Waza waza everywhere! And no great need to think

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens - Carl Jung

Full disclosure: I have purchased tapes and videos of martial artists performing their kata and their drills. I like to look and see what others are doing and whether what I am doing is far off from what they are doing. I don’t borrow much of anything, really. It may give me a ideas for improvement of my stuff, but it does not make me want to copy what they are doing. It is sort of like the same thing as writers who have a dictionary or a thesaurus handy when they write - they are there for reference only. Not guidance or inspiration.

So, am I part of the problem or part of the solution?

I would to think that I am part of the problem. I am not sure if there is a solution. Pandora’s martial box has been opened. Who will put the highly lucrative evils back? There’s a pile of layers to the problems with this. Sort of like the seven martial sins, only condensed to, like, four:

Sloth.

Lust.

Gluttony.

Pride.

The challenge I have with the folks who attend these things seems to stick on that first point: sloth. Yes, we are lazy. We seek answers from others that we should strive to find in our own training. Because we are greedy (also another sin). We want all the answers. But we want them the easy way. 

Which is sort of the antithesis of our training.

The Meibukan has a maxim about this: Nangi go gokui – the secrets of training are revealed through hard work.

Instead, we go this route: 高価なセミナーで訓練の秘密が明らかになりました。

It is said that the Okinawans only revealed as much to students as they believed they earned. This was either through adherence to training or through display of character/ mentality. In our world today, it's pay your money, learn the good stuff. Or the stuff that someone who spends the time analyzing kata has found and is willing to show you for a fee. We have eliminated some moral safeguards, it would seem. And for what – profit? Name recognition?

Two problems:

1)      You do not get end control of who you teach what to. There is no familiarity with the attendees prior. So perhaps people who should not learn how to make a violent art more violent are being given keys to a kingdom they do not deserve.

2)      There is no quality control over the learning. Hard to make sure that all 40 participants walk away with information that is valuable or retained. Ah, but then you can either buy the DVD copy of the seminar or come to the next seminar and relearn it. Still, no guarantee to mastery or even deep understanding of or connection to other elements.

I don’t deny anyone to make a living. I might disagree with making money from karate as a primary income (or an income at all, for that matter – but that the bee up my ass, not yours). They have discovered a niche/ need and they have responded to that market requirement. Good for them.

I don’t think the log in your eye is any bigger or smaller than the log in mine. I just see we have different logs.

We laugh at the concept of a McDojo that hands out belts to people in exchange for cash. The fact that these misguided people learn nothing and get belts that they are not worthy of is the crux of the problem. Mc-anything is simply a mass-marketing/ mass-distribution paradigm. We have now simply shifted belts for knowledge.

Those people did not earn the belts that were given to them.

These people learning applications did not earn the knowledge they are getting, either. They are paying for it. We are rewarding them for not searching their own kata, not exploring their own art, not asking the deep questions of their own seniors. The only thing they had to be able to do was pay the seminar/ session fee.

The easy route. Pay your money, get your answers.

So, before I piss more people off, let me underline that I do not question the pedigree of those who are teaching the secrets or offering their brand. Their skills and abilities are without question and their experience is well-documented. I question why they do what they do. Is the ultimate goal sharing information or making money? Or both?

Again, I have no issue with people making money. And I see no issue at all with comparative sharing and exploring. My issue is not squarely with those who seek to make the knowledge available in a commercial format for others to lap up and consume. Though I do contend that there likely little thought paid to whether the attendees are worthy of getting the hand up or how they may employ this new information.

Nope. Again, the bulk of my ire does lie with those who jump on this information – for whatever purpose. Perhaps some of them, like me, comparison shop what they do to determine if they are on the right path. Or maybe it is to try to wholesale apply what is learned to what they study. Or to learn all new content to sustain their own students’ desire for growth. Or worse. It's just plain bloody lazy.

Think critically about your kata. Look at it. Explore different types of common attacks. If you are not sure what they may be, then pick from this list. Look for elements of your kata that fit the response. Then test and test again. And then keep looking. Nothing frustrates me more than someone who teaches a defensive application that looks like a karate punch.

And once you have a few things that fit from some of the movements, explore how changing bits and pieces of the movement will change overall defensive response. Example - what changes on following up from movement X if you are blocking inside versus blocking outside? How does the kata adapt for that? Or does it. Or, perhaps more importantly, how do you adapt the kata?

But to go off of what someone else says based on their work and practice practice practice adapt - well, that's sorta like group work where one person does all the lifting and everyone else shares the rewards of labour.

But if you need hints - or (worse) you need the whole thing drawn out for you - maybe you need to spend more time as a student and less time as an instructor. Or maybe you simply need to recall the concept of shoshin – beginner’s mind. Look for your own things. Dig deeper. Look harder. Practice more. Ask questions of your seniors.

Since many of the folk teaching this stuff have spent significant time living overseas, perhaps that is also where you should go to uncover the gaps in your knowledge that prevent you from discovering the technical gems within your kata.

For the love of all that is honest, do your own bloody homework. Study your own kata. Make errors. Explore. Test. Adapt. Work your kata.

Spend less time worrying about how to get John and Jane Q. Public through the door and more time practising your own art and exploring its limits and beyond.

Go find your own damn waza!