The long-term warrior, an individual journey in the company of others

The true fruits of practicing martial arts are long term. One has to be in it for the long haul. The life of a martial artist is an arc that can only be discerned from afar, from the perspective that only the passage of time can give. In my last post I touched on my own personal awareness of this process in the last stage of my formal dojo experience in Las Cumbres. My good friend Dan Djurdjevic commented on the bucket v. thimble paradigm of energy that every martial artist confronts as the years pile on. Dan is a true and serious martial artist with a lifetime of continuous commitment to the study and practice of the martial arts who has had to overcome myriad obstacles to remain true to an art to which he owes so much. He is a long-term warrior. Dan’s commitment and arc reminded me of a fellow karateca and senior black belt in the Las Cumbres Dojo: Ángel Santana.

Ángel exemplified all that was good about Goju-Ryu, all that a Goju karateca could achieve through the continuous and profound practice of Goju (which can also be said of the commitment to any serious martial art). When I met him, Ángel had well over 20 years experience as a black belt, more than 30 practicing Goju, as far back as Ochoa when he was a university student. The point here is that this practice of karate was continuous. He never took a sabbatical from the dojo, never strayed from the path. By the time I met him he was no spring chicken. Ángel was not in the dojo per se for class, but he was a hovering presence of “old-school” karate training in the flesh … and spirit. Professional and family commitments did not allow him to go to a formal dojo session every day, and yet he found time to practice every day. This was obvious in the impeccable execution, relentless energy, and unyielding martial spirit he displayed when he did come an hour before class to practice solo. He was one of the founders of the Las Cumbres Dojo and one of the financial supporters of that old wooden structure atop a hardware store in the outskirts of San Juan. The dojo was, in a manner of speaking, his other home.

Ángel defied the passage of time. I remember now sitting sweating on a bench with other black belts watching how he did ten-step pushups with the ease of a teenage Chinese gymnast. He could do more of these heart-wrenching pushups that anyone there, young or old, and did so after practicing katas and doing drills without rest for an hour or so. Many were the times I saw him running past me up the stairs, still dressed from work in shirt and tie, lugging this huge bag where he carried his assortment of gis, kobudo arms, and whatnot. He’d make the fastest transition from street to dojo that I have ever seen and by the time I sauntered out of the dressing room he had already worked up a sweat. His warm up acceleration was astounding, looking as focused as if he had been at it for an hour instead of the 15 minutes since I saw him going up the stairs. Only years of continuous practice can give this level of performance.

Yet Ángel was the exception, not the rule. There were others with as much time and as much commitment, but not at his level. When he did give a class it was with the same kime he brought to everything, and not from the sidelines barking orders, but from the front leading by example. Ángel was an example of what any young person starting karate could and should aspire to be, physically, morally, and spiritually. But does this mean that if one does not reach his level that one should seriously consider leaving karate, or maybe stepping up the level of practice? Is the “way” of Ángel the only way to be a martial artist? Of course not, and Ángel would be the first person to say so. He believed that karate was basically an individual journey in the company of others.

The acute awareness that martial arts tries to teach us is not only the awareness of danger, of the opponent, or even at the moment of engagement, it is also an awareness of self. Of how one fits into the major scheme of things at any given moment of that arc. Mind you, I say arc, not an ascending straight line. Or forget arc, and think spiral.

I was not Ángel as much as I would have wanted to be. It would be foolhardy to believe that the practice of martial arts has one unbending rule of perfection. The practice of the martial arts is also one of learning to eat humble pie. As my other good friend Shinzen Nelson would say, one cannot go against Nature, but only flow with it.

Every breath you take

As one ages, oxygenating the body becomes a prime concern in practicing the martial arts, not only for the obvious health reasons but to regulate the qi that could either flow or bottle up. In other words, growing old could either be a blessing or a curse. Even though I knew about qi, I never thought about it much when I was young because my body would force itself through any quagmire through sheer force.

The Las Cumbres Dojo was witness to the last eight years or so of my formal dojo practice; my passage as a middle-aged black belt raging bravely “against the dying of the light.” Although there were quite a few 40 + practitioners, the dojo, as it always did, catered to the very young at heart … and body. My broken chain of training through the years and the reckless life I led outside the dojo exacted their due. Every session was a coin toss between surviving and a sudden heart attack. I prayed they would skip the warm ups that in traditional Goju are the most grueling. That way I would have a modicum of energy left over for the kumite and bunkai. I never actually attained a plateau of conditioning where I could feel comfortable. Denied the external strength that my youth provided by the bucketful, I had to make do with a thimble of energy that I had to learn to use sparingly and wisely.

I had to learn to breathe and move accordingly with its ebb and flow. I had to put ego aside. It was not easy. As a racing car would square itself behind a lead car, I learned to latch on to whatever energy was around. Usually someone else’s. Qi was an elusive butterfly flitting seductively beyond my grasp no matter what I did or did not do. But ego was my albatross as I succumbed to the fear of losing face and would push myself where my body could no longer go.

In the dojo they drove us hard and my old clunker of a body would have to put back all the spare parts that had fallen off during a practice session, spare parts that I could no longer replace nor retool. Every week I would discover a new ache or sprain, sometime not being able to fully close my fist for days.

Style and technique were the least of my concerns after doing katas 200 times. After an hour of continuous katas you really don’t care if you look good. Just being on your feet after wards is all. Slowly I learned to hold back a bit with the outward kime. In reality, I stopped caring how I looked and started paying attention to how I felt. I gave it up. Didn’t care if I got hit or not. I learned to give up before I started and inch my way up from there, from surrender to survival.

So then Sanchin stopped being a test and became a rest. I took refuge in it to fill up the tank. It became my watering hole. I began doing Sanchin for me instead of the sensei and took the blows in stride.

Karate can either bloom or die in a dojo. Karate almost died for me in that dojo. It was after I left that dojo that I learned karate. There I only learned the katas and how to survive. Maybe that was a necessary step to get where I am today. Sometimes dojos unwittingly foster a boot camp mentality, a survival of the fittest in mind and body. Maybe I question that because I lived it and can now discard it, much like a person that has gone to war can claim then that peace is better.

It’s all Goju to me

After the first few months in Jaime Acosta’s Chi-I-Do dojo in Santurce I began to get a proper perspective about the evolution of my old Ochoa group through the different Goju schools (Toguchi―Kimo―Kayo) which I heretofore was oblivious. I never fully grasped the differences, to the point of not even remembering the different insignias. It was basically, as I’ve said before, a Shoreikan style of Goju marked by Toguchi’s particular syllabus and training format.

I learned that most of the karatecas I knew were now in the Chi-I-Do organization, with the exception of Dionisio Pérez who was still practicing in Kimo Wall’s Kodokan school close by. Yet even most of his students had migrated to Chi-I-Do, primarily in the main Chi-I-Do dojo in Las Cumbres. It was all very confusing. On the floor it was all the same to me, give and take a few kumites, give and take a few katas.

The dojo had an extremely small student body stretching from five to twenty. It was precarious financially; you could neither grow because of the space nor pay the rent to the dance school with so few paying students. It forced the Sensei to give class to children and adults together, which is not always wise. The Sensei took the plunge and moved to yet another dance school recently opened that was closer to my house. I had never been a walking distance from a dojo and it was short-lived. But while we were in Santurce we did receive visitors from Las Cumbres and among them I saw familiar faces from the Ochoa years. The move to the new dance school facilities did not bring along with it the desired hike in registration. It had a lot of space but horrible parking options. We were forced to return to Santurce where I finally got my brown and black belt.

The school became better, tighter, more disciplined, but it was made up of old students that found their way back to the dojo now in their 30’s and 40’s. Young students were scarce. The few that came were forced by parents and these stayed but a short time before they got “bored” and dropped out. The computer game raised generations did not have the patience for traditional karate. Raised in the fast and furious pace and logic of electronic gaming, they had more short term obsessions than discipline. The only two young people, in their late teens, were Pablo, a black belt (whose mother was also a black belt) and Brian who took the black belt with me and my sister Rosa. These two would years later eventually drop out. Pablo, whose mother owned a small supermarket, left for studies and eventually ended up in his mother’s business. It was during this time that I met Ángel Santana, a senior black belt from the Ochoa years that practiced out of Las Cumbres. I hadn’t met him then because he practiced in the University dojo in those years. I realized that if I had remained in karate I would be where he was, although not technically perhaps (he is really good).

Circumstance finally forced Jaime Acosta to merge his small dojo with La Cumbres, which was, for me, way out in the sticks. The first day there Jaime Sensei sat us in a circle with the Las Cumbres instructors and black belts. They looked at us with disdain, amusement, and curiosity. I finally went back into a full-scale dojo with history, a history I had no part of, with its own anecdotes, players, myths, and “secrets.” All of a sudden I felt old; I shivered less with anticipation than with anxiety. I felt out of it before I began.

Hanky Panky in the Dojo

When I started in Goju in the 70’s there was a great influx of females trying out the martial arts. This tapered off in time although women in the dojo were a reality that was here to stay. Dojos are not gyms. There isn’t really all that much time to chat and a dogi is not a leotard. Plus, the martial arts are a learning process requiring concentration and a lot of commitment. There are no juice bars in traditional dojos. Nonetheless, it is a social environment and is not exempt from the realities of the world. In Ochoa, where I began, there was a strict code of respect between the sexes. But that did not mean that eye and mind did not stray. Not all social contact that could arise from the dojo experience can be or should be monitored. But a strict code of dojo ethics should prevail or the inherent trust needed for the learning process can be fractured. As in the military, rank in the dojo brings with it a host of responsibilities and among them is the avoidance of an abuse of rank. This applies in any scenario where there is a hierarchy of authority and power. A sensei cannot control what his or her students do outside the dojo, but he or she sure as hell can inside the dojo.

I was well into my forties in the 90’ when I ran into my first personal case of this. Beforehand, I mostly went to the dojo alone. The third time around I went with a very young wife who looked even younger. The kindest thing you could say was that I could be her uncle. She was offered rides back home, invited privately for “outside-the-dojo” karate seminars, was the victim of very tight hugs in the name of camaraderie, and lingering kisses to the cheek, etc. My wife dealt with it pretty well but it completely shattered all I told her about what it meant to practice karate. In my case, I was by turns incensed, embarrassed, and humiliated. All this took place under the “neutral” eye of the sensei and senior instructors who knew full well that she was my wife and nonetheless allowed it. So, two issues arose, the lack of respect for her and lack of respect for me. I respected my sensei in all points but this. Respect is a fragile thing, most often misunderstood and misapplied. Beforehand I had looked away, not being directly affected kept me from having to make judgments beyond the usual abstract “do-gooder” shit one spews.

Then the dojo received a “long term” visiting black belt from New York. He seemed to be a good guy, very disciplined. The sensei hated his guts. He had basically come to the dojo for kobudo which the sensei refused to teach him. He had come sent by the head honcho of the organization. But he had also come to give me grief. At every chance he would take my wife aside for private before session practice, adjust her dogi and belt, touch her hair, all in front of my nose. Sensei did nothing, other black belts I knew did nothing. Nobody did anything. I was a lowly green belt.

I could go on and tell how it all played out, but this is irrelevant.

Trust is a big part of any martial arts practice, without it there is no growth and learning. You have to trust what you do and who teaches it to you. You have to trust whom you practice with. Trust is based on respect. It has to go in all directions. It has to permeate one’s every move and gesture. Any departure from this leads to either war or humiliation.

My third time around.

Karate, a life

When I began finally working towards my black belt I was well into my ‘40’s. An overdue black belt, they called me. I had two teen age kids in crisis which led to me to take one home, the most vulnerable, the youngest, my innocent bystander son. The eldest had dropped out of school and was into drugs. I was trying to save the other one. Karate was one way of doing it. But does karate ever really save anyone? Yes and no. The one who was with me had no choice, it was the rules of my house and they included karate, along with tutoring, a strict schedule, and a heap of responsibility. The other one attempted karate and was in for awhile until the sensei kicked him out. Does karate really save anyone? Yes and no. The pride I felt in one son and the shame of the other were the crucible I bore in my quest for a black belt. Having met so many people whom I believed karate was a turning point in their lives it was only logical that I assume that it would work for me, for my sons, for that one. On the morning of the day I took my brown belt my eldest son was almost jailed, stripping all joy the event could have had. I had already lost my mother to cancer. My father, once a proud and joyous fortress, was reduced to a senile street bum lost forever to the bottle and the labyrinth of his tortured soul.

In all of this topsy turvy life I led, karate was the only constant. It reflected my life and reflected on my life. Interwoven in my karate were the raw sewage and the epiphanies of my existence. Beneath the sweat the tears. A cold beer resting on my sweaty belly at night’s end. A million kiais shouted in anger, calm, panic and desperation. Sheer bliss.

A life.

Ruminations: Stay in the Box ‘til the Box disappears

Dojos grow old just as people do. Though I practiced in several dojos it was basically the same core of people for over 30 years. Give or take a decade, all the people that have stuck to it 'til black belt have done so for over 25 years. Most "new blood" has come ... and gone. Of course, new people do come and stay, but not in the numbers they used to when I began. I can trace over 20 black belts back to my early years, no other generation of black belts can claim more than 2 or 3.

They say it takes 25 to 30 years to create a sound black belt sensei. Imagine the collective and individual energy involved. The time and effort. Black belts don't sprout on trees, they grow and evolve from the dojo experience. White belts are seeds in the ground that the sensei and the dojo in general water and tend, much like a garden (Miyagi's garden dojo!). Some sprout, some do not. Some grow this way and that. Once or twice a sapling has the traits of a strong tree. It roots sink deeper, its branches expand to loftier heights.

I've talked about the heir apparent, the one the sensei, and the dojo in general, believe to be the one to take over. They are young, skilled, and a wonder to the eye. Yet they leave. The naturally talented karatecas are like thoroughbreds, and like them are moody and hard to control. They abandon the dojo full of promise...that as soon disappears. Talent is sometimes fickle. The ones who persevere are the garden variety workhorses, who do not win the Derby but know their way around the farm. They toil with no apparent praise and the only reward is to awake to another day of hard work.

Karatecas of over 30 years experience are mostly dojo trained and dojo bred. They endlessly do the katas and kumites and bunkais..and one day they end up just doing katas. They may have been in street fights and maybe not, mostly not. They gather, as they have for years, in some sweaty dojo floor and do it all again .. and again ...and again.

Some say this is the Box, the Box you should, as soon as possible (2 years if not sooner) break away from to truly attain that purity of non-purity, that savage essence of the real when karate didn't even have a name for itself ... and just was. A no mumbo jumbo poke in the eye sort of thing. When men were men, and women, well, were women.

But just think of all those who stayed in the Box 'til the Box disappeared ... and were then truly set free. Like the old workhorses put to pasture and sent kicking through the high grass.

Just look ...

Ruminations: Forms, pauses, and continuums

Forms give texture to experience, they formalize it. Life is formless in its essence. Man sees patterns, links, and concocts a form. This is art. As in any art, the martial arts formalizes the experience of its practitioners in forms. To remember. To commemorate. This is kata: a form with pauses and continuum, sometimes imperceptible, sometimes not. Corporal arts like karate traditionally abide by stricter canons, a need for canon is inherent to the art and divergence only begets further canons. Every martial art has its own vocabulary, its own alphabet. Within each, the skeletal form, the origin, is always perceivable within the variations that each practitioner brings.

Any art requires an apprenticeship, a period of observation, copying, learning (beginner, intermediate, advanced). Then, when does one become a martial artist? When is the arc complete? When does one pass from merely fighting to martial combat?

Does combat define the martial arts? Partially. Is winning in combat a validation? Who is to say.