Black Belt Essay
Marcus Elmore
April 29, 2013

I encountered ninja a while later, through the James Bond
film You Only Live Twice and then in
the pages of Oscar Ratti’s Secrets of the
Samurai: A Survey of the Martial Arts of Feudal Japan (which I checked out
of the Boulder Public Library so many times my father finally bought me my own
copy). Ninja may not have seemed to me
at the time to share Shaolin monk Kwai-Chang Caine’s spiritual dimension,
though they undoubted had much cooler gadgets.
But nevertheless, in some important ways, the stage was set for me by
the time I was 12. And yet – it took
another three decades, and becoming a parent, and a whole bunch of moderately
crappy experiences for me to take the first steps on the path. I have devoted enough time to contemplating
why this was so that I am able to say with great confidence that I’ll never
understand in any significant way the process that led to that first step. But I took it. And now, going on five years later, I have
the opportunity to reflect on what it means, even if I can’t say why I have
traveled as far as I have.
Pema Chödrön suggests that,
the next time you encounter fear,
consider yourself lucky…. The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even
when we find out that something is not what we thought. That’s what we’re going
to discover again and again. Nothing is what we thought. I can say that with
great confidence. Emptiness is not what we thought. Neither is mindfulness or
fear. Compassion - not what we thought. Love. Buddha nature. Courage. These are
code words for things we don’t know in our minds, but any of us could
experience them. These are words that point to what life really is when we let
things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present moment.
I had no idea how afraid I was until I started training in
To-Shin Do. I think I may have been
vaguely aware that I lived with an enormous distaste for conflict, and was
willing to go to about any length to avoid it.
It took hundreds of hours of mat time, and at least as much time musing
on my reactions, for me to understand that almost everything I’d done in my
life had been to avoid situations of conflict: personal, emotional,
physical. And so it was a shock to me to
discover how right Pema Chödrön was: all of those hours on the mat, learning to
deal with the biomechanics of physical conflict began to coalesce, and I
discovered that conflict and antagonism were not what I thought. Nor was courage. And it is still humbling to contemplate that
there did not seem to be any way for me, personally, to come to that
realization except for all those hours of being in my body, in that particular
place, working on my kamae. And that it
was never anything I could have done on my own.
Reflection has clarified that matter for me: the extent to
which the value I find in my training comes from community. Certainly, for me, as an essentially
introverted person, it initially appeared as a sense of being accepted and included
by others in a mutually pleasurable activity.
In this sense, I suppose it was probably no different than the
experience of joining any group organized around a hobby or recreation, and
what I got from it could have easily been found elsewhere. Over time this experience shifted and became
more nuanced. Again, some of this would
probably have been the same in any group: as I put in time, developed
individual relationships with my teachers and fellow students, the feeling of
belonging to something larger than my own pleasure or interest increased. There are aspects of this dynamic, however,
which I do not believe could be found elsewhere, or at least only in a minority
of other contexts. One is the degree to
which what we do is founded of necessity on trust: trusting our teachers and
their skill at conveying authentic teachings; trust in the teachings, and the
techniques in which they are embodied; trust in our fellow students to provide
us with opportunities to learn correctly and to keep us safe while we train;
and finally, trust in our own ability to learn and improve. I have not experienced this in any other
community of which I’ve been a part, at least since childhood and probably not
ever.
Another aspect of community that has
helped keep me on the path to my black belt is that my own learning has
necessarily involved helping others to learn.
The mutuality of learning was not immediately apparent to me. As someone with an academic background and
more than a decade’s worth of experience teaching in a classroom, I found
myself slipping into one of two positions: either the supplicant student,
telegraphing to my teacher and fellow students my eagerness to learn, or (as I
gained experience and confidence in my technique) the knowing mentor. I have to admit that in my moments of
awareness, both of these attitudes made me cringe. It took a long, long time for me to come to
understand that my willingness to learn didn’t make me better than others,
though it helped me improve my techniques, and that I could help others without
becoming a know-it-all in the process.
And I also learned (and this, in my estimation, is crucial) that others
could help me learn, regardless of what colored belt they wore, and that helping
others played a huge part in improving my own technique. I also discovered that the more I made myself
available to those I trained with, by encouraging them and revealing the areas
in which I had the most work to do, the more I felt a part of a community.
In Kung Fu,
Caine’s wanderings through the 19th century American frontier bring
him face to face with conflict again and again.
When conflict rises to violence, he uses his wu shu techniques as he was
taught by his masters: “Avoid rather
than check; check rather than block; block rather than strike; strike rather
than hurt; hurt rather than maim; maim rather than kill—for all life is
precious, and none can be replaced.” But
what I sensed only dimly as a child is a deeper and more important consequence
of that ability: he comes to conflict calmly, neither denying that it exists
nor doing anything in his power to avoid it.
And that equanimity in the face of conflict was often enough (even given
that the TV show format demanded x-number of exciting fight scenes per episode
to keep viewers like me returning each week) to resolve the conflict. I wish I had understood earlier in my life
that the ability to fight was less important than the ability to calmly face
and accept whatever arose. But I am
certain that I could not have understood that without my training: that the
only way to get there was to travel this path.
Domo arigato, Aitoshi.
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If you would like to see Marcus test for his Black Belt, join us on June 7 at 7:45pm. Everyone is invited to watch the test and there is no charge.
Marcus's test is part of a weekend Copper Dagger event. Are you registered?
****************
If you would like to see Marcus test for his Black Belt, join us on June 7 at 7:45pm. Everyone is invited to watch the test and there is no charge.
Marcus's test is part of a weekend Copper Dagger event. Are you registered?
2 comments:
That was wonderful Marcus!
It is a bewildering, humbling and enlightening experience to face oneself honestly and you give voice to to that process beautifully...
Wow, Marcus! Beautifully written and told. Thanks for sharing the story of your journey. We'll be there on June 7.
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