I Like Sensei When He's Angry

The other night at class Sensei came in and looked pretty normal to me. He gave a short greeting, got changed, and started stretching. On Saturday nights our aikido group shares a already too-small dojo space with a karate class. Over the past three years, that class has been pretty small. They have their own world of budo, we have ours. I don't usually have problems with good karate, but most of the stuff the teacher does with this particular group usually makes me grimace or laugh. I pity his older students who diligently follow his instructions into dangerous techniques, ones that will get them pummelled by stronger opponents in a real altercation. But anyway, that's none of my business. What pissed Sensei off that night was the abundance of toddlers who seem to have joined his class. For a warm up, this karate teacher was having the children get into uncomfortable positions and hold them for durations of 10 seconds. For example, maintaining a push-up position with their hands as fists. This isn't even the problem. The problem was, the teacher counted each second with a loud kiai followed by the students screaming counting from one to ten.

"Ai!"

"Ichi!"

"Ai!"

"Ni!"

...

Sensei looked up from his stretching position with a look of utter disbelief. The second in rank in our class did the same, a few others looked up with a little less disgust, and I kind of just looked on with a more matter of fact reaction. I'm a kids teacher after all; such screaming is a kind of everday occurence for me.

We are all adults in aikido with day jobs where we put up with a certain level of things we don't want to. When we come to aikido, it's because we like it. Screaming children changes the atmosphere more towards the "not-liking" section. "I didn't sign up for this." is probably what a lot of people in the room were thinking. But the kids were happy screaming as loud as they could, and the karate sensei seemed impressed that he had all the students happily doing what he told them to do, and who's to blame him, if I had that in my classrooms I'd be happy too, minus the irritating sounds: OK I guess I wouldn't want screaming kids no matter what. Sometimes when I teach English and have the kids repeat after me they think it's funny to scream the English as loud as possible ... not a big fan.

This infuriated Sensei a bit beyond his normal levels. He showed and explained techniques to us in a raised voice to be heard over the nieghboring chaos, which irritated him more. This isn't the first time our class has endured background children screaming noise. Two days a week we are in a much larger gym which we share with a children's karate group on one day and a children's kendo group on the other. Can you guess where our problem is? It's with the kendo. Sensei got so tired of trying to talk over the screaming little demons, training has changed locations on that day. If you ever really wanted to know what screaming goblins sounds like, I recommend you visit a children's kendo class.

Anyway, when Sensei gets frustrated like this he gets very impatient. Wazas are practiced at a much faster pace, but that's the part that I like. I start pacing when people take too long in front of me, so this for me is just go-go-go and that's good. Another part is that he usually won't give anything with uke; which means if you're not doing the technique right, he won't just go through it with you. He'll make you do it right. Usually he focuses on one aspect and tells us to do it. The interesting part is that often the people he tells don't understand what he's saying. Given it's usually easier to see this stuff from the outside, but I couldn't believe a few of the other students that night. Sensei will give them instructions on what to do, show it on them, show it on someone else, give another example, but a couple people were just not getting it. Finally when someone does something right he gets really happy.

Frustration and budo, so much could be said about this relationship. We all react to negativity in different ways, or not just negativity ... what's the right word? In Japanese I call it "iya", いや。　"Iya" is when there's something you don't like or don't want to do. This is frustration. How we deal with iya more and more seems to me to be each of our defining characteristic. When I am confronted with iya I usually react with frustration and activity. The sad thing is how I often deal with this is ingesting things like coffee, food, or alcohol, depending on the time of the day. Zen says to sit with it, but for me the easiest and best way is to practice budo, particularly aikido. I often go to aikido frustrated and it fixes it. Often times I go to aikido happy and come out frustrated, which is weird but OK because I'll go back to aikido and it will probably fix itself. A big part of this is that aikido takes so much of my physical energy, I'm often too tired to be frustrated. With kyudo, it's different, but also very good at dispelling frustrating. You don't exert so much physical energy in movement, but the concentration required takes up all the space in your attention and you just don't have the time to be frustrated. Then when it's over, you're usually OK.

But what about the bigger iya, those bigger issues we plant in our head that aren't quelled so easily?
For the problems that don't go away, and always seem to come back, your budo practice needs to be just as consistent if not more. Everyday put the budo in and it will be stronger than the iya just by its time alone. Or maybe not. That could be bullshit. If we have real problems what needs to be done is dealing with those specific problems. Maybe there are stronger problems than budo can help. I don't know. This post could go on forever.

More to come on budo vs. iya. My life depends on it.

the "Art" in "Martial Arts": Part One of Many

 

I think in images. They are followed by feelings. This is largely how I make decisions in my life.

As a young boy, I was a drawer. Of all the childhood activities that were scattered through my time, it was putting a pencil to blank white paper where I practiced with the most enthusiasm. I remember it well: the complete freedom of a blank page, that one simple instrument. I didn't erase much. If I did, the previous line would be replaced by a better one, and I would move on. I would draw a picture for maybe thirty minutes to an hour, then put it somewhere never to be seen or thought of again.

 

I don't draw anymore. Since then I've attempted several returns to that age, but they just don't work. So, I don't try it often. The great change came with puberty. A maturation of muscles and development of desire in a social world ushered in an age of physical activity: namely organized sports and skateboarding. A creature of activity, satiated only by physical motion. But not just physical motion itself, physical motion with a goal. I'll get back to that in a second.

I am still like that, I think. My life is largely determined by physical motion. The difference is that it started in organized team sports and has evolved into practicing Japanese martial arts; namely aikido and kyudo. (One interesting constant though has been board sports, skateboarding when I was in middle and high school, and snowboarding now in Japan). I said "Japanese martial arts", because it's a very specific practice within the umbrella of "martial arts" as a whole: its differences greatly affect my experience of martial arts. One of the most intelligible differences can be found in the suffix "dou" (karate-do, aiki-do, kyu-do, etc). But that is a topic worthy of another post to come. What is relevant to this discussion is the image of Japanese martial arts, and the feelings produced from those images and its practice. I express my tendency to images by being interested in the image of Japanese martial arts, and by most of all being the image by participating. By participating in the art, I am using my physical body in motion, and the combination of my imagination working with the images and my body with the physical world, a certain feeling arises and exists. Kind of like the kokyu that arises from correct form in aikido, or a clean hanare (release) built from proper form in kyudo. Everything together is the picture of art that I make, each segment playing its respective part, yet totally inseperable from each other as the whole. This is my art. I practice for a couple hours at a time, consciously making corrections by the guidance of my peers, and forget the experience after I'm finished.

 

So there's my current practice of martial arts which I consider to be a legitimate medium of creativity. There's the little boy who used to love drawing pictures. There's sitting zazen. These are like islands of definite something rising above nebulous mists. I don't often try to draw anymore because I just don't know what to do. I sit there for an extended period of time, draw a few lines I'm disgusted with, erase, try again, and give up. I have such a strong desire to "create", but it doesn't come through. When I was a boy, I had a strong image my hand just seemed to create with purpose. Now all of those pieces are hopelessely disparate. I like writing. Actually I love writing on this blog. I always carry a pen and paper with my and on average scribble about 2 to 10 pages a day of varying levels of nonsense. Sometimes I write uncontrollably. Sometimes only a few words a day. This tendency is very important, but its focus also belongs in another post. What's important is that sometimes I want to write something poetic. Then ... blank whiteness. I'll have some kind of image, and the intense desire to create something of worth in writing, but all else is lost. I'm sure other writers must find this strange desert in the imagination as well. On the contrary, writing on this blog is where I feel best, and within all of my range of blogs, it is the ones of very specific detail that I am most fond of. Usually either communicating specific realizations found from training sessions in aikido or long stories of bike rides in the mountains. (Funny thing is that I haven't done that much in the last year) What is the difference between my desire to write poetry and the documentation of my blog?

Purpose.

My personal expression of art needs this kind of purpose. If any of my writing could be called art, or skilled in a kind of art, that is other than just relaying facts, it is not of conscious design but merely an effect of the overall mission to write. If there is beauty or art in my movement of martial arts, it is not for that purpose, but merely an effect of that specific technique. This truth is not built by thought, but an effect from my life. This is very important, and it finds its way snaking deep down in the depths towards some kind of core from which the roots of other arts blossom.

 

The other day I visited an ikebana (the art of flower arranging) exhibition and was absolutley blown away. First of all it was just beauiful; and there were so many different kinds. This is a kind of art that is designed for beauty. It's different from my arts. But it is all art. I don't know ...

I don't really know what it is like to create art for the sake of beauty; I wonder how much I can relate to painters or practitioners of ikebana. I think of music as well, an art designed for creating sounds. That is very different as well. That is very interesting to me. That is all.

The "art" in martial "arts"; it's real.

How Do You Commit To Your Art?

Well, a lot of kyudo people do this by paying lots of cash for gear. Like me!

So much to say.

So little time.

I got an off-shade of red because they looked the coolest and they reminded me of the red hair that demons have in Japanese stories. Also it's probably the least likely color I would usually pick ... a kind of way of consciously courting the unknown. It can only end up well.

There's Fungus on my Tree

 

I'm on the quest for the Holy Grail, but no one really cares about that goal. As if one day I'll finally have it, but no one will care.

But as a matter of fact, there's a lot of different holy grails I'm after, more than there's time for. The one I really love. The one I really want. The one that others want. The one that I already have ... etc.

I want to go home, but when I do it's over, and so am I. This is "life", and it's so fragile; that which I can see at least. But in the end it doesn't really matter, right? All those dreams of perfection: clouds around the mountain.

My way of living is a struggle over mountains, broken by periods of waiting in the valley. Is it the only way? If life really is about "the Path", then the definitions really don't matter. Why is it that I care so much? Why am I constantly reminded by blissful experiences that my efforts are so small?

Questions. Memories. You can't remember the experience of perfection. I think about aikido, and sometimes its good or bad. When I practice again I experience and remember that feeling of happiness ... and it's not the same thing as what I remembered in isolation. If life is just to be lived, why all of these thoughts? Emotions.

There was once a time that I believe I was sufficiently content. But I know more now than I did back then. It seems simple now looking back. I want to go back, but I can't, because I'm here and need to move forward. But there is some kind of return that I feel is necessary. I want everything from back then, but I want it with all the stuff I have now. It's too much. Now I'm faced with a puzzle: I need to make less with the too-much I have now. It's like a magic disappearing act.

The beauty of Japan is limited and asymmetric. There are minimal ingredients, and they aren't "perfect". It's in this limited and assymetric world that we paint a picture; one in which we live. By making the most of those ingredients available to us, and leaving space for the perfect to form in an abstract image, or emotion, we find some kind of sufficient contentment. If there is a perfect symmetric world that really exists, I don't see it. I read about it, and think about it, but I don't see it.

In this forest, I will pick the pieces for my picture. A few modest entities that won't be so much too fill one's whole view. Just enough objects to tempt further dreams, but give sufficient work to tire my efforts. So at the end of the day I can look at my forest garden content, but excited for tomorrow's work.

A green background. Carefully placed blots of grey. A slice of flowing blue. And one red flame.

A beer, and a moment of hazy elated calm before falling off to sleep. Tomorrow will come after a full-night's rest. I can do this.

Relaxation, Tension, Chaos, Me

 

Aikido, relaxation upon the form of the spine and situation

Kyudo, tension built to explode

the World, myriad chaos manifestations

Me, a malleable entity instantaneously constructing form around all else

 

Islands we see. There's still the ocean connecting it all ... and the sky ... and the clouds ... and everything else. Budo is everything pointed in a direction. To the relative, yet ultimate position of myself, aikido isolated is not Budo. Niether is, kyudo, the world, or myself. Everything exists. Not-everything also exists. The sum of it all is unrecognizable. Focusing the mind alone on this painting with the goal of understanding is misinterpretation, or frustration and torment. Our focus finds a point, the rest falls into the periphery. Engage the object. Fall into its failure: Real failure.

Leaves fall frail while the trunks of their former bearers come to freeze. Frailty dies. Hardening survives. Can we forgive ourselves for the dead? Walk upon the bridge of the fallen.

The result is a falling parade of red, orange, and yellow.

Climbing Hakusan and Temporarily Getting Over Myself

 

Goal: Climb Haku-san (a famous mountain in Ishikawa Prefecture) in the best way possible.

Plan: Take trains and buses to the base of the mountain at a very inconvenient time of 9:00am in which I will wait all day, camp, and leave before sunrise the next day in order to experience the best weather conditions possible. Climb Haku-san that day, camp again, and wake up again before sunrise to descend with the best weather possible. On the last day, hike down, followed by the long transit home by more trains and buses. 3 days maximum Haku-san experience.

Problems: A waste of a the first day just sitting on my thumb reading about zen and scribbling nonsense. The last day being unneccessarily long.

Solution: Just go.

 

 

I had this situation of ... me, Hakusan, the weather, the time, and everything else in the world as pieces of a puzzle I had been working on putting together in the perfect way. How could I get it seamless? My answer to the equation, according to precise calculations, was "the best way" to climb Hakusan. But that's no the most important part; climbing Hakusan, that is. I can pretend, train to believe, and declare, arriving at Hakusan at the most perfect time determined by my mind is most important, but it's not.

I know this because of many reasons. The weather was beautiful when the bus approached the base of the mountain. I was abundantly flowing with young male mountain climbing-ness. Because everyone else was doing it. Because if I left that day, I would have a whole night and day to explore the small town of Echizen-Ouno and Fukui City. Because maybe the experience of climbing the mountain at that moment would produce and experience greater than that I had imagined. Perhaps leaving that day would be an experience more horrible than I could ever imagine, but that would be OK too. I decided to leave that morning because it sounded like fun, and I thought the me that had planned all of this looked incredibly small and stubborn; silly and undesirable. Perhaps if I made the decision to leave, I could somehow begin cultivating a me that I liked better than the one that planned vainly for perfection in dark shadows. But that's going too far. That's a thought, but not the one that tipped the scale. Perhaps that thought was in debt to the squabbling self it was pointing the finger at.

 

Anyway, I left. It was epic. Beautiful weather. I was climbing the mountain with the masses of other Japanese climbers I somehow didn't expect to see. I passed everyone on the way up with a pack much heavier than everyone elses. I'm beyond being proud of this. However I was deeply insulted by a couple who succeeded in passing me. I took pains to notice that they had tiny packs, signifying that they were just making the trip up and down. For some reason it was OK that they passed me then. It seems after my enlightening decision to accept the current situation and climb was not one to save me from still making egotistic judgements of my seemingly innocent surrounding parties.

 

It was beautiful weather until the top. Just as I had suspected, between 1 and 2 o`clock when I would reach the top, it became covered by thick white clouds, blocking vision of anything more than the rocky summit I stood upon. But I expected this to happen when I decided to depart that morning. I have climbed so many mountains to find myself blind at the top like this. It's all good. I climbed down to my campsite, set up shop, read about zen and scribbled small thoughts on paper, watched the sunset, ate my tuna fish and strawberry jam english muffin sandwiches for dinner and went to sleep before 7pm.

 

Darkness brought the usual frenzied dreams I have in tents before long hikes. I woke up prematurely around 12am, and stayed awake for an uncomfortable duration, but was surprsied to hear my alarm at 3:30 in the morning and desired more sleep. Regardless, I awoke. I was not alone in waking, but I didn't see any one else leaving within the long hour I took to get ready. "What is everyone doing?" They came all this way, and even woke up at the right time, but are squandering their time here at the camp when the world's most beautiful moment is about to be revealed an hour hike ahead at the next peak.

As I climbed, black slowly faded to blue, and the stars diminished. Still climbing, the impending sunrise boiled a fuel stronger than any coffee inside of me. Tired legs were invisible as I scrambled the rocks to the peak in front of me: that platform where I would see all that I desired.

I was not disappointed. Just before the sun rose, it's light fell upon the other sides of the mountains in the distance. I saw the sillhouetes of my best friends: Tsurugidake, Tateyama, Yakushidake. Yarigatake, Hotakadake. All friends I stumbled upon to reach their peaks in order to see others. Now I was on top of Hakusan: a mountain I had so many times seen as an island above the clouds from elsewhere. But now I was there! And I saw new mountains. Norikura and Ontake sat before me like new worlds I must find myself atop. The feeling is inexpressable. My words are faulty and immature. The pictures warped by my camera. Budo is my practice, but mountain climbing is the adventure. I am alone. I am not lonely. I do not want others here. It's not that I don't want them there, I just don't want to listen to people talk. I just don't want to wait for other people to get ready when I'm already packed. I don't want to worry about someone wanting to leave before I do. I have many interests, but when climbing mountains this feels the most ... something. I think the only other person that understands this part of me is my brother, and yet I've never talked about this with him. On top of these mountains I find roots much deeper than budo, much deeper than education. There's only love, and then there's thought, and then there's usually something else. And it's gone.

I climbed along the ridges of other mountains in the Hakusan area and made my descent ... with beautiful weather and stunning scenery. Many texts say my mind should be empty so I can experience the world as it is. Well, the problem with that is that my mind is also a part of the world, and actually a pretty big part since it's situated right in the middle of my head. So I have these dialogues with myself about the world and then look up at the scenery, surprised as if it weren't there a minute ago and say, "Whoa." Then I'm back in my mind. Some people like to think about spirit animals and other such non-sense; I am one of those people. Perhaps people usually think of impressive animals: "I'm a tiger." "I'm a wolf." "I'm a dragon." Or I think that's what most young adult males think. Anyway, I get the image of myself as a wolverine sometimes. Does that sound cool? Will that animal forever be limited by the comic book character named after him? The image isn't really all that impressive. It feels like I'm a lonely creature scrambling awkwardly across rocky cold peaks, scavenging and burrowing, alone and busy away from all else.

The rest of the hike down was painfully enjoyable: beautiful scenery accompanied by pains in the legs from relentless descent. That's all normal, but one part of the guidebook I read I didn't pay much attention to (perhaps the author purposely left out extra detail on the matter) was a two hour walk along a road to the final destination of an onsen from where I would take a bus. Plenty of cars passed, but the surly mountain mammal just grumbled ahead. Next time, I'm hitching.

 

I got to the onsen to find I was thirty minutes too late to get in the bath. It wasn't really that fact, but the manner in which I learned this from a grumpy old man who was apparently responsible for things at the time I arrived. I set up shop outside to make my last tuna fish and strawberry jam english muffin sandwiches only to see him shake his hand in front of me and say "dame" ("bad")

"dame?"

"dame."

He pointed to the bench located across the gravel parking lot in front of the benches where I should continue such activities for the next few hours until my bus came. It took my about 30 minutes to move my things, make the sandwich, eat it, and curse him. Then I decided to fall asleep. I woke up a half an hour later and decided to buy a beer from the vending machine from the old man's establishment. I crossed that gravel parking lot to make my transaction with the vending machine. Success. I put the coins in, got the beer, and returned. Soon after, I heard an extremely week "Oy!" cry from the empty porch of the hotel. It was the old man. I looked at him for a moment, and he continued "Oy"ing in my direction so I put down the beer and started walking towards him. For some reason, the walk became a jog and I arrived just before him. "Onsen OK".

"OK?"

"OK."

By Jove the heavens have shifted and this old man has decided to let me take a bath! Hallelueha!

Took the bath.

Rode a bus to the small castle town of Echizen Ouno. Then caught a train to Fukui City.

I drank a bunch of sake and ate fish with two very strange sake-drunk dudes.

Woke up the next day more hungover than I wanted, sightsaw Fukui City, went back to Toyama City.

Then it was back to work ... where I still am ... at.

 

Here is a story from the "Shobogenzo" I would like to share with you here which I found in my most recently read book about zen, "To Meet the Real Dragon" by Gudo Nishijima.

"One day a young monk told Master Dogen that he had a sincere desire to enter a temple and devote himself fully to the study of Buddhism, but that he hesitated to do so because of his family obligations. His mother was very old and completely dependent on him for support. If he entered a temple, he could no longer send her money and she would soon die. What should he do in such a situation?

"Master Dogen's answer was very candid and realistic. He said, 'That is a very difficult question. Even I cannot answer that question for you. It is your problem and only you can find the right answer. However, I feel that there might be a way for you to become a priest and still provide for your mother's health and security. It might be difficult, but if we have a sincere will to do something, a way can usually be found. So I hope you can find such a way. I hope you will be able to support your aged mother and, at the same time, devote yourself to Buddhism by becoming a priest.'"

Finishing the Shobogenzo, Aikido Seminars, Frustration

 

"For a bodhisattva bound by one life, there is no intermediate stage."

This is the last line of the Shobogenzo ... or at least for the appendix of the version I just read.

Like a rock sinking through the sea, when I read this line the whole book just went "thud" against the ocean floor.

There is no intermediate stage.

Only beginning, and being.

We don't know. We learn. Then we know.

Or at least that's my immediate feeling.

In that phrase life is fresh; not like this purgatory that I find myself currently in. I am in a phase of "studying". This I am equating with Dogen's "intermediate stage." So often studying causes our minds to separate the ideas of "us" from those of the "real world." "When I'm done studying, I'll really get started. " As if this time studying prevents us from feeling the world as it really is. As if the world's phenomenon will refrain from engaging us until after graduation. As if what we do now in this time of study will not alter our future or dissappoint our past.

I ride trains everyday. I study Japanese on the trains. When I do so, there is this bubble around me. My world of study - separation - everything else. Because I live in Japan, this bubble world isn't interfered with often. I study Japanese so that one day I can be a me that is fluent in this language; this incredibly smart me that can do more than I can currently imagine.

What am I doing?

My whole life is a study. I study aikido and kyudo for the same reasons. That one day I will be an incredibly smart and capable me. That me is invincible, in the purest sense. But it is somehow not me now, and in fact, the opposite of me concerning the relationship of having and not-having. Now I am nothing. I am so much nothing that I am outside of this world, studying.

The things separate from my study are a waste of time. I don't believe they directly contribute to my Becoming. My job teaching English. My friends. My girlfriend. Sleeping. Eating. Social agreements. Holidays. They don't give me black belts or language proficiecy certificates, so they are a waste of time. As if my future ideal will have nothing to do with these current "irrelevant" activities.

What am I thinking?

But it's true.

There is a flash of my fantasy world followed by an image, and that current image is everyone sitting around thinking about me. "Where is he?" "What is he doing?" "He's fluent in Japanese and a martial arts master." In the periphery of this scene is me with the perfect house and an awesome car. It's so cliche. "He's also a famous writer."

So much of the time I just want to get out of here so that people won't limit me to my curent circumstance. You know what I'm talking about, all those people or the idea of all those people who say that you'll never leave, you'll never change, and everyone knows exactly who you are. Once every few years on facebook they'll just check your profile and get where you're at.

This is disgusting.

And this is my mind.

When I drink I often exaggerate it. The other day my friends and I all had a barbecue. Afterwards I was driving to an onsen with my girlfriend. She's been watching "Grey's Anatomy" lately and had it on in the car while we drove. I said, "I want to be a doctor." She laughted and said some contrary comment like I couldn't be a doctor. I have never done anything in my life to put me on track to be a doctor, and probably display a lot of characteristics that just don't fit the image of a doctor. This is also in Japan where people choose their careers very early and undergo a lot of strict passages to reach their them. As an American it seems not impossible for someone like me to decide to be a doctor; here it's laughable. But anyway, that's beside the point. This isn't about Japan. This isn't about my girlfriend. Niether are at fault. The issue is that I took this comment straight in the head and thought for the first 30 minutes of onsen how I was going to be a doctor and prove everybody wrong. I was going to be invincible. Finally somewhere after I stumbled lightheaded out of the sauna and was sitting there dripping pounds of sweat next to a bunch of other naked Japanese dudes, I realized I didn't need to be a doctor, and probably wouldn't have a lot of fun in that process anyway.

These are the episodes of an intermediate.

There are stages in life, and yet there aren't.

Form and chaos. I believe this is the world; some incomprehensible painting.  People, religions, systems try to come up with answers bigger than the picture, but they are all limited. Prejaculatory moments of seeming invincibility.

I don't think the Shobogenzo seeks to answer the paradox of existence. Or at least this is what I think after finishing it. Just about every night since I recevied the four volumes as a present last Christmas, I have gone through reading exclusively this book. I can't believe I just read the last line.

"For a bodhisattva bound by one life, there is no intermediate stage."

I designate myself as a student in an intermediate stage. I don't like this. This is life.

Anyway ...

I've got some other things to get off my chest here; a couple of topics I wanted to write about in their own posts here, but they're just falling into history while new monsters keep coming in.

The Doshu came to Toyama for a training seminar. It was awesome.

Masuda Sensei from the Kobayashi dojo came for a weekend seminar. Lots of training and drinking while I was recovering from one of the worst colds I've had in a while. It was awesome.

Going to aikido about 3 times a month totally sucks. But it's all I can do to survive.

Kyudo books are really boring.

That is all.