WHAT HAPPENED IN MARCH:

FUND-RAISER FOR St JUDE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL:

I wish to thank the parents and students for your wonderful acts of generosity. This year we raised $2,500! Congratulations to our winners and my heartfelt gratitude to all our generous donors on behalf of St Jude Children’s Hospitals and their patients!

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN APRIL:

OSHIRO SENSEI’S YAMANNI-RYU SEMINAR, APR 5-6: Oshiro sensei will be teaching our Yamanni-ryu students Saturday, April 5, from 10 to 11 a.m. at the dojo, followed by an RBKD Instructors-only session at 1:00 p.m.

The RBKD open seminar will be held Sunday, April 6, at Bloomfield Middle School, Bloomfield, from 10 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

The training fee is $100.

KURASHITA SENSEI’S GASSHUKU, APR 21-27: Kurashita sensei will be back at our dojo for his third annual Goju-ryu gasshuku. The schedule of training will be as follows:

Monday through Wednesday: 10 a.m. - 12 p.m., then 7:30 - 9:15 p.m. Thursday will be Sensei’s day off. Friday, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m., then 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. The training fee is $250.

Cancel all weddings now!

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UNDERSTANDING KARATE AND ITS KATAS

THROUGH OTHER MARTIAL ARTS

by Tran sensei

I am an iconoclast. I like to revisit questions that people think have been answered, dealt with, and classified. I remember Mas Oyama’s book, What is Karate? (Followed by This is Karate, which is a repeat of the same contents) in which he explains nothing, provides no history, but only shows his techniques. So I’ll ask again: “What is karate? What is it for?” Perhaps a more pertinent question should be, “What was it for?” because karate is not a contemporary activity and yet is viewed as such, hence the confusion.

Visual memory conjures up images of Okinawan karate masters lugging nigiri game (Sanchin jars), pounding makiwara, or practicing kata. Why did their forebears do this? Why do they still do this now? What is their reason, their motive? Are they training for a tournament? Hardly. Are they training to protect themselves against an imminent threat–an invasion, perhaps? No, there is no clear and present external danger. Are they turning vigilante because their police is powerless in providing security in their neighborhood? Does lawlessness reign in their city?

To look at karate afresh, re-adjust our perceptive lens, re-assess the function of its katas, and view their bunkai in its proper light, let’s look at other martial arts where backward extrapolation will appear futile if not downright absurd.

For comparison’s purposes, let’s look at Iaido. Iaido is the study of defensive Japanese swordsmanship; it was created in the 15^th century, and is the only native Japanese martial art which relies solely on kata (solo forms. Its kanji means “mold”) for training. All other Japanese martial arts (including “imported” ones such as Doshin So’s Shorin-ji Kempo and Taikiken) use two-man drills to catalogue their techniques and use no kata. (Or, rather, their two-man drills are also called “kata”, albeit with a different kanji, meaning “frame.”)

When you analyze Iaido’s forms where, for instance, the practitioner either intercepts–and cuts down--an assassin or assists a fellow samurai in seppuku (ritual suicide), you cannot possibly think of a contemporary setting. The katas’ bunkai do not lend themselves to imagining a situation where you would be wandering around your neighborhood armed with a katana, expecting to slash a potential mugger. If you did–and I’m sure some have tried–you’d wind up in jail and on the front page of your community newspaper as “ ninja slasher on the loose.”

To analyze Iaido’s techniques, therefore, you must place yourself in a different time, a different place, even a different body: you could not possibly even be an ordinary citizen–as you are now–but a samurai in medieval Japan. The proof of that is the sword you wear; only a samurai would wear a sword and know how to use it. By dint of your status, your attackers could only be bandits, assassins, or enemy samurai. They would conduct their attacks with swords, spears, polearms, or attempt to take your sword. The techniques in your katas show how such attacks were thwarted, teach you equanimity and composure, balance, and body mechanics: in other words, how to be a warrior. We don’t study Iaido as an ordinary citizen who learns swordsmanship; we study Iaido to be a warrior through swordsmanship.

Next, let’s look at Yamanni-ryu bojutsu (art of the staff). Yamanni-ryu was probably started by Todi Sakugawa in 18^th century Okinawa from what he already knew as a warrior and as the King’s bodyguard. There was never the option of bojutsu being remotely a farmer’s method of self-protection, as, unfortunately, many proponents of the weapons arts have been led to believe and perpetuate the misconception. Yamanni-ryu (as all martial arts) is a warrior’s art, not a farmer’s secret creation. It was a secret not because it was practiced underground or because it was illegal but because warriors did not teach ordinary citizens; warriors taught only other warriors. The common citizen had no knowledge of it, therefore it was secret. As a kobujutsu (ancient martial art), it bears the mark of history. There is a technique in Yamanni’s Suuji-no-kon kata where you thrust your staff upwards at a horseman. How many horsemen do we fight against today? There is also a nuki sashi (hand switch) technique where the practitioner slides the bo from hand to hand overhead because that’s what a rider needed to do when he fought on horseback So we see that this art is dated; therefore, it would be quite silly to transpose bojutsu into the present and imagine yourself walking around, armed with a six-foot staff, waiting to defend yourself against eventual muggers, although silly people have asked the question, “But how can you carry a bo with you on the street to defend yourself with?” (Don’t believe there is no such thing as a foolish question.)

Bojutsu places you in a different time, a different place, a different position. Okinawan practitioners of bojutsu were law enforcement officers or warriors; since hard wood was more readily abundant than steel, it was easier to carry a staff than a sword, particularly when dealing with the general populace (such as a riot situation) required using a less deadly weapon than a sword. Therefore, when a warrior grabbed his bo, he meant to travel to a place where he expected to use it, much as a modern-day police officer grabs a firearm to travel to an area where gunfire is likely to occur.

The original misunderstanding of karate by a modern public is prompted by karate’s methodology: it is taught as a physical exercise program. Starting from warm-ups, students practice isolated basics, then move on to katas; to conclude their session, they spar (Kung-fu practitioners actually laugh at this “program.”) How did this come about and how was karate taught originally?

One entered any martial art through its katas, directly. There was no breakdown. To understand an art, you simply dove into its katas and learned it by learning its katas. Katas molded a practitioner into its adherent. True enough, the kanji for “kata” (used in karate) does mean “mold.” In Goju-ryu, Sanchin kata is considered “basic” simply because beginners had to tackle it for a long time prior to studying the kaishu katas; Sanchin molded the entrants into Goju-ryu practitioners, taught them how to move, how to breathe; it taught them how to acquire a “Goju body”. Here, kihon kata does not mean baby stuff, or introductory kata. There was no such thing as introductory material. What happened to this approach? What happened to karate?

In the ‘30s, Itosu Anko introduced karate into the physical education curriculum of Okinawa’s junior high schools. In order to teach children, and groups of them (as opposed to individual adults), katas had to be broken down into simpler, safer, digestible forms (Kusanku was broken up into the five Pinans, and the Fukyu gatas–Gekisai among them-- were born). Component techniques were isolated for preliminary practice, their names created for easy recall and identification, and rhythmic counting established for ease of kata step-by-step teaching. This juvenile system carried over into the modern era and became the pattern for adult “programs.” Only one more thing was added that was totally alien to classical training: sparring, because, after Funakoshi Gichin brought karate to mainland Japan, Japanese university students were only too eager to use it in competition, after the examples of kendo and judo. Sparring was the next step to completing karate’s sport image. Round kicks (mawashi geri), hook kicks, and wheel kicks were invented to accomodate this new activity.

To return to karate’s original meaning, we have to see it as a kobujutsu, an art as ancient as the weapons arts. As proof, there is a technique in Goju-ryu’s Saifa kata where you grab an attacker’s topknot before dispatching him. Who wears a topknot nowadays? In Kururunfa kata, the kuri uke technique is not a simple elbow block, but a movement in which the practitioner trapped the attacker’s grabbing hand inside his kimono’s sleeve. In Shorin-ryu’s Kusanku/sho kata, there is a technique called Sode Gaeshi (“returning the sleeve”) in which you flick back your kimono’s long sleeves. Who wears kimono? Karate was the domain of warriors, not ordinary citizens and certainly not the peasantry. Only warriors (bushi) had the privilege, the inclination, the time, and the duty to study martial arts. Private citizens did not have access to that knowledge unless they were wealthy enough to hire a martial art teacher and have the time to study what they were taught.

Therefore, it is a mistake to view karate’s techniques as simple self-defense, available to ordinary citizens, in any time period. Moreover, modern analysis runs into a major contradiction: if indeed karate concerns self-defense, whom is the ordinary citizen defending him/herself against? If we’re at war, then shouldn’t we let the military deal with the threat? If we’re in peace time, then shouldn’t we let the police deal with lawbreakers? After all, there is a legal system. If we take the law into our own hands, then we become the law breakers (and/or will be sued out of house and home). So then, the self-defense approach is not valid; should we, therefore, initiate fights in barroom brawls in order to “use” self-defense? If the peg doesn’t fit the hole, make the hole fit the peg. Don’t advertisers do the same thing, create a demand for their products? But barroom brawls only serve to satisfy our thirst for violence and the assertion of our machismo. It’s neither self-defense nor martial arts. So the only way modern promoters could find to “use” karate legally was to devise a special circumstance to create an answer to the self-defense conundrum: citizens will attack other citizens inside a ring, in an organized event called a tournament. (But how can it be self-defense if both parties agree to meet and attack one another?) Isn’t it how it’s done in boxing? But then boxing is not self-defense. And what to do with those bothersome katas? Of course we’ll have kata competition; after all, don’t they do that in gymnastics? Judging routines by form, artistic impression, etc.? Karate became a legalized sport where young and old can be champions without the trappings of budo. Champions, but not warriors.

In the Jackie Chan movie, The Big Brawl, Jackie’s character expresses to his father his desire to open a dojo, in contradistinction to his brother, who is a successful doctor. His father asks, sardonically, “And how much will you charge people to defend themselves?” This pointed question hit the nail squarely on its head. So there it is: we don’t teach people to defend themselves. Katas are not meant to be lessons in self-defense. They are records of what the ancients did or knew. By entering the katas, we mimic the ancients and assimilate their knowledge. And if you understand katas to be mudras, mandalas, and sadhana, this applies too. Especially so.

We teach and practice martial arts to propagate an art, a tradition, a way of being, so it wouldn’t be lost or die out because its beauty, importance, and spiritual significance are too dear a human heritage to lose. We gain something invaluable: nobility of character and spirit.

When we train in martial arts, we train as warriors, act as warriors, and think as warriors. The intangible elements at play are the deportment, mind set, elegance, and nobility of the warriors we become. Instead of bringing martial arts down to the mundane level, we must elevate ourselves out of our mundane frame of mind. In Zen and the Ways, Trevor Leggett writes of a Zen master teaching Kyudo (archery) in a remote corner of Japan where his pupils are a greengrocer’s wife and a Cabinet minister. When a journalist asked him why he was wasting his time teaching a greengrocer’s wife instead of moving to the capital to teach more Cabinet ministers, the Zen master replied: “It is not a question of being the greengrocer’s wife or being a Cabinet minister, but of not being a greengrocer’s wife and not being a Cabinet minister. We teach archery here. She has to shoot herself out of being the greengrocer’s wife into the Buddha-nature which she really is, and he has to shoot himself out of being a Cabinet minister into the Buddha-nature which he really is.”

Karate is not about “learning to fight so we don’t have to” (as The Karate Kid’s Mr. Miyagi told us); that would discount the katas. Katas don’t teach how to fight or defend oneself They are neither catalogues of techniques, lesson plans, nor are they rehearsals for eventual confrontations. They are historical records, psycho-physical archives of what has already been accomplished. The bunkai unravels the katas the way a DVD player plays the movie contained in the disk and shows us how the ancients did what they did and also why they didn’t do what was not shown. Omission is just as clear as commission, if not clearer. However, we have to play archeologist and dig and study.

So, in the final analysis, we really study Iaido in order to...practice Iaido. We study Kyudo in order to...practice Kyudo. We study bojutsu in order to...practice bojutsu. And we study karate so we can–right!–practice karate. The being is in the doing. As simple as that.

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WORDS TO LIVE BY:

–“You were born into a state of grace. You cannot “fall out” of grace, nor can it be taken from you.

Man is innately good. His conscious mind must be free, with its own will. Part of this great permissiveness has to do with the fact that man is to realize that he creates his own reality. Free will is a necessity.

You must learn to believe in the goodness of your own being.

We are IN God. We were NEVER externalized. Everything we imagine and know is inside. There is no outside. Being inside God we are literally made of God-stuff and are therefore eternal.”

–Jane Roberts, The Nature of Personal Reality

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RECOMMENDED READING:

WHEN THE IMPOSSIBLE HAPPENS by Stanislav Grof, published by Sounds True, Inc., 2006. Dr. Grof is the founder of transpersonal psychology; in this volume he strings together his own--as well as his patients’–accounts of non-ordinary reality as triggered by either psychedelics, meditation, or intuition. His anecdotes are replete with stories of famous people he knew, such as swami Muktananda, the late great psychic Joan Grant, and the late Helen Schucman (who transcribed A Course in Miracles). He also recounts the difficulties he encountered with otherwise seemingly intelligent scientists, such as the late Carl Sagan.