“It has taken me forty years to reach this level. I was much too hotheaded in my youth to master swordsmanship.”
~ Tesshu
I lost my temper in the dojo a while back.
It doesn’t happen often, but it has happened enough to show me that, after all these years of training, I’m still human. Yep. Still just a man, even though my students sometimes see me as having embarrassingly super physical and metaphysical powers. Black belt in karate, green belt at life.
What set me off?
Just a new student black belt continually trying to go full contact with me while I was cruising in ‘teaching mode’ and trying to get a point across, not fight. He was too busy trying to be more impressive than in absorbing the lesson. His cup was too full. Normally, that would simply require a word of advice, but last night I went off. I certainly was embarrassed to lose control of my emotions, but primarily it let me know I still have a long way to go to get where I want to be.
What really disappointed me was that I missed a wonderful teaching opportunity by overreacting. Yogi Bhajan, the Master of Kundalini Yoga, said many times “Act, don’t react.” Sounds so simple, yet it is a very difficult concept to master. And you cannot master it if you’re not regularly put into the pressure cooker.
But isn’t that a type of mastery we train for every day in the martial arts? If our emotions get the better of us, we revert to the reptilian brain in which we attack without thinking. Some of us may not consider that a bad thing since the reptilian brain is all about survival, but the truth of the matter is that self-defense, and all interpersonal relations for that matter, are mental games. When we lose our composure, we are no longer thinking rationally, and that can get us in trouble. We martial artists don’t need to add to the madness, for there are already far too many reptilian responses in society today.
Sensei Teruo Chinen, our late head instructor of Jundokan International Goju-Ryu, used to tell us repeatedly “Don’t lose your mind,” while at the same time, going to great lengths to stress us into doing just that. He called it ‘police academy training’. What he meant was that in the line of duty, people were going to verbally abuse you, spit on you, be uncooperative. Push your buttons and test your limits. It comes with the territory. You will be operating under great stress and duress, so Sensei would try to keep us off-balance in the proverbial pressure cooker every time we trained. He was conditioning us to keep our cool.
So, what do we do with uncooperative or abusive people? Shoot them? Of course not.
The job requires that you maintain your composure while everyone around you is losing theirs. So does life. You cannot maintain composure unless you train for it. Chinen Sensei never missed the opportunity to try and make you lose your mind. His point was: it is better to lose it in the dojo as many times as necessary than to lose it in the street, the office, or in your family situations. Not reacting is difficult because we’re hard-wired to react; but over time maintaining our composure and focus within the midst of chaos and distraction becomes easier because we train for it.
Fujiwara Sensei and Saito Sensei in the old Omigari Budokan.
In combat, the mind is every bit as powerful as our fists and feet. In interpersonal relations, a word thrown out in anger is an arrow shot at the world that cannot be retrieved, just as a punch thrown in anger cannot be returned.
“It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more.”
~ Saadi Shirazi
To lose the mind in combat is to allow tunnel vision to prevail. First, we miss the opportunity to de-escalate a dangerous situation. Second, once a situation escalates to physical confrontation, the ability to prevail requires not only absolute skill and resolute willpower, but also the presence of mind to out-maneuver an opponent mentally. We cannot do this in a blind rage.
Blind. How appropriate. And so true.
I blinded myself that night by losing my mind, and I missed that opportunity to teach through example. That’s what being a Sensei is all about. This is a humbling art, and every time I think I’m getting it, another of those experiences lets me know that I’m still a pilgrim on the path…and that I need to continue to chop wood and carry water.