“I don’t train anymore,” the fellow told him, apparently surprised at the suggestion. “I’m a senior instructor. I don’t train anymore. I just teach.”
I tend to be cynical, being accustomed to stories of “10th-degree black belts” not old enough to remember the first Bush administration and of masters too deadly to practice their techniques in the vicinity of mortals. But the notion of anyone reaching a level at which no further training is necessary rendered me speechless.
Gichin Funakoshi (right)
The idea of graduating beyond practice in karate or any of Japan’s budo — including the tea ceremony and flower arranging — is preposterous. Try saying, “I’ve perfected my marriage to such a degree that I no longer need to be married,” without getting laughed out of the conversation.
Building, refining and keeping a marriage strong and healthy is a lifelong process. You don’t graduate from a marriage academy and become free of involvement. No, you must continue working, learning and contributing to the relationship until you or your spouse dies or you end the contract.
Let’s be absolutely clear: You don’t graduate from karate-do. There’s no summit, no peak to reach and say, “I’ve climbed to the top; there’s no place higher for me to go.”
Instead, karate-do is like slowly working your way up a hill. It’s not steep or treacherous, but it’s intimidating if you’ve never climbed before. You approach the top, proud of your accomplishment, only to see three or four larger hills facing you, each of which must be climbed.
When you ascend the first peak, it affords you a view of a half-dozen even higher peaks. The second reveals a vista of other peaks that are more like mountains. Each time you tackle a new climb, you’re rewarded the same way: another landscape with more mountains. Seeing them, you can’t imagine having the time, energy or resources in one lifetime to conquer even a fraction of the peaks you glimpse.
For some, this description seems familiar, even exciting and challenging. That karate-do offers such varied and profound vistas and destinations is a powerful attraction for them. For others, the view from the top of that first little hill is intimidating. Something within them, a tiny voice from the depths of their ego, urges them to turn away from the hills and mountains and proclaim, “I’ve reached the top!” and believe it.
They spend the rest of their lives not conquering new summits but marching around the crest of that first little hill, reliving that accomplishment and pretending that higher elevations don’t exist.
This is the only explanation I can find for people who believe they no longer need training. How else can they sit comfortably and shout instructions to those below while ignoring their own journey? True, they can help others climb to their level, but no higher. Those who have climbed higher and encounter such people realize instantly that they’re deluding themselves and possibly others.
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The great joy and wonderful benefit of following a way like karate is in the process. That’s a big reason it’s called a martial way. It’s a path, not a destination. There are endless destinations along the way, and some of us will reach more of them than others. In the end, what matters is not how many summits we climb but the process of climbing.
Of course, there may be cases in which physical limitations mean a karateka can no longer be active. If one of my karate teachers was confined to a wheelchair or had to walk with a cane, I’d still seek his teaching and guidance.
In his final years, Gichin Funakoshi had to be carried up the stairs to get to the dojo where he taught. I suspect that even then, he was struggling, climbing new peaks in his art that we may never know. That is what is so terribly sad about the attitude of those “senior instructors.” A much older karate teacher once told me, “By the time I got old enough to know how I was supposed to do it, I was too old to do it.”
The notion of embarking on an endless journey — to a place where dimensions and boundaries are impossible to measure — can be daunting. That’s what we sign up for when we begin to follow the path of karate-do. An “instructor” who thinks otherwise will never be my teacher.
Dave Lowry is a freelance writer who’s trained extensively in the Japanese and Okinawan arts. He started writing Black Belt’s Karate Way in 1986.
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Much has been published about how following a martial art will and should pervade other areas of your life. This has led to some silliness, such as believing that just because you strive to approach it with the same intent and feeling, playing a guitar is the same as sparring.
The fact that your balance, improved through karate, allowed you to cross the swift current of a river while swimming last weekend doesn’t mean a weekend playing in the river will improve your karate.
The same notion of transference has been applied to all the traditional do of Japan: budo, shodo (calligraphy), kado (flower arranging) and chado (tea ceremony). While they’re similar at their core, we must be careful not to draw far-fetched conclusions.
Photo by Robert W. Young
There’s a famous story about a master of the tea ceremony who inadvertently insulted a samurai and was challenged to a duel. In desperation, he went to an expert swordsman, who told him, “Make tea for me.” The tea master performed the ritual as if it was his last — which it might have been.
“Approach the duel with the same spirit in which you made that tea,” the swordsman said.
You can guess what happened. The tea master appeared for the duel, calm and composed, filled with the spirit of the tea ceremony, and the samurai lost courage and fled.
It’s a great story that makes a worthy point, but in reality, the tea master would’ve died. Spirit is wonderful, but it can’t replace technical skill. Want to become good at karate? Practice karate.
It’s foolish to believe that a sword expert could pick up a brush and automatically be a competent calligrapher or that an expert in flower arranging could perform a great kata just because their arts share a spirit with karate.
It would be equally ignorant to dismiss the parallels between Japan’s traditional do. Sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective to shed light on what we do.
Sen Soshitsu XIV was the headmaster of the Urasenke style of the tea ceremony. He steered the ryu during the critical years from 1924 to 1964, when Japan emerged as a world power and was subsequently crushed during the second World War, only to be rebuilt into a modem nation.
It was his idea to plant the tea ceremony in Western cultures, where he traveled to present it. Sen Soshitsu was writing about the tea ceremony in the following paragraph, but you can read his words with the martial arts in mind:
“To those aspiring to follow the way of tea, guard against jealousy. Placing yourself at the center of things, envying or tempting others — these are unpardonable. Know your duty and immerse yourself daily in the way of tea, and you will find contentment. The more you look up to others, the clearer your own position in relation to them will be.
“Whenever something bad happens, people try to make themselves look as good as possible. But if we remember the humility of the host in the tearoom, someone who knows the spiritual taste of tea, then this constant craving of power for its own sake will be seen for what it is.
“Know what you know and know what you don’t know, for only then will the limits of your strength become evident. To attain spiritual power, seize the chance when it offers itself; devote yourself to study and practice.
“In life are many who feign knowledge and lead others astray. No action can be more reprehensible. The way is never exclusive. It is open to all to follow, but those who set out upon the path perforce need the way of those who have passed that way before.”
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Did this master offer anything of value to karateka? He did practice the martial arts, namely judo and kendo, back when they were closer to combat than to sports. He was a powerful man, but he never did karate. He practiced the tea ceremony all day long.
He probably couldn’t shatter boards with his tea scoop or use it for self-defense, so one might mistakenly conclude that he couldn’t offer anything worthwhile to the education of a karateka.
Placing yourself at the center of things, being jealous of others, trying to look good when things go wrong — he was addressing these flaws in chadoka, not karateka.
When he advises us to remember the importance of humility and avoid craving power, it was meant to be applied in the tea hut, not the dojo.
Knowing how much you don’t know in order to appreciate and expand the limits of your own strength — surely there isn’t a lesson in those words for the karate student.
And those who fake knowledge and in doing so lead others astray? That’s a problem exclusive to the tea ceremony, surely not something we have to guard against in karate. Right. …
Maybe there are so many lessons to be learned in the dojo that we don’t need to investigate other ways or listen to the words of those who have pursued those ways.
Maybe, though, if we broaden our views on following a way, we’ll see that others who are on different paths might lead us more deeply into and further along our own.
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