The following will make no sense to anyone not a follower of the Destroyer universe, but today it's lack of continuing presence led me to post a few words.
If you have not been a follower of the Destroyer universe, why you've missed 3 decades of enchantment and wonder...................................
I am created Shiva, the Destroyer, the dead Night Tiger made whole by the Masterof Sinanju..... .. what is this peace of Dog meat that stands before me.......... ......... ..............
memories of the way things used to be..
o'glorious anniversary
it is the day
the day, the bee and the sun
bee seessun sun seeks flower
bee seeks flower
bee flying in sun
bee landing on flower
bee seeking sweet nectar
flower died
bee flew. sunsets
Sinanju gone
the key to the sun source
breathing to fullness
not bending the elbow
respecting little father
there is Sinanju
all else is less
now Sinanju fades to myst
the master returns home
is it next sending the children to the sea?
the world churns
money not gold molds away
only the tribute kept Sinanju alive
but the most foul have wreaked their havoc
let loose the dogs of war against the Destroyer
and Sinanju is not a army
Sinanju is but one idea
a fixed point in the mind
that training and correct breathing
creates one more in tune with the universe
Chiun noted he looks forward to meeting God to discuss God's balance
it is an appropriate thought
Sinanju taught me that correct technique is everything
that and to bring Victory home in your Teeth
I..am created..... ..... SHIVA DESTROYER DEATH...SHATTER OF WORLDS respect for sunshine and bee the balance of a great song the gentle tapping of the middle finger on the wrist
i see no sunshine
i fear death for the first time
a companion we do not want
but can not remove
Where john carter, lord greystoke, doc savage, tom swift sr and jr, and tom corbett reside may be the destination for our friends
Isshin (one-heart) means to throw oneself wholly into the action without any other thought at all. Zanshin (remaining-heart) means some awareness still remaining. Some of the texts (victor note – of the Way) give both, some of them do not mention zanshin at all, and some of them mention it but say that the heading ‘zanshin’ means that there must be no zanshin.
With a spear, isshin is to commit one’s body wholly to the thrust; in a judo throw, it means to throw one’s body and heart at the opponent. If the action is technically defective, or the opponent more skilful, it will miss; then one is generally in an unfavorable position. On the other hand, the more impetuosity and immediacy and completeness of the movement may have so upset him that he cannot utilize his momentary advantage.
Still, in theory might it not be better to take into account possible failure, and keep something back in order to be able to adapt it/ But then, the one-heart will be broken into two: one saying ‘everything into the throw’ and the other ‘what if it fails?’ The latter is called a fox-doubt, and it infects the physical movement, to cause hesitation.
Similarly, if the attack is successful, must new isshin be formed to deal with a new opponent?
The schools which speak of zanshin take it as an awareness which is wide and unmoving, and which contains the isshin. The immediate awareness is thrown into the action, and yet something remains, unconscious? conscious?, which can handle a failure or even a success. This is zanshin. It must not be consciously aimed at, as that would split the ‘one-heart’.
In a sense the one-heart is the ji or particular technique, and the remaining-heart is the ir or universal principle which manifests in particular situations but is not exhausted in them.
'Isshin is the unity of the wave, zanshin is the unity of the water. Isshin defeats an opponent at a tme and place, by a technique. Zanshin is awareness of the whole process of defeating opponents, and wider than that, defeating them with minimum harm to them, and wider than that, for a good purpose and wider than that…'
In this verse, zanshin is referred to as ‘water holding the moon’.
'Not Setting the Mind' from Trevor Leggett’s “Zen and the Ways”
'Not Setting the Mind' from Trevor Leggett’s “Zen and the Ways”, Page 158
The mind turns in accordance with the ten thousand things:
The pivot on which it turns is very hard to know.
Zen verse (much quoted in the Ways)
Like many of the Buddhist verses and aphorisms, this verse about not letting the mind get set, but keeping it freely turning on a pivot, seems vaguely ‘wise’ but it is soon abandoned in practice. A fencer comes out without setting his mind on his opponent’s technique or his own and his movements become slack, so that he gets hit on the head at once. The calligrapher goes to write without letting is mind be set on the proper way of writing the character, the result is a sprawling mess. It is true that in this last case, he may persuade himself that he has written well, in an unorthodox manner; but the archer who has missed by a mile has no such refuge. One of the advantages of the martial wasy is that the result is so immediately apparent. In any case after a few failures the whole attempt is abandoned.
As the classic says, ‘those who are not training in a tradition will find it hard to understand.’ The teacher has to supply one or two concrete examples from the particular tradition. Here is one from the judo tradition.
In Tokugawa times, one of the big Jujutsu schools lost three of its best men, killed at night in the street. In each case there was only one mark on the body, a stab in the abdomen, slightly to the right side. It was guessed that these killings were done by a member of a rival school, with which there was a feud on, but the puzzle was ho these three highly skilled men could have been killed by one clean stab. If they had been overcome by numbers there would have been other marks, a single man, even though armed, could hardly have finished the fight with one blow, especially a thrust to the abdomen which is easily checked.
The experts finall worked out how it had been done. There are only two effective ways of using the stabbing knife (1) from below to the abdomen, and (2) down from above on to the neck and shoulder. Skilled Jujutsu men were well practiced in the defense to both of these attacks. An expert could tell which attack was coming by observing the position of the attacker’s right hand: if the thumb is in front, the attack will come down, and if its to the rear, the attack is upward. Before the blade is actually visible, the defender’s body is already moving into the defensive reaction.
The other Jujutsu school discovered how to make use of this fact. Their man was holding the knife reversed; his left hand holding the hilt and the right hand holding only the sheath. This right hand had the thumb prominently displayed – in front. So the defender was moving to intercept a downward blow, but when that came it was being made with the sheath, while the blade moved upwards unopposed.
This is an example of getting the mind set on one thing, namely the position of the opponent’s thumb, which in the ordinary way is the key to the situation. Does this mean then that the thumb is not to be noticed? No. It is to be noticed, but not at the expense of the whole situation. As a matter of face, the opponent’s posture was not the normal one of a man about to draw a knife with the right hand. The opponent is holding the knife in fact with the left hand, and he will have to advance his left foot to use it. If we look at the posture in the third set of pictures, we see that from the very beginning the knife-man has his left foot level with his right foot, whereas in the normal case it is well back. An experienced judo expert, who does not let his mind become set in the thumb position, will find something ‘unusual’ in the situation, and will correspondingly keep a freedom of action. He will not be tied to a mechanical defense reaction.
Followers of the Way should consider how technical excellence in a particular point gradually becomes mechanical, and creativity is lost. Technique, like logic, can only operate by ignoring certain aspects of a situation as insignificant; it works well in nine cases out of ten, but in the tenth case the disregarded aspects are in fact decisive. In the tenth case, absolute reliance on technique, or logic can be disastrous. The mind becomes set on them, and cannot adapt. Technique is to be utilized, but it must not be the master, as it does when it is worshiped by a mind set on it.
Everything is always in a state of change, the arts martial or otherwise the same.
Change isn’t bad or good, it’s just the reality that you can’t step into the same water in a flowing stream no matter how hard your try, nor can you stop changing what you were taught and practice or teach. Nobody ever has. In fact developing a healthy respect for change, so that you understand an attack will likely never follow any training sequence you’ve experienced, but those experienced help develop skill that can be inserted into the current new and changing reality, too.
All the admonishments, ‘never change the kata’, ignore the reality is that kata continually changes. In fact the origin of that statement likely had nothing to do with the fact kata change but probably was a focus given to beginners to help them focus their training. At some point in time, we no longer remain beginners, though it is healthy if we keep the beginners mind in our mindset too.
The act of change that is more subtle is the creeping change that infiltrates our studies, especially when we don’t know it’s happening.
I can recall going back decades and learning Sanchin in a more Okinawan standard, without words wrapping around the training. Then an article describing Ibuki breathing, followed by Mas Oyama’s books describing it and in turn started using that term myself. The issue isn’t the use of the term ibuki with hard focused breathing (Quick Definition of course), but the use of a term that wasn’t part of my Isshinryu training. Then making the link to that term and my practice changing my art to use the term.
A more complex example is how the Japanese term ‘bunkai’ crept into the Okinawan arts, and I suspect many of it’s current definitions do not really describe the original Okinawan methods of studying kata technique applications. Today you are hard pressed to find one capable of making the distinction about ‘bunaki’s’ usage.
The past few years I’ve been working hard to identify much that has crept into my own practice, understand why and work to expunge or annotate its usage correctly.
Then a few weeks ago I came across a reference to a short story I had read in College (back in those dark ages of the 60’s). The story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges . It truly is a short story, a fiction describing a fantastic world, written in very rich detail.
Essentially he described a few friends who found a book with a few more pages than any other copy of that book, partially describing a fictional planet, Tlön. A few years pass and then the 11th volume of an encyclopedia of that planet is discovered. It was so rich in detail many started trying to re-construct the remaining volumes until finally it was published, and in turn much of the world started changing to the practices of that planet.
Of course the author then discovered the entire effort was a work of a secret society, but after making some observations, turns away to his own efforts.
To quote from the story,
“Already the schools have been invaded by the (conjectural) "primitive language" of Tlön; already the teaching of its harmonious history (filled with moving episodes) has wiped out the one which governed in my childhood; already a fictitious past occupies in our memories the place of another, a past of which we know nothing with certainty - not even a that it is false.”
“Then English and French and mere Spanish will disappear from the globe. The world will be Tlön. I pay no attention to all this and go on revising, in the still days at the Adrogue hotel, an uncertain Quevedian translation (which I do not intend to publish) of Browne's Urn Burial.”
I have no further comment at this time, except to note much current change in the martial scene has a similarity to Borges description.
From my study of the Sutrisno Aikido series, practiced against straight punches, technique number 9 parallels the Defense against the knife from the 1938 “Karatedo Taikan” by Nakasone Genwa we can find the ‘Tanken Dori Nana-Hon no Kata’ – Surface Knife Defense Kata by Otsuka Hironori. They are Ceremonial Kinfe Defense kata from Shindo Yoshinryu Jujutsu.
I share the following scans from that book.
The translation of the title of this section was provided by Charles Joseph (Joe-san) Swift, long ago and was greatly appreciated.
To begin to talk about the study of knife in any form it first helps to get a real strong dose of reality. Before you go further watch the entire following clip on what the blade can do.
The Edged Weapon Threat – Michael Janich
Try to keep that in mind, the study of knife isn’t about glamour or looking good. Knife is a serious study in offensive and defensive potentials of the blade.
My primary focus has been Isshinryu empty hand and Isshinryu kobudo as I’ve written. I’ve never been particularly interested in inserting knives into peoples bodes. My father was a Pennsylvania Butcher after all and I was raised knowing what knives are used for. But I understood if you don’t understand how to use a knife you’re at a real handicap trying to understand how to stop one. My first answer for my students on what to do when faced by a knife is ‘Run like Hell’, and knowing what I know today I still consider that the best response……. But there are times.
When I started training with Ernest Rothrock in Tai Chi, I saw his students working Chinese knife forms in their studies, and for fun he worked with me to adapt the Yang Tai Chi sword form he taught me to Kukri after Charles Murray gave me one as a gift, but that was more an exercise than anything.
When I studied Bando Short stick, I came to realize it’s potential as knife study and that has remained a private practice for me. It’s not surprising considering the relationship between stick potential and that of knife. Dan Insanto’s “The Filipino Martial Arts” had clarified that relationship to me before I studied stick and all my efforts just confirmed what he wrote.
I was also training with Tristan Sutrisno during that time and towards the end of the 10 years he started sharing some of his knife studies. His arts consist of extremely logical starting points of study. Karate kata and kata technique drills to interlocked two person sets. Tjimande basics to forms to interlocked two person sets. Aikido multiple attack drills to aikido study. Bo and Kama studies where the forms build upon the previous forms with more and more advanced skills. The little I saw of his knife studies the more the pattern remained the same, and as follows the more impressive the actual skills sets involved became.
First I was shown 7 defensive response drills against attacks. Then he shared a piece of a knife kata. Very complex blade shifting skills and knife handoff techniques. There was never one technique that I was shown by him in any study over 10 years that wasn’t enough for a lifetime of study in it’s own right. Working on those studies I came to see a relationship between his Tjimande basics and them being done with a knife too, which he acknowledge in private discussion.
I was living quite a distance away from him and as time passed our time training together came to an end. I never stopped practicing, but aging, arthritis, etc. made some of his skills very hard to work less try to maswer. Then last year I found one of the video’s of him doing a clinic with my students and had forgotten he had drilled my basic knife drills at that time. As I was working a technique, behind me he was working variation after variation on those techniques, and the underlying logic of his arts made more sense to me.
The hardest skills were the continual knife shits from open to closed to open and the smooth handoff so it was impossible to ‘guess’ which had was striking with the knife. Other principle studies have also made me more fully understand his arts targeting at touch range where the knife functions.
Of course with Sutrisno Sensei what you really learn is you have no idea of the depth of his arts. A few years ago I discovered he was promoting his Siliat studies on the net, and watched his Siliat knife technique, even more impressive, fluid and flowing. No wonder he’s developed a following around the world on his arts.
Some time after discontinuing training with Sutrisno Sensei one of my senior students, Mike Cassidy, showed me how the aikido drills I had learned from Sutrisno Sensei were knife attack counters too. Those drills were about the first thing I had studied with him. You’re surrounded by a series of attackers and one after another you shift use an aikido technique to move and lock your attacker and then ground with them to finish the lock (in most cases).
What Mike had discovered was when you did the sequence grabbing the hand with a thrusting knife the technique was even more effective. For one thing it explained the manner in which some of the techniques were executed instead of other alternative movement choices, you were moving to keep a hand holding a knife away from your body at all times. (I don’t know if Sutrisno Sensei follows those choices but I’d never suggest he doesn’t or more importantly cannot use them as knife defense.)
Where the knife becomes an important force multiplier for the attacker, if you can get your hands on the hand holding the knife it becomes a great force multiplier too, generating pain in their fingers as their hold is used against them. Of course how you enter the space they provide when they attack is most critical, but the aikido technique study addresses that too.
Then somewhat later in time I obtained a copy of the 1938 “Karatedo Taikan” by Nakasone Genwa. It contains the ‘Tanken Dori Nana-Hon no Kata’ – Surface Knife Defense Kata by Otsuka Hironori. Ceremonial Kinfe Defense kata from Shindo Yoshinryu Jujutsu. (I don’t read Japanese and my friend Joe Swift provided a translation of that chapter title for me back when I obtained a copy of this work. Those techniques are eerily similar to some of the Sutrisno aikido techniques, of course as his father had trained in Japan in the 1930’s the similarities between different studies countering a Japanese style thrust attack must have been similar. (See the following article showing one of those techniques).
Of course Japanese style knife attacks only are one way the knife can be used. If you’re living in Japan where almost everyone was using the same style of attack, answers are more readily achieved. But in an entire world of different knife traditions defensive answers are not simple.
My choice is that only long training black belts work any knife defense studies and only instructors train in knife offensive studies. A small program cannot do everything, the instructor must pick and choose which are most appropriate studies for their students. If the times change the focus of the program must change, perhaps even to the extent that offensive knife studies are requird. Yet until that day occurs (hopefully never) the instructor training passes knowledge that may become useful.
Going back to that original video, the best form of knife self defense is running, IMO.
I often think most of the knife drills I’ve seen other schools do are more useful for building confidence, as long as the danger of the exercise is fully explained. But when I see kids flashing kama around I wonder if that is the case in to many places. Still my business it my program, not what others are doing.
Years ago there were several interesting books that addressed knife offense and defense training. While the books may be no longer available, the video record does make the same case.
First, the late Michael Echanis authored a series on martial weapons skills in 1978 under the series name of “ Special Forces/Ranger-UDT/Seal Hand-to Hand Combat/ Special Weapons / Special Tactical Series”. Both of them are interesting presentations of knife technique and defense that came from his study of the art of Hwa Rang Do. While these books are out of print I have found video’s that match much of their content. I turns out that he was just sharing basic Hwa Rang DO training, and what is shown is much of the content of those two books.
Knife – Hwa Rang Do
Knife Self Defense – Hwa Rang Do
Even more interesting is Daniel Inosanto – in his book “The Filipino Martial
Arts” 1980 is an excellent presentation of the Filipino arts. That book covers
an entire wealth of topics (all of which directly or indirectly apply to knife
studies. I doubt the book is any longer available, but the following video’s
show even more. And the videos of Dan Inosanto showing hot to use the knife are
no longer there. But the following video shows some ofit.
Inosanto 1983 - Stick and Knife
If you search YouTube there is much more material on Inosanto available. I was
once able to attend a clinic with him teaching knife self defense and against
him the blades went flying. The clinic however was two hours of technique of no
technique, for about every 3 or 4 minutes he taught another technique, hard to
retain anything from the training, but the basic principles were in the book,
and on the above videos.
For a different way to use double daggers in one Chinese tradition you might
consider
Hua Quan Double Daggers (Shuang Bi Shou)
Of course this only touches the surface of training with the knife.
If one is required to use one, in offense or defense, might our skill be that of the Cook Ding referenced in “The Book of Chuang Tzu”.
“ I proceed with caution and keep my guard up, considering when I should stop and when I should move slowly. I move the knife just a little bit and that part is quickly separated, like a clump of dirt shifting on the ground. Then I life up my knife and stand up straight, pausing to look at all my work until I’m satisfied with it. Then I properly clean my knife and stow it away.”
