Instructor I

Another day and more unsolicited email messages show up in my inbox. Several Martial Arts organizations marketing groups are always trying to sell me information about becoming a better instructor. Of course from what I teach and how I teach it they information is useless to me, except to keep me current with the latest martial school trends. I do pay attention to try and understand the landscape, always watching and thinking.

I started my own program almost immediately after reaching my sho-dan in Isshinryu. Unequipped for the role of course, I had never studied karate to become an instructor, I only wanted to learn karate and get better. As events shaped my karate experience I began teaching to remain an Isshinryu practitioner, and had to work to define what my program would be.

For one thing I started out teaching a youth program through the Scranton Boys Club, for free. My program was the first one to bring girls into the Boys Club for membership. As I learned how to be an instructor, the hardest way, I tried to focus what I wanted my program to represent and settled upon trying to move into a pre-1900 approach to individual training. Always the most important focus was that between student and instructor.

In my past 30 years of teaching, perhaps in some ways I’ve succeeded. In other ways I was way ahead of the bell curve, such as seriously teaching a youth program, years before it even became a reality on Okinawa. Back in the days when everyone thought I was out in space training youth, almost all telling me I should be spending my time with adults to do real karate. I tried to tell them what the future would hold if they wanted to keep their programs going, but few thought I was serious. Of course today there are very few commercial schools in any art that would be open without the income that their youth programs generate. Then again my focus wasn’t money, for I’ve never charged for my instruction. My payment was being allowed to continue training and I’ve been very well paid at that.

I plan to do a series of articles on my personal insight into instructor development. Not to guide other programs, but to share with my students in what we practice.

Still to begin I think it very important to realize that ALL of us, trying to link our programs to the karate of the past must realize, what we’ve turned into is very different from Okinawa’s origins. Very different!

Karate pre-1900, as far as I’ve been able to piece together, was before the dojo, perhaps just a back yard or an empty field or clearing in the forest. I’ve been unable to piece together much information about how many students an instructor had, how frequently they trained, what their drop off rate may have been, and without information to discuss those items is mostly speculation.

Karate pre-1900 was a walking student population. The student(s) lived a walking distance from the instructor. Of course in that world time, the populace walked, there weren’t cars, or much other available transportation. Walking distance might be 10 miles for the most possessed student, but still I suspect a neighborhood type of distance in many cases.

The stories seem to indicate that unless it was from a family or friend obligation, a prospective student had to work to be accepted. That might represent being turned down repeatedly, or having to present oneself for many months showing one’s true interest before being accepted. It suggests a small student population that worked very hard to be accepted, and in turn willing to stay training.

Just supposition, but for a successful instructor today (defined as one who keeps their school open for years), with thousands of new students, who didn’t stay even to sho-dan, for the handful who move into fuller training, I’m sure those older instructors would look askance as to what a good instructor meant.

I’m not suggesting right or wrong, just the world keeps turning and change happens (entropy is the universal champion after all). But it is difficult to truly consider the modern instructor an inheritor of the older traditions.

The body may move the same, and the same steps must pass in a students studies, but the wrap around of today, hardly allows an instructor to focus on their program in the same way as when there were a handful of students.

The change of course is world wide, and includes Okinawa too. Can you consider any pre-1900 instructor would have considered running a world spanning organization with students they never taught, as a part of their art?

Trying to understand the trends of the past are useful to help us shape our art and our responses to guide our students into their own futures.

In my case I had to work out how to develop a youth program for a small group of students that would require between 7 to 9 years of training to qualify for sho-dan, and then of course they would leave us forever, and separately develop an adult program that is I believe very close to what a pre-1900 model of training may have been.

I will continue exploring what developing an instructor should represent in subsequent posts.

On Translation and Kata

 

I was reading the translator (Louis Swaim) introduction to Yang Chengfu’s “The Essence and Applications of Taijuquan”, only to be surprised by the following comment. “…Traditional Chinese books were not punctuated, and it was the reader’s job to parse the sentences, determine which clauses were subordinate, and to match up subjects and predicates.”

Though in modern times punctuation has been added to Chinese, Japanese and Korean, in the older form it was the readers analysis how to group the concepts expressed, using the context of the subject in discussion. In the older works, ..”Chinese writers did typically did not attribute…quotations. They were simply run into the writer’s text with the expectation that the reader would recognize them and know their significance.’

I’m sure many reading this are wondering what type of person reads translator’s notes. Language and its study has been a long interest of mine, and having translated a few martial works from French into English, having experienced many of the difficult choices even an amateur translator must face, this comment by Swaim helps understand the difficulties we all have accepting modern translation accuracy.

Any of us who had Freshman English in college likely spent time interpreting what poetry was saying. I felt it was an open door to understand when the work leaves the author’s hands it no longer is under their sway. It makes me remember the bit in Rodney Dangerfield’s movie “Back to School”. Having an assignment to do a paper on a book by Kurt Vonnegut, he hired Vonnegut to write the paper, which ultimately drew an ‘F’ because the professor felt the paper missed entirely what Vonnegut was writing.

Of course if one was a direct student of Yang Chengfu, the book would have been a memory aid because its context would have directly come from Yang. But for everyone else we might always wonder if the parsing that was made conveyed what Yang Changfu meant.

The key is we never know for sure. As a result of this I often take years and years to understand the place of a book in my martial studies. I need to place it in context.

The funny thing is it strikes me that kata is a work of literature from a point of view. Kata movement sequences are a vocabulary of the kata concepts. Unless you trained directly with the founder, you’re always trying to understand it’s potential (from the founder’s point of view), and ultimately you must place that potential in context of an attack opening.

Of course it matters not what the originator meant if you form an operating context for the book and/or the kata. In that way you’ve made their work yours.

This is not a simple quest. I recognize many underlying principles that work with kata movement, in turn dozens and dozens of technique answers that can be used against various attacks.

A more compelling story might be to read Douglas Hofstader’s “Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language”. In it he conveys many issues, but prime among them are his efforts to translate a simple poem by Clement Marot.

From his effort, his wife and many friends and acquaintances he published dozens of answers, each correct and each different from the original, all attempting to convey the simple thoughts of Marot.

Translation, the study of kata, and many other things are inter-related, it is up to us to find how.

In closing I leave you Marot’s poem for your own efforts.

A Une Damoyselle Malade

Ma Mignonne
Je vous donne
Le bon jour.
Le sejour
C'est prison :
Guerison
Recouvrez,
Puis ouvrez
Vostre porte,
Et qu'on sorte
Vistement :
Car Clement
Le vous mande.
Va friande
De ta bouche,
Qui se couche
En danger
Pour manger
Confitures :
Si tu dures
Trop malade,
Couleur fade
Tu prendras,
Et perdras
L'embonpoint.
Dieu te doint
Santé bonne
Ma Mignonne.

We are known by our passions........

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...................................

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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 sees sun
sun seeks flower
bee seeks flower
bee flying in sun
bee landing on flower
bee seeking sweet nectar

flower died
bee flew.
sun sets
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

mysts of the past
the void

iamcreatedshivathedestroyerthedeadnighttigermadewholebythemasterofsinanju
iknowfearthatimaynotincreasethewealthofmyhouseevermore

i am shiva i am
shiva i am i am i am
i've been created many times before
need one more not to close the door

there is a story the masters of sinanju require their tribute first

in the end it's all about the benjamins... ......

i was created shiva....
but who is the true destroyer?

written by my fell hand,
in this year with slight summer
new hampshire
where the old man in the mountains went away

the cool air chilling me to the bone

i who wanted to be shiva
victor

Seiunchin Kata - Bushi No Te Isshinryu

Young Lee performing the Bushi No Te Isshinryu Seiunchin Kata.

Isshin and Zanshin

from Trevor Leggett’s “Zen and the Ways”

Page 156

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”

'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.

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

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.

I prefer to point you to the story itself and let you experience “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/Borges_-_Tlon,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius.html

Borges short stories in his book ‘Labrynth’ are always worth reading.