Kung Fu and life
I have been rather introspective lately. At some point I varied again from the path I chose for my life. I found comfort and wisdom in two movies I watched recently. I watched The Forbidden Kingdom a few days ago.
I'll say first that I watched the cartoon version of Journey to the West as a young boy. I was at an age where the monkey king was someone I could relate to in a very direct way. His journey changed me as I watched and I have never forgotten that. This movie is related because its another tale of the Monkey King. it has a lot to teach as well, with many traditional Kung fu principles being exemplified in the movie. The thing that struck me the most was something that was said during the training "Kung Fu is hard work over time to accomplish skill. A painter can have Kung Fu or a butcher who cuts his meat everyday until his skill is such that his blade never touches bone."
I feel that anything you do if you extend yourself into it. If you dedicate yourself with humility. Not seeking to be the best but seeking to do it correctly. If you seek perfection in anything and concern yourself not with how others are doing compared to you but how you are now compared to how you were a moment ago. You are on the path of finding the divine. I have in the past dedicated myself to things in that way and I felt the presence of the divine in what I did. Not every time but those times when I really let go. I used to say that when my hands reacted faster than my mind and my movements weren't planned but instead just happened, then I felt myself touching the face of God.
Its strange now to remember such things. I don't practice at all anymore. I tried teaching but I long ago reached the point of unconscious competence. You throw a punch and I let my body react, I can't teach you that reaction. I never really know what I'm going to do and the more I think about it the less it works. I never trained the right way to tell you the truth. I have two boys now and as they grow up I want them to be strong fighters. I don't know how to teach them that though. Fighting stops being how you move or what you do at a certain point. It becomes a way of thinking and a way of feeling. I was taught to be slow to anger. I was taught to avoid a fight at all costs short of harm to others or unacceptable harm to myself. Unacceptable harm. I've let someone walk away from punching me in the face before. They lost their temper and hit me. As soon as the punch began we both new what would happen. I saw the anger turn into fear as I felt my face go from normal to dead eyed calm. In that moment the fear melted me. I saw myself dodge the slow clumsy punch and systematically harm and injure this person. I saw all the ways I could do harm and one way I could not. I spent too much time on that thinking and all I could do was turn my head enough to let the hit glance off my cheek bone. It hurt but for once in my life I didn't flare up into anger. I felt sad and empty. I looked at him and he looked at me. He just walked away and I let him.
I learned that day that I didn't like hurting people. I learned that being angry didn't make it ok to do it. Over the next year I found that simply understanding the harm I could do to another person and not wanting to do it made fights not happen. I learned that no cruel glare or hateful scowl could stand against the sadness in the eyes of someone who just doesn't want to hurt you. Ironically this was when my fighting hit a new level. I began to understand the real principles of fighting. I realized that fighting fair was a joke. the only kindness you can show someone you turn your hand against is to end things quickly. It is nearly impossible to provoke me. I won't hit you out of anger and I will allow you to save face if it ends things without a fight. On the other hand, I don't know much about knocking you out. I don't know any magical nerve punch to painlessly paralyze you. I only know how to quickly injure you badly enough that you don't want to fight anymore. I only know how fragile people really are and how easily a simple application of pressure can change someone's life forever. I don't know how to teach those things. If I showed you the moves I would use they may not work for you. They may not even be what I would really do in the situation. I enjoy the mental exercise of mock combat. I like to fence and I like practice kenjuitsu with boken but those things are games and they are not combat. I couldn't explain the difference but its there. I'm glad I learned to maim and to kill with my body, because it taught me mercy, kindness and peace. I don't think I can teach my children the way that I learned because they are not me and they may make different choices than I did. The failings of the student are not the masters fault, the magnitude of the repercussions are though.
I wanted so badly to be a Ninja. I wanted to be an assassin. I thought that the techniques I wanted to learn were the ones that ended combat with the least danger to me and the least chance of my opponent raising an alarm. I was a kid who loved Sho Kusugi movies. I practiced the regular stuff in class half heartedly only using it to build strength and coordination. I sat quietly and paid all my attention to the black belt lessons. I played every martial arts movie I had in slow motion till I learned the moves of Jackie Chan, Sho Kusugi and an unknown host of Hong Kong stunt men. I tried these things out during free sparring to learn their application. I did it only when the instructor wasn't paying attention and I only did it in such a way that I was certain I would harm my partner. That doesn't mean I didn't occasionally show off. I would occasionally knock a higher rank partner on their ass if they talked down to me during sparring or if they weren't fighting hard enough for me to learn anything. By the time I was ready to move up from yellow belt I could take anyone up to first dan black and most importantly I had learned the danger of only knowing what you were taught in class. We never studied sweeps. The first time I was in a point match against a 2nd dan Black Belt who had me 2 to 1 and I pulled out "dragon Whips Tail," a kung fu sweep I learned from a Bruce Lee movie(the one where he fights Chuck Norris at he end I think.) It dropped him like a rock. he simply had no idea what to do about it.
You may think I'm telling a story of the "Look how awesome I am" variety, but my real point and what I really learned was that you are only prepared for what you know. This guy had 10 years of study on me and I dropped him with something that was slow and clumsy if truth be told. But since he had no experience of it he didn't react at all. He just watched it come in looking very confused. I always ask myself, "Am I about to look confused and fall down," when entering any situation. When you react instead of thinking you can face unexpected things, if you think to much unexpected things will knock you on your ass. I don't know if I can teach that. I always wonder if I am cheating my kids by not teaching them martial arts myself. Maybe I am, but maybe I'm helping them by not. I really don't know and I doubt its something I could be taught.
I'm remembering who I really am. But in many ways its like trying to hold on to the memory of a dream when you are waking up. Life and all the mundane things pull me away. No time to meditate you have to work. No time to exercise you need to go to the store. All the time though I have a misty recollection of what its like to move in perfect harmony with an opponent. To feel their actions as an ebb and flow of force instead of just seeing them move. But then I have to cook dinner or go to a baseball game. That is why I have to be reminded that programming and going to the store, cooking dinner and taking the kids to the park are also Kung Fu. These things can be done correctly and without ego. In the book of 5 Rings it says "To know one thing is to know all things." To do anything perfectly is to know perfection.
The path is very hard. I have dreamed of it my whole life and I have walked only short percentage of the time. Sometimes I wonder if I even know what it is. I allow myself to be made tired. I keep silent for fear of sounding foolish. I walk quietly not out of humility but out of not wanting to draw attention. I have so long learned to watch others that I never really enter into the interactions with them. I am always just watching what they do, not just doing. This is a hard thing to unlearn. I'm tired and starting to ramble.
If this madman has offended think but this and all is mended.....
I'll say first that I watched the cartoon version of Journey to the West as a young boy. I was at an age where the monkey king was someone I could relate to in a very direct way. His journey changed me as I watched and I have never forgotten that. This movie is related because its another tale of the Monkey King. it has a lot to teach as well, with many traditional Kung fu principles being exemplified in the movie. The thing that struck me the most was something that was said during the training "Kung Fu is hard work over time to accomplish skill. A painter can have Kung Fu or a butcher who cuts his meat everyday until his skill is such that his blade never touches bone."
I feel that anything you do if you extend yourself into it. If you dedicate yourself with humility. Not seeking to be the best but seeking to do it correctly. If you seek perfection in anything and concern yourself not with how others are doing compared to you but how you are now compared to how you were a moment ago. You are on the path of finding the divine. I have in the past dedicated myself to things in that way and I felt the presence of the divine in what I did. Not every time but those times when I really let go. I used to say that when my hands reacted faster than my mind and my movements weren't planned but instead just happened, then I felt myself touching the face of God.
Its strange now to remember such things. I don't practice at all anymore. I tried teaching but I long ago reached the point of unconscious competence. You throw a punch and I let my body react, I can't teach you that reaction. I never really know what I'm going to do and the more I think about it the less it works. I never trained the right way to tell you the truth. I have two boys now and as they grow up I want them to be strong fighters. I don't know how to teach them that though. Fighting stops being how you move or what you do at a certain point. It becomes a way of thinking and a way of feeling. I was taught to be slow to anger. I was taught to avoid a fight at all costs short of harm to others or unacceptable harm to myself. Unacceptable harm. I've let someone walk away from punching me in the face before. They lost their temper and hit me. As soon as the punch began we both new what would happen. I saw the anger turn into fear as I felt my face go from normal to dead eyed calm. In that moment the fear melted me. I saw myself dodge the slow clumsy punch and systematically harm and injure this person. I saw all the ways I could do harm and one way I could not. I spent too much time on that thinking and all I could do was turn my head enough to let the hit glance off my cheek bone. It hurt but for once in my life I didn't flare up into anger. I felt sad and empty. I looked at him and he looked at me. He just walked away and I let him.
I learned that day that I didn't like hurting people. I learned that being angry didn't make it ok to do it. Over the next year I found that simply understanding the harm I could do to another person and not wanting to do it made fights not happen. I learned that no cruel glare or hateful scowl could stand against the sadness in the eyes of someone who just doesn't want to hurt you. Ironically this was when my fighting hit a new level. I began to understand the real principles of fighting. I realized that fighting fair was a joke. the only kindness you can show someone you turn your hand against is to end things quickly. It is nearly impossible to provoke me. I won't hit you out of anger and I will allow you to save face if it ends things without a fight. On the other hand, I don't know much about knocking you out. I don't know any magical nerve punch to painlessly paralyze you. I only know how to quickly injure you badly enough that you don't want to fight anymore. I only know how fragile people really are and how easily a simple application of pressure can change someone's life forever. I don't know how to teach those things. If I showed you the moves I would use they may not work for you. They may not even be what I would really do in the situation. I enjoy the mental exercise of mock combat. I like to fence and I like practice kenjuitsu with boken but those things are games and they are not combat. I couldn't explain the difference but its there. I'm glad I learned to maim and to kill with my body, because it taught me mercy, kindness and peace. I don't think I can teach my children the way that I learned because they are not me and they may make different choices than I did. The failings of the student are not the masters fault, the magnitude of the repercussions are though.
I wanted so badly to be a Ninja. I wanted to be an assassin. I thought that the techniques I wanted to learn were the ones that ended combat with the least danger to me and the least chance of my opponent raising an alarm. I was a kid who loved Sho Kusugi movies. I practiced the regular stuff in class half heartedly only using it to build strength and coordination. I sat quietly and paid all my attention to the black belt lessons. I played every martial arts movie I had in slow motion till I learned the moves of Jackie Chan, Sho Kusugi and an unknown host of Hong Kong stunt men. I tried these things out during free sparring to learn their application. I did it only when the instructor wasn't paying attention and I only did it in such a way that I was certain I would harm my partner. That doesn't mean I didn't occasionally show off. I would occasionally knock a higher rank partner on their ass if they talked down to me during sparring or if they weren't fighting hard enough for me to learn anything. By the time I was ready to move up from yellow belt I could take anyone up to first dan black and most importantly I had learned the danger of only knowing what you were taught in class. We never studied sweeps. The first time I was in a point match against a 2nd dan Black Belt who had me 2 to 1 and I pulled out "dragon Whips Tail," a kung fu sweep I learned from a Bruce Lee movie(the one where he fights Chuck Norris at he end I think.) It dropped him like a rock. he simply had no idea what to do about it.
You may think I'm telling a story of the "Look how awesome I am" variety, but my real point and what I really learned was that you are only prepared for what you know. This guy had 10 years of study on me and I dropped him with something that was slow and clumsy if truth be told. But since he had no experience of it he didn't react at all. He just watched it come in looking very confused. I always ask myself, "Am I about to look confused and fall down," when entering any situation. When you react instead of thinking you can face unexpected things, if you think to much unexpected things will knock you on your ass. I don't know if I can teach that. I always wonder if I am cheating my kids by not teaching them martial arts myself. Maybe I am, but maybe I'm helping them by not. I really don't know and I doubt its something I could be taught.
I'm remembering who I really am. But in many ways its like trying to hold on to the memory of a dream when you are waking up. Life and all the mundane things pull me away. No time to meditate you have to work. No time to exercise you need to go to the store. All the time though I have a misty recollection of what its like to move in perfect harmony with an opponent. To feel their actions as an ebb and flow of force instead of just seeing them move. But then I have to cook dinner or go to a baseball game. That is why I have to be reminded that programming and going to the store, cooking dinner and taking the kids to the park are also Kung Fu. These things can be done correctly and without ego. In the book of 5 Rings it says "To know one thing is to know all things." To do anything perfectly is to know perfection.
The path is very hard. I have dreamed of it my whole life and I have walked only short percentage of the time. Sometimes I wonder if I even know what it is. I allow myself to be made tired. I keep silent for fear of sounding foolish. I walk quietly not out of humility but out of not wanting to draw attention. I have so long learned to watch others that I never really enter into the interactions with them. I am always just watching what they do, not just doing. This is a hard thing to unlearn. I'm tired and starting to ramble.
If this madman has offended think but this and all is mended.....