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| Charlie Suriano |
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Given the nature of budo training, and the amount of ground one must cover in order to understand the value of its teachings, I am going to make a bit of an obvious statement here and say: it has never been easy. But then, surely, no one has ever thought it should be — right?
In the past, I have often sat quietly and listened to my Japanese, and later on, Okinawan, teachers tell stories of great karate men from long ago. Some of these tales were clearly not true, not based on any factual evidence that could be verified, nor based on genuine eyewitness accounts. Still, like the parables found in religious texts, they illustrated the difficulties faced by those who would undertake such a journey towards a particular understanding. They inspired me, and many others, to try that bit harder, to go that bit extra, and to endure that little bit more discomfort when things turned sour and the internal frustrations of trying to make ground with a concept from another culture became a burden that was seemingly too much to bear. There is no doubt about it: at times I felt like progress was just never going to happen.
Like so many who had gone before and even those who, like me, were discovering the martial arts themselves at that time, when I first made contact with karate training itself, my head was full of the esoteric, the strange and even the mysterious. My initial introduction to karate had been by a popular and familiar route back in the early 1970s, through movies and television. Actually finding someone to learn a martial art from wasn’t a problem at all, as many of my friends were actively engaged in karate. Besides, the Western world was suddenly full of ‘experts’, and though I knew little of the history of karate’s migration around the world back then, I learnt some years later to recognise the familiar stages it, along with many other great human endeavours, had passed through in order to spread around the world and take on global proportions. Though it never registered with me at the time, perhaps the easy availability of instruction and the shear numbers of people who had set themselves up as a ‘sensei’ should have rung warning bells in my head. How could something so special be so common? But like I said, back then there was little room in my mind for anything other than my dreams of what I thought I was getting into.
Rarely does it transpire these days that what we see is what we get, and all too often what we see is, in reality, a mix of what we want to see and what others want to show us. It’s like our brains are somehow hard-wired to believe people are telling us the truth, that they are what they say they are, that they are not only an image of what they represent but a real life honest-to-goodness example of it. The real deal — the truth! But how often is this myth shattered? How often are we left disappointed by those very same people we thought were above the small and petty things others squabble over? How many times do we discover that the people upon whom we bestow an almost God-like status are in fact all too human after all? One has to ask the question: who should carry the burden of responsibility for the pain such discoveries bring — the student, or the teacher?
I wonder sometimes — well, quite often actually — why we humans seem to hold so tightly to the messenger while at the same time disregard their message so quickly. Right now, the horrors of terrorism seem ever-present in our world. No-one thinks there is anything strange when they hear on the TV that Christians are fighting Muslims, or that Jews are fighting Arabs. In this day and age, it all seems so normal. It is certainly commonplace, like it has always happened and is, when all is said and done, just a part of the natural order of things. Few seem able to step back and absorb the actual message delivered by the religions. In every case, followers purport to follow the teachings of someone who was good and decent and honest; someone who was kind and considerate, and looked out for those who were less fortunate; someone who lived the kind of life they preached about, and delivered to the world massages of peace and understanding, of ways to live with dignity and integrity. Today, these same teachers are often quoted in order to justify the disgusting and barbaric acts committed by their so-called ‘followers’. How convenient that people’s gods are able to forgive them their trespasses, for if they couldn’t, hell would be full and heaven empty.
In the past I have made the comparison between religion and the martial arts. Both activities are noble and both carry a message that would, if followed quietly and sincerely by each person involved, need neither policing nor hierarchy. Both point to the development of the individual and their humanity when dealing with others. Both speak of respect and even love. Both address the need for self-control and balanced thinking. And both teach that progress is made by looking inwards, not out, and that worthwhile discoveries will come from the things we learn about ourselves and our humanity. Given that this is so, why, I wonder, is the world still so full of greed? Why do we still measure a person’s importance by the amount of power they wield, or their worth by the number of their possessions? Why do numbers still mean so much? Why is conversion so important to many religious groups today, and why do so many martial arts teachers advertise themselves, instead of their martial art?
It would seem to me that no matter how often we hear the message left to us from the past, many are still not listening. Perhaps they have confused the advice inherited in the teachings of Zen to ‘live in the moment’, with their overriding urge to ‘grab as much as possible while you can’! One of the lessons I have learnt through budo is the idea of musei jinko, which means ‘calling others without using the voice’. In other words, a good person will attract others by their example. Sadly, I think this is one small piece of wisdom that has been lost to many, as they focus their attentions on a long-dead messenger, and lose sight of the message they left behind.
Take a look around for a moment and see how much of martial arts advertising is making more of the person doing the teaching than the martial art itself. Are you being invited to learn a martial art, or train with a celebrity? Or perhaps they want you to just affiliate to a particular group so they can build up their numbers? It’s a funny thing, but if you look closely at the ads making the most of the local ‘sensei’ you tend to see they make a big deal of who they are connected to also. Usually, it’s someone in Japan who — if you are very, very, lucky — you might get to see once or twice a year. Mind you, when you do see him, you’ll probably be standing in a huge hall with two or three hundred others, but at least you will get to see him — right?
One of my teachers told me once that he thought it was easier to train when he was younger. This amazed me, as I had always believed until then that training in the old days was much harder than anything I had experienced. Miyazato Eiichi Sensei was in his 70s when he was telling me this. He had been the student who remained with his teacher the longest. When his teacher died, he was given all the training equipment and asked by his teacher’s family to carry on with the instruction. So he continued to do just that, first in his teacher’s backyard where they had always trained, and two years later in a purpose-built dojo he named the Jundokan, meaning ‘the place next in line’. His teacher was Miyagi Chojun Sensei, the founder of Goju-ryu; a man whose teachings many hundreds of thousands of people around the world today claim to be following. And yet, on 9 October 1953, the day Miyagi Sensei died, he had less than a dozen students training in his backyard dojo, and of those who were training, some were mere children — teenagers.
Miyagi Sensei had spent around 10 months in the islands of Hawaii in the early 1930s, and no more than three or four months in total in Japan, spread out over a number of visits. Other than this, he only ever taught karate seriously in his backyard to people he knew, and privately to the police in their headquarters gymnasium in Naha, Okinawa’s capital. By all accounts he did not like being away from his home or family and saw little value in travelling around the place displaying his karate. Even while he was alive, there were those in Japan who claimed to have been taught his ‘secrets’, and within weeks of his death there were some who even claimed that they alone were his successor. The fact they had nothing in the way of experience to back up their claims did little to dampen the rush to claim something that was never rightly theirs, and yet, with the passage of time such claims have now become established facts in the minds of many.
In contrast to this, Miyazato Sensei continued to teach what he knew to those who wanted to learn. He took over Miyagi sensei’s teaching duties with the police too, and continued to pursue his own parallel paths of karate and judo. In his writings and in all the interviews he gave, he never once claimed to be his teacher’s only successor. In all my many conversations with him, he never told me he was. In fact, no-one I have ever spoken to about this has ever said he made such a claim to them either, and yet, the way he lived his life and his generosity of spirit spoke volumes about the man and his adherence to the example set by his teacher. It was enough to answer any questions one might have. He was, I believe, an example of musei jinko in action.
Though scornful of those who would see him as anything other than a regular human being trying to make sense of life, Miyazato Sensei was, nevertheless, all too aware that students sometimes needed guidance. To this end he fulfilled the role of sensei to many over the years. It was, however, a role he did not seek, nor advertise for, nor did he make a living from it. In fact, the main reason for opening his dojo came from his deeply felt obligation to pass on the kind of training he had received from his teacher. My amazement at his comment — that it was easier for him to train when he was younger — came from his observation that he had less (in life) to distract him. More than once, he told me about the lack of facilities Miyagi Sensei’s dojo had in comparison to the modern buildings many people practise in today. But this, he believed, was countered by the fact that every student had a personal relationship with their sensei, and with little else available in the way of entertainment or leisure activities, those who had a dojo to go to had something of real value in their lives. How many reading this, I wonder, have a personal relationship with their sensei? (Sorry, but being drinking buddies doesn’t count.)
Many who are living and training today, surrounded as we are with every modern gadget and aid to our convenience, still struggle with being able to live life well. So, perhaps Miyazato Sensei had a point after all. Certainly, people living in the first world expect to have the things they want, when they want them. They want 24-hour-a-day shopping, Internet banking, mobile phones and even a machine in their car that speaks to them and tells them how not to get lost. The technology behind all of these things is without question a wonder to behold. But, washing silently over us as it does, we hardly notice that this ever-increasing reliance on technology is quietly robbing us of the arts of conversation and debate, of negotiation and of compromise; some are even losing their capacity to read a map! In our race to make life easier, we are in fact only complicating matters, and as a result, making life even more chaotic.
I believe that the value to be found in training in any of the budo arts is to be found in the simplistic, uncomplicated way we do our practise and how we live our life. Just as the most effective techniques (in my opinion) are the more direct and uncomplicated ones, so I believe it is the simplicity of our thoughts and deeds that lead to a contented existence. In gentleness there is strength and in hardness there is softness, too. In silence there is noise and, if we are prepared to be still for a moment, even amid the turbulence of life we can still find tranquillity. As yin has elements of yang, and yang has some aspects of yin, so too do we need to recognise that the balance of opposites remains perhaps the most profound signpost on the budo path.
Now, if you think keeping things simple is easy, try it! If you think living an uncomplicated life isn’t challenging, try it! I guarantee, you’ll learn more about yourself in one week, than all your trips to the dojo has taught you in the previous year.
The aim of budo has never been about achieving celebrity, or providing a career path to a personal fortune. Yet today these are among the goals many people set themselves and spend their time working hard to achieve. Why is that? What is it they see in the martial arts that people like me do not? Are we even on the same path? Just because we dress alike and use the same words to describe what we do, does this make us all budoka? We need to ask ourselves often where we stand in relation to all this. Perhaps we prefer sitting on the fence, taking a bet each way, remaining non-committal, and all the time confusing our actions with ‘walking the middle path’. But in truth, I think those who live like this know better. But if doubt remains, perhaps a little more time spent being a student rather than a teacher would help clear the mind.
This article has more than the usual amount of unanswered questions, but deliberately so. Assuming that you have stuck with this until now, you will have no doubt found plenty to disagree with. Or, you may have found plenty of things you agree with. Regardless of what you have found and in what proportions you have found them, if indeed you found anything at all in what I’ve written, then please remember that the value of your thoughts are personal. They are the thoughts that lead to the small steps forward we make from time to time along that path we know as budo. They are also thoughts that need to be translated into action if they are to have any value at all.
In the 21st century, according to your personal point of view, it is perhaps tempting to believe that the budo path is either easier or, in some ways, more difficult to walk these days than it was in times past. I personally think it is neither of these. Rather, I believe it is relevant to whoever is making the journey at the time they are making it. We endeavour to make progress by using the abilities we have to overcome the challenges we face. In this regard, everyone who has ever stepped upon the path, regardless of when that was, has taken the same journey. For insufficient time has passed to change us and we are essentially the same kind of human beings we were centuries ago.
No, walking the budo path was no less difficult or demanding for our predecessors than it is for us today. The challenges, I believe, remain the same in spite of their difference in appearance. Our surroundings and expectations may have altered over time, but as with our predecessors, the challenge to improve ourselves as human beings remains the same. And the big question faced by every budoka also remains the same: are we brave enough to accept the challenge?
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