Why train?
My God, how can we not?
NOTES
1 1. Petula Dvorak, “Passengers Watched Killing on Metro Car. Should They Have Intervened?” The Washington Post, July 9, 2015, accessed September 25, 2017, www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-38500002.html?refid=easy_hf.
Introduction: The Martial Is Moral
When scientists looked to record data on the stimulation of a frog, they used a bell to startle it into jumping. They rang the bell, recorded how far the frog jumped, and then cut off one of its appendages. This ringing and snipping continued until the frog was but a stump. And when they rang the bell for what would be the last time, and Stumpy did not jump, their conclusion was this: when all of a frog’s appendages are removed, it loses its hearing.
This story was told to my father in his first year at dental school, and its point is simple: do not disregard the obvious. That’s essentially what this whole book is about: rediscovering and clarifying what is, or rather what should be, self-evident truth. Bear in mind, this is not the stuff we all agree on—nobody really agrees on everything anyway—but rather that which we cannot deny.
Imagine training the chest-compression and breathing techniques of CPR but divorced from their purpose of saving lives. Without their purpose, why learn them? What’s the point of the skill if we’re training ourselves to be incapable of recognizing when it ought to be applied? In fact, without that “ought,” that sense of obligation, what makes it at all necessary?
Some years ago I traveled to the West Coast for training at a weekend event. During one of the segments, I was called to the front to physically defend a fellow who was to be attacked. Now, I was a highly adept martial artist who’d been training since I was a kid, and I’d even lived in Japan for several years, getting my butt kicked by the very best teachers of my art. I was little concerned about defending anybody from anybody because I knew something the attacker did not: I was about to attack the hell out of him.
The moment my protectee was threatened, I leaped into action with more than twenty years of expertise to thwart the assault. I remember feeling pretty satisfied as I loomed over the aggressor, now facedown in the dirt and dust, and twisted him into an airtight submission. I was proud of myself—I’d been called out before a crowd of my peers, so my aim was to impress, and I was pretty sure I had. I remember that moment as well as I remember the next: turning to confirm the safety of my protectee, only I couldn’t find him. He’d been silently nabbed by an unknown second attacker. Cue the laugh track for this fool.
A teacher, mentor, and friend, Jack Hoban, arranged the fiasco. He had nothing against me; he was simply taking advantage of the chance to teach a larger lesson. And I have never forgotten that lesson. It laid bare the one thing no professional ever wants to admit he possesses: a weakness he wasn’t even aware he had. My confidence to serve up skill lacked the one thing truly necessary for right action: clarity of what I ought to do. My job, my role, in that moment was not about attacking an attacker. It was about defending someone, about safeguarding his life. It was about being a protector.
After all my years of training and experience, you might think I should have already known this, that it would be second nature, a given. It was not. And it is not for many other professionals. In that crucial moment, I was convinced I was doing the right thing, but I was wrong. I was confused. And I failed. Instead of being a protector, I behaved like a thug.
No one trains martial arts to get worse at martial arts. No one trains to gain less understanding and ability. Everyone trains to get better, gain comprehension, and enlighten themselves. Even weirdos dressed as Power Rangers who flood the net with claims of secret training from Master Cucamonga believe this through the fog of their own self-importance. In fact, it is this unanimous motivation to gain proficiency that’s translated into the variety of reasons folks train in martial arts. But real proficiency is contingent on a central truth: it must protect and defend a clear sense of obligation. It must know its ought.
In his seminal work, The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate, the founder of modern karate, Gichin Funakoshi, recounts the story of a famous feudal-age sword master. A high-level student of Tsukahara Bokuden with “extraordinary technical skill” passed by a skittish horse, which kicked at him. The student “deftly turned his body to avoid the kick and escaped injury.” Townsfolk were so impressed, they immediately related the story to Bokuden himself, who reportedly said, “I’ve misjudged him,” and promptly expelled the student.
Mystified by his reasoning, folks plotted to force Bokuden to react to the same circumstances. They placed “an exceedingly ill-tempered horse” on a road they knew he used, then secretly waited. When the old man finally came round, they were surprised to see him give the horse a wide berth and pass without incident. Once the townspeople confessed their ruse, the sword master said this: “A person with a mental attitude that allows him to walk carelessly by a horse without considering that it may rear up is a lost cause no matter how much he may study technique. I thought he was a person of better judgment, but I was mistaken.”1
Funakoshi highlights this story to introduce the principle of “mentality over technique,” writing “mentality” as shinjutsu, describing acute mindfulness with ethical connotations. Losing our mentality, or, worse, being willfully ignorant of it, can be life threatening, as it represents a personal duty. Bokuden dismissed his student for the plainest of reasons: he had lost touch with the duties he was obligated to uphold to himself. And if he had failed himself, what use was he to anyone else in need?
This clarity of obligation is by far the most important point of martial undertaking because it places every lesson in context—protecting the self grants the confidence and accountability to protect others. People concoct all kinds of reasons to study the martial way, but track those reasons far enough, and they invariably travel full circle to this originating alpha point because of a shared experience: the martial way was not invented; it was discovered.
Universal instincts from deep within the human condition compelled early adherents toward a shared sense of purpose: to survive human conflict. Thus, at different times, in different places, by different people, in different ways around the world, the martial way was realized and refined into the plurality of means and methods we know today. More than simply traditions of culture or libraries of fighting techniques, they are creeds. Codified systems imbued with values, morals, ethics, and virtues—a code of what we feel, what we think, what we do, and what we aspire to do—all calibrated to a particular end, what I call the protector ethic.
Take this true story of a young man who went to the aid of a young woman—she was being beaten. This fellow tried to thwart the attack by attacking her attacker. But, unbeknownst to our hero, the aggressor’s friends were not far behind, and when they came on their comrade receiving a knuckle sandwich, they served up several of their own. Whatever happened to the girl is anyone’s guess.
