Like a monkfish out of water…

It is interesting how monks, nuns, and those who take religious vows learn to defend themselves from social harms and ills. And those vows to abstain from drugs, sex, violence, harmful speech and behavior are all the more possible because of a secluded monastic environment. But the monastic environment is not meant just to shelter the religious from the world, but to create a safe environment in which they can build a base of profound mental awareness. The ordained may not necessarily ever stop practicing or living in their ordained community, just as any martial artist (let’s say anyone who follows the fabled-to-exist practices of budo, chivalry, gongfu, etc.) does not stop practicing or teaching at their school despite their adept level of ability. Furthermore, religious monastics and martial artists  are both ideally practicing to ward off negative elements in their surroundings.

Wait, are they both? The martial artist parallel stops short because of the outcomes of these different methods of practice. An honest religious disciple is learning to see troublesome elements in the mind before they arise, and easily avoids these things. A martial artist is usually learning to sense violence before it appears in their surroundings. On the one hand, a good monk is exempt from pernicious social atmospheres which may result in lust, greed, crime, violence, etc. and intuitively learns how gauge these things. A martial artist might not learn to perceive these elements, but is better poised to deal with violent confrontation should it happen (which is almost always due to stupid social conflicts, but let’s say we’re talking about horror-story confrontations with occasional, random, mean-spirited groups of thugs, Clockwork Orange-style, or even complete psychopathic nutcases). Here the combat training — in a “do-or-die” scenario with no other choice but to fight — becomes useful.

But what has always bothered me about a number of fighters and martial artists is a subtly angry disposition. I’ve met people in this line of practice who are virulently aggressive people with dysfunctional social problems. They’re not the majority of the people involved (a lot of the angry violent types end up in questionable lines of work anyway), but martial arts rarely has anything to curb a penchant for anger — except to let the person go berserk on another person. And even if a martial arts practice does succeed in warding off negative elements, does it have to be done through the practice of violence (even if in a controlled environment)?

So I admire this about religious vows: even if the ordained do not keep to such precepts or vows, the idea of giving up anger, greed, lust — this is very impressive and admirable to me. Because a number of people who take these vows succeed in keeping them. I know from experience that during the periods one gives up these things, so many formerly conflicting aspects in one’s environment, social sphere and daily life just float on by without causing any mental disturbance.

But talk is cheap, and here I am hanging out with the angry people.

Dragon’s tears

You know, practicing the martial arts always make me want to cry. I feel like a little kid every time I think about it. Because although the stuff is there to make you stronger or more self-sufficient (supposedly!), the teaching method is so harsh at the end of the day. Sure, maybe we’re all friends, or brothers, or whatever else, but I still feel like the opera kids in the classic modern Chinese film, Farewell My Concubine. The ones who are horribly beaten into submission by their master. But that agony makes them into the most amazing, beautiful performers in existence: true national treasures.

One character sees adults performing an opera and cries: “how many beatings does it take to become a star?” In other words, how much pain does it take, how much suffering must be transformed, in order to become great, appreciated, brilliant or realized? And how many people are destroyed or stray on that path? Too many!

But if something happens to you in a fight, in the world, in martial arts, in anything at all, the underlying conclusion a person has to understand is: it’s your problem. It may not be your fault per se, but you are the one who has to deal with it — alone. And this is where the idea of modern (post-pagan) religion has stepped in, to provide answers for this, to provide practice strategies to deal with the mental agony of it all, or maybe just comfort and a shoulder to cry on.

I suppose if religions or martial arts are actually creating positive habits in our “spirit,” they do so in the way phrased in Buddhism: a person cannot remove physical pain, but a person can remove the mental association or attachment with that pain. When a person is hurt or harmed, the real pain comes from the concept of being harmed, that another person could do such a thing to another. If you actually think about it, it really is a horrible idea. As soon as you empathize with someone being tortured or maimed or killed, it becomes impossible to do it to anyone else.

And yet in some twisted, sick way, in studying fighting we learn to hurt others without thinking really empathizing with their pain. What a disturbing thing. Someone once pointed out to me, there are three lessons in fighting: (1) Being seriously injured; (2) Injuring someone else and (3) you’ll find out!

Show me what is real

Although there is probably nothing outside of the universe itself, the material/physical universe is not the only game in town. I’m not an athiest or Bright/”Naturalist” since I don’t subscribe to a strict materialistic view of existence.

Science is pretty popular as the methodology to explain unknown phenomena. But it’s just an academic method of recording data and experiments. To me, science does not actually prove anything beyond a cold, stale collection of data; science just accumulates data used to expand upon human lines of reasoning. And what is reason but an argument for one’s desires? Human reason generally seeks to influence people.

As some religious proponents have mentioned (contrary to what it looks like, I am not “religious”) if scientific analysis says something is true or factual and I don’t understand the explanation but am simply told to accept it as fact, this is no different from accepting religious gospel I don’t understand. Believing in things on blind faith is pretty useless. The only truth is direct experience. Transmission is a form of direct experience.

The only truth is experience –> transmissions can only be made in person, in the flesh, as experiences –> ultimately, enlightenment is self-realized, not transmitted

Which makes sense. All the great mystics and saints and demons and wizards have pointed out: reality must be realized by oneself. I can only show you the door, you have to open it, blah blah. Like the Buddha’s “Alone in the universe I am exalted” idea, for if one is alone in the universe, how can one’s perceptions rely on anyone else’s interpretation of life? Why are people so afraid to trust their own perceptions of reality?

Austin Spare wrote about how all desires and realizations must be done and achieved through flesh — that flesh is reality. And Musashi talked of how true understanding of martial arts and violence could only be learned through direct experience and transmission. Buddha said don’t believe something just because someone told you it’s true — try it for yourself. It is all the same idea: live in your body, live out your ideas, experiment with deep philosophies in your actual life, not just as thoughtful meditations. When people sit around and make speculations about things they don’t do, when they don’t actually go out and experience those things for themselves, they become worthless people. A person has to throw themselves into their experiences to understand life in any worthwhile capacity.

Tough times @ WS HQ

I am in the midst of battling a 103-degree (Fahrenheit!) fever. I think today was the worst of it, but whoa nelly — that really could’ve been the end of me had I not taken care of it ASAP. If I were a settler on the Oregon Trail™ I would’ve certainly been done for! But it was entirely my fault to begin with, really. I saw it coming from a mile away. My one piece of advice is: remember to always get yer beauty-rest, kiddos!

The funny thing about being really bed-ridden is how it makes you look at your entire life, Ivan Ilyich-style. All the wonderful and terrible moments of one’s life become fully illuminated when one sits for days in isolation, without distractions. It must be pretty tough stuff if you’re a terrible person with demons in the subconscious (in other words, it was pretty tough stuff, ahaha!).

Towards the height of this illness, I found I could only avoid excruciating pain by maintaining a constant breath. Any shortage of breath, any moment where the breath stopped, would send blood pumping to my head. And every time blood would go to my head it felt like I was being stabbed with a knife. But continuous, meditative breathing also made it hard for my temperature to go down, since focused breathing can actually raise one’s body heat.

Anyway, the things I did mentally to get through the torture: (1) aforementioned continuous breathing, (2) objective observation of the pain itself, (3) dwelling mentally in parts of the body which were not in pain, and (4) accessing concentration via cool, icy, “water-element” images.

Plus wet washcloths and all that junk.

And now it’s on to the final round. Tut, tut! Don’t abandon us yet, dear readers! ‘Smoke has plenty of fight in him left!

Do your worst…

In times of moral crisis
the darkest places in hell
are reserved for the neutral
–Ihsahn

A well-known idea espoused since ages past by various individuals is, you’re only as good as you are at your worst. It is particularly relevant to the martial arts, where our skills are likely only going to be tested in the worst of scenarios. And that’s true in general — our survival instincts, the tough decision-making, our moral integrity, that faith (in ourselves) in the face of fear — they’re all tested during absolutely shitty situations when we have no food, no friends, no money, are stressed-out, are tortured, are intoxicated, etc. etc. A personal Sir Gawain and the Green Knight if you will… or Spirited Away… or The Game … or… ah whatever, you get the point. It sucks and 90% of people would seriously compromise their integrity right away.

Thing is, most people in society are fairly upstanding human beings. Because they’re… sorta neutral on issues. After all, it’s hard to make decisions when you’ll be blamed for the outcome, isn’t that right? So most people are fairly friendly and somewhat charitable when times are remotely good. But when times become hard, when the economy suffers (hint hint) and when tough decisions have to be made, it becomes much tougher to be a good person.

A good person though — what is that? It’s a pretty abstract term. I guess I’d say “good people” do not actively scheme or go out of their way to take advantage of others. A good person has chosen not to act unnaturally, not to act without a prior cause to respond to. A good person doesn’t mug someone else because they don’t have the emotional conviction to believe in such a cause. Sorry if my descriptions are pretty vague and generalized (not to mention biased), but that’s how it is.

It’s more reasonable to say we all exist somewhere on a “moral” scale, on a scale of Nietzschean drives. But drives don’t seem morally relevant except in hindsight. For even seemingly good people — don’t they sometimes have to choose to ignore the evils of their state or society in order to feed their families? Are they bad people too? Yes, they probably are. Maybe it’s a bad example, as I never understood the whole family-over-friends thing in the first place (I’m weird like that).

Still, there is no “worst” or “best”. There is only the present moment, young grasshoppa. But I do have to wonder… is it when people are at their worst, or when they’re neutral, that they’re dead?

Neighborhood watch

What makes people turn on their neighbors? Economic hardship, starvation, limited resources. Perhaps it can all be summarized thusly by this quote about treatment of Allied POWs captured by the Japanese when they invaded the Philippines. Some POWs were forced into submarines to be shipped north to prison camps in Eastern Asia. As Ronald H. Spector quotes an eyewitness’ account:

When it was nearly full, guards came down and with whips began beating us farther back into the ship’s hold until it looked as if no more men could get in… Yet, more and more were coming. The ceilings were low, only about five feet high, but we were made to stand…we were crammed so tightly that if a man fainted he could not fall to the floor. He would be packed between them. . . . The men began screaming and fighting. They tore at each other, they fought and pushed. Their screams of terror and their laughter were terrible things. Suddenly, there was more room. The fainting and the dead were sliding down until men littered the floor underneath our feet. We had more room to move in. But under our feet were the bodies of dead men.

-Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan

Soul Brother

“We’ll tear your soul apart.” —Hellraiser

The scariest kind of horror fiction is that stuff that talks about the torment of the soul, of a negative post-human transmigration. In fiction, those elements were always the scariest parts of Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Arthur Machen, E.T.A. Hoffmann, etc. After all, that’s how religions and cults brainwash people — they imbue them with terrifying stories under the guise that they are real.

Oh, not that they’re wrong — hell is real, but everything looks and seems different when observed from far away. We might be in hell right now (we probably are) and just don’t realize it because we don’t have the eyes to see it, or because our perceptions are made up of hellish perceptions. And besides, to someone with an agenda (enlightenment, heaven, freedom, power) anything that obstructs that agenda is bad, dangerous, a hellish manifestation.

Lots of horror stories function under the premise of someone encountering deep underworld elements (occult or social) which they are not prepared to comprehend. This is how our “souls” can be damaged — by attaching to negative influences or encountering tantric forces we do not understand. When fear is too powerful, a person attaches to it and becomes ensnared by horrible things, ideas, whatever.

It’s the same when confronting or fighting somebody: even if your structure and technique is fantastic, if a person’s spirit is far stronger, you become paralyzed and frozen in fear. Nothing works and you succumb to their energy. This is why eliminating fear is such an important step in religious/martial training. As Glenn Morris likes to chant in his charming and entertaining occult/martial arts books, “the stronger spirit wins”.

We’re often told of the conundrum that the final peace or whatever arises of its own accord. You can’t force it, blah blah blah. It’s true, but it also arises as the only alternative to disenchantment with all of these painful things. There is a point where the hells just become boring.

DIY, Soldier!

Life in many urban places is too cloistered, bureaucratic, unimaginative and boring these days. And I would argue that in a lot of industrialized regions, there really isn’t that much violence for the population size. But single acts of violence are so publicized and subject to so much fear-mongering that people become intensely affected by them. The other thing is, the good life becomes boring because it lacks drama. I think people are naturally geared towards creating drama for themselves.

Awhile back a sword ban proposal was introduced in UK Parliament, with the intentions of banning the trade, import, and use of real swords in the region. I can think of no other reason to do this except fear of sword violence or youth violence. What’s weird is that I can’t tell if modern industrialized life is better or worse for the lack of violence in it. I mean, violence is bad, but so much traditional culture has deteriorated as industrialized countries introduce more socialized measures and technologically impressive standards of living. As a result, traditional culture has become pretty expensive to uphold. Modern culture has become almost exclusively technological progress, the third phase of Neil Postman’s technological theory.

In general, nobody really knows how to use swords anymore. Some martial artists, historians, military men and sportsmen do, but that’s about it. Isn’t it strange that anyone would want to ban swords when nobody knows how to use them? Or maybe that’s the typical reactionary fear of things one does not understand? I don’t think of myself as a conservative zealot who wants guns and firepower to protect me from the government or whosits. But it’s a weird situation in some places: weapons only exist illegally, so citizens do not carry weapons, but many criminals do. And in some places, weapons are legal so everyone has weapons. It seems like no matter the legislation, weapons just won’t disappear.

The funny thing is, a lot of pro-gun people, for instance those USA citizens who argue for “the right to bear arms”, argue for a kind of anarchistic, Do-It-Yourself, frontiersman existence. Isn’t that quoted line from the USA Bill of Rights a colonial decree? It is, and the attitude hasn’t changed: people who want to own guns for purposes of deterrence (and other personal reasons) are arguing for a way of life that is libertarian and independent from any external protective organization.

Really, I think violence is just more common in harsher economic circumstances. But what is the best course of legislative action? In some ways, when we rely on the government to protect us, they take one step closer towards being the “Big Brother” of Orwellian legend. I see the danger there, but what if a lot of us can’t adequately defend ourselves? Is it just a cruel predatory world out there?

Ninja Melt

I’m not one for traditional aerobic activity. I don’t jog or go to the gym or road bike or fight bulls. I certainly have done those things, but in my experience they seem like a lot more trouble than they’re worth. Plus, I cannot stand to get all sweaty and hot in front of a bunch of staring strangers and their smog-inducing cars (apparently I’m OCD/Social Anxiety-prone, hee hee!). Gross!

No, for me rolling is the sweetest exercise ever. I feel like I’m 7 years old all over again, every time. It’s so much fun! The thing is, you have to be careful when you roll. I actually used to intuitively tumble as a kid, but I picked up a wide variety and knowledge of rolls from throwing down with Bujinkan classes over the years. Some of those guys (along with maybe Systema) teach a crazy variety of rolls. Much more than in Aikido or Judo, where a lot of people get exposed to the idea. I’m actually surprised Dave at Formosa Neijia hasn’t talked much about rolling or roll-conditioning, considering he’s a true chameleon and full-time blogster on “soft” martial arts.

Rolling functions as an aerobic exercise that builds up the muscles on the back. Oh, sure, if you do it incorrectly or when you’re tense you will shred your back but that’s part of the fun, amiright? Point is, if I just work on rolls and (my half-assed attempts at) handsprings for a half-hour every day, I become incredibly powerful. Although! I should point out that I pre-empt and finish each practice session with some serious zhan-zhuan or zazen-type muscle relaxation meditation activity. Rolling incorrectly a few times can tense up your back pretty good.

If you already do Bujinkan/Systema/Aikido/Hapkido or whatever else curriculum that incorporates this rolling stuff, my advice is not that special. But, since nobody reads this blog anyway, what do I care?

Some precautions:

• Do not drop onto your shoulder as you roll! Just as you smoothly transition between steps in Taiji or any martial art, the weight transition from the feet to the shoulder and then the back is like slowly pouring water into a glass. If you drop on the wrong part of your shoulder, such as where the collar bone connects to the shoulder, you could do some serious damage or pain to yourself.

• Relax throughout the roll! The more worried about the roll, the more you will tense up. Even a little tension at the beginning of the roll will build up and create giant gaps in movement by the end of the roll.

• Work on them slowly! Learn to do them with little momentum or slowly. Learn to feel your way through the roll, as though the muscles on your back were tire treads.

• Never pre-meditate a roll or act when excited. Just practice rolls slowly until they are a natural part of your movement.

• Don’t finish on your knee and don’t push with your head. If you practice on concrete this can really mess you up! Don’t do that until you’ve mastered this.

• Practice on concrete or a hard surface once you’re getting good. This will let you see where you are too stiff or where you are relying on your hands/knees. It will also strengthen your back and smooth out your technique.

• Go back and break down the fundamental basics and watch them as you go through a roll slowly. I.e. make sure it’s always going shoulder-to-opposite-hip and that you aren’t placing impact on any portion of your shoulder blade.

People make fun of the Bujinkan sometimes because there’s so much cheesy ninja romanticism that goes along with it. Fair enough — there are many guys (including teachers) who have simply spent too much time playing Tenchu: Stealth Assassins and Ninja Gaiden. But a lot of practices in martial arts are mistakenly discarded because they take too long to implement into one’s natural movement. Rolls are sometimes thought of this way. But with rolls, if they’re practiced every day for a couple of years, they become one’s natural movement. This means: no more fear of falling on pavement, the ability to jump from greater heights by channeling the momentum into a ground roll, and the ability to leap out of the way of gunfire while saving hot babes (this is the Roger Hamburger technique).

There are some truly legitimate videos of the Bujinkan Shihan demonstrating basic techniques that have finally weaseled their way onto the internet. Also, there are some Kadochnikov Systema examples that are slick: the dude just melts into the ground!

Give or Take

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Nothing really tows the line. What kind of punishment is appropriate for a crime? Any punishment is too strict or too lenient. This is always the predicament. What punishment is appropriate? Sure someone may reap the metaphysical or mental results of what they sow, but society’s laws aim to keep order within society and distribute justice, or deserving punishment.

Of course, things do not come close to one-hundred percent successfully functioning in this way. The flow of the universe is too chaotic or perhaps, too relaxed, for humanity attain the rigidly pure goals of its imagination, at least in any tangible physical reality. Society generally awards lenient punishments to those with desirable resources (usually money) and harsher punishments to those without lucrative gifts. Money tends to usurp the place of talent or wisdom as the apple of society’s short-term eye. Some may speak otherwise, but what good is a talent or wisdom in the short term? When one needs food now or in crisis, potential and artistic integrity are not very relevant. Martial arts however, are always relevant, no matter how advanced our society becomes.

I wonder a lot whether continually learning martial arts isn’t totally crazy, whether it isn’t like some hell-bent black magick quest that destroys a person’s humanity. ‘Coz like, if we’re so afraid of being harmed by the world, isn’t learning to horribly maim others just another way of being manipulated by the world and joining its ranks of perpetrators? I guess I’ll let everyone know how it turns out! *wink*

Ah, but I have no regrets. I’m much better off now than I ever was. I said before, I wanted to learn martial arts because I hate violence. But you probably noticed: unless one is a completely trashy, unsophisticated being who lucked out on a vacant spot in a human womb, or a total nutjob psycho, he/she doesn’t like seeing or experiencing violence. No, like a lot of people, not only did I hate violence, but I used to really fear violence. To the point where it made me depressed and socially anxious.

I started out by getting into Buddhism and meditation and all that stuff and it didn’t help me with that fear. Because I was really trying to walk away from it. Not that those approaches won’t work (and they did to some degree), but it’s more a matter of how your teacher can affect you. Even today, I absolutely hate and fear hurting other people, even when I actually have to do it. But I’ve learned how to let it melt away when it’s necessary. Hurting others, watching others be hurt, or hurt themselves — it’s so humiliating and horrifying. There’s no pleasure or virtue to be found there. I think I hate it all so much it makes me pursue the things I’m deathly afraid of. That’s why I play this game. Or so I tell myself.

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