The Moon on the Water and its Reflection

I wanted to share another piece from 'The Life Giving Sword' by Munenori that stuck with me.

"The moon on the water" refers to the fact that if there is a certain distance between you and your opponent, his sword will be unable to strike you. Stepping inside this distance and stealing close to your opponent without his noticing is like piercing the reflection of the moon on the water."

This is a concept I have experienced in my time sparring with TaeKwon-Do. At the black belt level the way fights normally go are the opponents stand about six feet apart (outside leg range) and are facing each other and not moving forward or back - there are lots of little subtle feints and movements. At some point one combatant will step inside the range of an attack and both people will explode towards each other - there will be a flurry of hand and foot attacks and they separate again.

This is very different from kung fu where we fight very close to each other with many repeated and fluid attacks. The distance or "The Moon on the Water" is way inside my instinctive circle of safety trained with years of TKD so I have big flashing proximity warning lights and sirens going through my head still when I am kung fu sparring.

Joe Hyams writes an excellent chapter on 'drawing a circle' in his book 'Zen in the Martial Arts' (one of my favorite books). He talks about drawing a mental circular line around you which is the distance where an attack cannot reach you. Outside this line noone can physically hurt you. So why feel defensive or afraid? How liberating is that?? Whether in sparring, in a business meeting, in a confrontation in a bar - if someone is outside this imaginary line then you are invincible - noone can hurt you so there is no need to be afraid.

When someone steps into this circle of safety, that is when you react and take care of the situation, otherwise they can be as aggressive as they like but you have no need to be concerned.

Nick
Yellow sash

Experiencing the Moment

One of the greatest benefits of martial arts training is to enable you to exist in a single moment in time. When I practice Kung fu it is very difficult to be thinking about anything else other than exactly what you are doing at that moment. In fact it happens to me as soon as I walk onto the training floor, my fellow students have commented that as soon as I enter the floor I look 100% focused on the training. I forget about the pressures of day-to-day life and let go of all those mental 'to do' lists and only think about the training. There are not too many times in life where we have the opportunity to purely live for the moment and experience this mental release.

Nick
Yellow sash

Hardness and Softness

This week Sifu Maury touched on the subject of hardness and softness and specifically the ability to understand the strength, or hardness, behind an opponents move. When an opponent makes a powerful attack such as a straight punch there is no point meeting this with your own hardness such as a powerful block. The opposite is needed, hardness needs to be met with softness - so a guiding and controlling block rather than one in direct opposition. This is described as 'using the opponents momentum against them' commonly seen in styles such as aikedo. At some point the punch ends and in this transition period as the punch is withdrawn there is softness and at this point you meet it with hardness in your own powerful (counter)-attack.

Another example is if someone is grabbing you, the natural expectation is for your to resist, but if you were to move with the pull and turn it into an attack the moment of hesitation caused by the unexpected response can be the sufficient time to take control of the situation. This is a theory to aim for, reading strength and energy in someone else's movement takes years to achieve and also to have your body to be able to react in response. Exercises such as the 'sticky hands' technique which made such an impact on me is ideal training for understanding the energy flow between you and your opponent moving between the hard (yang) movements and the softer (yin) movements.


Nick
Yellow sash

More No-Mind

The Samurai Munenori gave one of the best descriptions of the state of 'no-mind' that I have read in his work 'The Life-Giving Sword'.

'A monk asked ancient worthy, "What is the Way?" The Worthy replied, "Your ordinary way, that is the Way."

When applied to the world of martial arts, when you think about your movement - attacking or defending then your movements will not be fluid or responsive. When you are in combat, if you don't think about what you are trying to do then your mind will be at ease.

A mirror is always clear and has no form, perfectly reflecting whatever is in front of it. The mind of a 'Man of the Way' is like a mirror: It does nothing and is perfectly clear. This is the ordinary mind. 'A man who accomplishes everything with the ordinary mind is said to be a master.'

No-mind is not having no mind at all, it is simply your 'ordinary mind'.

I have been reading this to Ethan 'in-utero' so hopefully he will be a good samurai warrior in a couple of years.

Nick
Yellow sash

The Life-Giving Sword

I am currently reading 'The Life-Giving Sword' by Yagyu Munenori - a highly recommended read. Munenori was a fellow swordsman of my hero, Miyamoto Musashi and achieved the position of sword instructor to the shogun which Musashi never managed to achieve.


"It is missing the point to think that the martial art is solely in cutting a man down. It is not in cutting people down; it is in killing evil. It is the strategem of killing the evil of one man and giving life to ten thousand."

Munenori writes about training and coming to a state of no-mind which is a re-occurring theme in my martial arts reading which I find fascinating. Munenori talks about "exhaustively extending" your knowledge through study and training. If there is something you don't know or understand it will linger in your mind and create doubt. The doubt will slow your actions during combat as you will over-think rather than react. The point of extending knowledge is to get to the point of being able to completely empty your brain. At this point you can engage in combat with the state of 'no-mind', without doubt or fear and know that your training will take care of you.

"When you perform an action you will be in harmony with what you have learned, without even being aware of it."

In kung fu we learn that knowledge is learned through repetitions over time. So this is something to bear in mind when you are yet again having to practice a basic punch or kick rather than being able to practice 360 degree flying kicks.

Nick
Yellow sash

Growth or Death

During a discussion this week Sifu Maury said that "we are either growing mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually or dying mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually". This is quite a statement and I have been giving this much thought since then. I have to say that I agree with him, it makes sense. It came up because we were talking about setting goals in life, achievable long-term goals broken down into a series of short term goals that enable us to get there. It is important that goals are set in life and that they are written down to make us accountable. The reason why we need to set goals for ourselves is because if we don't have a conscious path of growth in our lives we are not growing and if we are not growing we are dying.

It makes sense to me yet I am struggling with it. My only goals right can't penetrate beyond the birth of Ethan in 3 weeks and hoping we can get through this happily and healthily. My goals for my massage business have really fallen apart and while I am training intensely in kung fu my focus is not on a specific goal but more on enjoying the daily challenges the training brings. I have no goals at work right now, I just want to stay employed in a turbulent industry in order to enable my family to live a comfortable life. The rest of my life is in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures - just having as much fun as possible.

Setting goals should be straight forward, we think about where we want to be. Going through the goal-setting process right now though, I am finding it really tough. Maybe because my biggest goals involve so much life change which I don't want to face right now. I have an ideal job in mind which would mean the disruption and uncertainty around leaving my position and starting up elsewhere, I have a massage practice goal but that means a lot of time devoted to it and putting myself in situations outside my comfort zone to achieve this.

It is also easy to justify not starting down the path we know we need to take. I can't risk a job change right now with a child about to be born and I really won't have time to focus on my business. But after that when would I expect to have the time, when Ethan is 2?, 6?, 14?, 21? Vast numbers of people live their whole lives like this - I am unhappy now but I will do X once I get my promotion at work/get that big scratchcard win/after my elderly parent has passed away.

Is the alternative dying mentally?, physically?, emotionally?, spiritually?

Nick
Yellow sash

A Story With a Happy Ending

Once upon a time (last Thursday about tea time) I was waiting to be picked up from the train station by my beloved wife. It was a cold and windy night, high 20s F with the wind chill taking it way down to 'o my God its cold' temperatures. So all the cars clear out of the station after 10 minutes and I am left standing there using language that does not belong in a blog. After 45 minutes and numerous voicemails left on Jennifer's mobile phone and the home phone, and just about the time I was really beginning to hurt from the cold I figured something was terribly wrong with Jennifer. In case you think I may be over-reacting, remember she is 8 months pregnant. The first place I thought to go to was the kung fu school which is a 15 minute walk from the station. I arrived at the school freezing cold and white as a sheet with worry and asked for help. Immediately I was given a set of car keys by one of the students instructions to call the police business line to find out the day's ambulance calls etc.

As it turns out Jennifer had forgotten all about picking me up and eventually got my message that I was at the kung fu school. Half way home I got a call from the school letting me know Jennifer was safe and sound, so I could go bring the car back and get a ride home with her. I can't tell you how happy I was to hear that Jenn had just forgotten me, it was the best case scenario.

So the point of the story is how the kung fu school has become the closest thing I have to family in the US and it was the first place I thought of going when I needed help. Everyone there did everything they could to help me out for which I am eternally grateful. The school is so much more than a place to learn martial arts and the efforts they have gone to in order to develop community has really paid off.

Maurys Kung Fu, I thank you.

Nick
Yellow Sash