoy most.

The program is small and personal, the instructor must go slow meeting the students needs foremost.

Helps one gets older and slower I guess, but for the upcoming joy when fists will collide and the arts potential can be realized.

The smaller the program in fact means the slower the instructors wishes are realized.

If long ago you were an instructor and have one student, if their time passes for any reason and you have to begin again, consider the slow of that instructors flow.

More from "The Sword & The Mind"

More from “The Sword & The Mind” written by Yagyu Munenori

Page 67

Three Types of Beat

You and your opponent striking each other simultaneously – that is one kind of beat.
Striking the opponent from below as he raises his word – that is another.
Striking the opponent from above as he lowers his sword – that is still another.

We consider being in tune bad, being out of tune good. When you and your opponent are in tune with each other, he can use his sword better; when you are not, he can’t. You must strike in such a way as to make it hard for your opponent to use his sword well. From below or from above, you must strike without keeping time with your opponent. In most cases, allowing yourself to be in tune with your opponent is no good.

Slow Beat versus Quick Beat;
Quick Beat versus Slow Beat

If the opponent moves his sword in slow beat, you must move yours in quick beat.
If the opponent uses quick beat, you must move your sword in slow beat.
Hear again, you must use your sword so that you will be out of tune with your opponent. If you allow yourself to be in tune, the opponent will be able to use his sword well.

An accomplished No chanter chanter off beat, so that an inexpert drummer cannot play the drum well as accompaniment. If an accomplished chanter is coupled with an inexpert drummer, or an accomplished drummer with an inexpert chanter, it should be difficult to chant or play the drum. When the same is done in a sword fight, it is called the art of slow beat versus quick beat, quick beat versus slow beat.

When an unaccomplished chanter chants slowly, an accomplished drummer will not be able to play the drum quickly, however lighthearted he may try to be. Again, when an accomplished chanter chants lightheartedly, an unaccomplished drummer will be left behind, unable to play the drum.

An accomplished bird-spearer shows th ebird his spear from a good distance, making it sway gently, and when close, quickly slides up to the bird and catches it. The bird, enchanted by the swaying rhythm from the spear, flutters and flutters his wings, trying to fly away, but unable to do so, ends up caught. The point is to stay out of tune with your opponent. Out of tune, you can step in. You must contemplate even things like these.

from The Sword and the Mind

The study of karate takes place on the dojo floor, or the spot outside where true training occurs. Karate does not have a vast tradition of sharing the strategy and tactics to make the training work in conditions extremis. For the most part it probably consists of oral tradition shared between instructor and student, and tactics studied on the dojo floor.

With the exception of the Bubishi (which is of Chinese origin) and a small selection of various instructors concepts, there is not consistent body of knowledge to consult.

Allow me to quote from “The Sword & The Mind” written by Yagyu Munenori translated by Hiroaki Sato, Published by Overlok Press in 1985.

A brilliant collection of Japanese sword lore, on the tactics involved. While written for the sword, the principles apply to all confrontation.

Consider in all things there is a first move, an opening. Or the passage that follows beginning from page 68 in the aforementioned work.

“Understanding the Startup Rhythm”.

In dancing or in chanting, if the performer doesn’t know the startup rhythm, accompanying him will be impossible. In swordmanship, too, there is something like a startup rhythm. You must correctly grasp how your opponent may use his sword and what tactics he may employ in order to see his ultimate intention. When you do, you are like a ‘No’ dancer or chanter who is well acquainted with the startup rhythm. Once you know your opponent’s moves and behavior well, you can work on him freely.

Six Approaches

1. Strike back as the opponent strikes.

2. A difference of three inches.
[Mitsuyoshi; “When two combatants face each other with swords crossed, the victory is said to be with the one who manages to move his sword forward thre inches ahead of the other.”] {victor smith – this does resemble the technique of Motobu Chokoi. Watch the following video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmUEDqqj8hQ at exactly 3:50 you’ll see the crossed arms before a contest, straight out of Motobu’s own book.)]

3. Steal within a distance equal to the opponent’s height.

4. Mark the opponent’s elbows when he olds his sword in the upper position.

5. When a ‘wheeling’ moves is employed, mark that part of the sword grip between the two fists holding it.

6. A distance of three feet. [Mitsuyoshi: “You must concentrate on moving close to your opponent so that the distance between the tip of your forward foot and that of his is three feet or less……If it is further thatn three feet, you won’t be able to strike your opponent with your sword."]

These six approaches must be learned and explained orally in actual exercises with oyour master. So they are not detailed in writing.

If despite your initial feints and double-dealing, your opponent remains unalarmed and sticks to his waiting stance without making the first assault, you must steal within the three-foot distance, and move close to your opponent. When, when he cannot contain himself any longer but takes an attack stance, allow him to make the first strike, and while he is doing so strike him. Unless your opponent strikes first, you will not be able to win. And unless you learn not to receive a hit when your opponent strikes, you cannot allow him to strike at you. You must train hard to master these things so that you may fearlessly move close to your opponent, have him strike at you, and win. This is the attitude known as sen-sen (initiative above all).

Four Other Approaches

1. Taikyoku, or “great deception,” [Mitsuyoshi explains that kyoku, deception, is a technique of winning that lures the opponent to strike frist by showing an apparent weakness.] along with “initial’ moves’. To be orally transmitted.

2. Zanshin, or “maintaining presence of mind at all times.” Applicable in both ken and tai stances. [ken – attack stance, tai – waiting stance] To be orally transmitted.

3. Dodging the short sword by a foot and five inches. [a “foot and five inches” refers to the width of the shoulders but the meaning of the phrase is not clear.]

4. Ken-Tai in taking an initiative. Remember to hold your body in an attack position, your sword in a waiting position.

Not one of these can be mastered without having it explained in actual exercises with our master. These approaches are difficult to explain in writing.

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Yagyu Munenori lived from 1571 to 1646. These words to back over 300 years but they remain relevant in today’s studies. I have experienced them on the floor with my own instructors and agree they must be lived not read. Still they point towards an important level in our arts.

Instructor III

It was in 1985 I started thinking seriously about what it should take to develop an instructor.

I was about 10 years into my own study and had to move from Scranton, Pa. to Derry, NH for work. The prior 6 years I had continued my own training, developed a program at the Scranton Boys Club and brought students to Sho-dan in my program. I had both competed and in turn ran a number of successful youth karate tournaments. I also trained as hard as I could with different friends in many arts.

Almost immediately moving to Derry, I restarted my program at the Derry Boys and Girls Club. Beginning anew I made some structural program changes to the program, using some of the additional experiences I had acquired from my friends, not to create a new system, but a new way to approach developing Isshinryu karate-ka.

It was at that time I started thinking about what should be required in developing an instructor. I had read of the JKA’s International Instructor school training, but there were no details and I’m sure I had a very idealized version in my head. I understood it involved more than just the study of karate and came to think of it as subsidiary training and knowledge to scope the development of karate training.

One does not sit down and develop an instructor training program, such a program should obviously be the product of many instructors and disciplines, as well as many decades of study. What I did though, was look at the library I had begun to acquire and wonder what would make sense to pull together to provide as study and work material for an instructor trainee.

My wife, Maureen, assisted and together we pulled together a wide range of material, including anatomy, physiology, history, etc. The end result was a very thick volume and with the assistance of a friend was reproduced and bound, and shared with my friends.

Everyone agreed it was a valuable effort of material useful in instructor development.

Today I cannot find my copy, I know I have one somewhere, but I have accumulated too much and no idea where it may be. I’ve contacted several of those I gave copies too, but alas, they likewise no longer posses it, or can find it.

There are important lessons there. Books alone do not make an instructor. I had no need of my copy because I had all of the source material at hand, to use when I need it.

If a training program had been developed with the book then it may have retained a purpose. But that wasn’t my intent at that time.

Of course this was before I knew of the historical antecedent of the karate instructor’s manual, the Bubishi, which is a text on medical matters, anatomy, strategy, technique, etc.

A valiant effort for 10 years training, but there were many lessons to come.

Technical note: This was written listening to the Velvet Undgerground ‘Heroin’.