Meditations of Violence

Yes, dear reader, it seems I am the last kid (blogger) on the block to read Meditations on Violence, A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sgt. Rory Miller. Many of my fellow bloggers have recommended it but it wasn't until I got hold of it myself that I understood why.

Sgt. Rory is a good writer. He understand his audience really well. His audience is made up mostly of tough-guy martial artists who train a lot, and not so tough-guy martial artists who also train a lot. He talks to us as if we were a bunch of girls sitting around in our nighties at a pajama party. In walks Sgt. Rory with his big boots, body armor, sim-guns, SWAT team-prison guard experience, with talk of predators and the monkey dance. With bravado and humor, he kindly offers to set us straight.

This book makes you meditate on violence. I particularly like his discussion of what happens to your body when you are attacked--What he calls the hormone cocktail. He says we lose dexterity and coordination and not just the ability the think or plan but the ability to see, hear and feel. Our sense of time becomes distorted and we can even freeze up.

Reading this book makes us think hard on the value of our martial arts training. Different types of training serve wildly different purposes. Of course this is obvious, we don't do muscle building to get good at push-hands, we don't cultivate weakness to win wrestling competitions, and we don't practice butterfly kicks unless we have an appetite for showing off. But no doubt, readers will find justifications for doing the practices they already enjoy--Even though he blind sides you with smart quips like this one:

Experience, in my opinion, could not give rise to a new martial art. Given the idiosyncratic nature and the improbability of surviving enough high-end encounters, it would be hard to come up with guiding principles or even a core of reliable techniques. I am painfully aware that things that worked in one instant have failed utterly in others.

There we have it, from the tough guy of all tough guys, the professionals' professional, the marital arts trainers' trainer! Martial arts can not have been created by people with real life fighting experience. Go ahead, bite down on this bullet, I know it hurts.

Still he unwittingly makes a great case for Chinese internal martial arts training. For the sake of argument, let's pretend that the main reason internal martial arts were created was for fighting (an idea my regular readers know I find ridiculous).

In a fight for our lives we fall under the influence of adrenaline and we become very strong. Mark one down for cultivating weakness! Don't waste your time cultivating strength, in a real fight you'll be really, really strong-- automatically...autonomicly.

You will also lose your sensitivity to pain, so external conditioning, training to take blows, is also a waste of time. Sgt. Rory doesn't totally reject conditioning. He says that training surprise impacts, on your face particularly, can help to keep you from going into shock in a situation where you are completely surprised. Familiarity with the feeling of being hit will make it easier to see through the hormonal fog.

Speaking of fog, he gives some statistics on police firing their pistols while they are under attack. Basically, they miss most of time at very close range because they are shaking and they can't see:

...Under the stress hormones, peripheral vision is lost and there is physical "tunnel vision." Depth perception is lost or altered, resulting in officers remembering a threat five feet away as down a forty-foot corridor. Auditory exclusion occurs--you may not hear gunfire, or people shouting your name or sirens.

Blood is pooled in the internal organs, drawn away from the limbs. Your legs and arms may feel weak and cold and clumsy. You may not be able to feel your fingers and you will not be able to use "fine motor skills," the precision grips and strikes necessary for some styles such as Aikido.

The "dis" of Aikido here is totally unnecessary since all styles have these kind of techniques, probably invented for dealing with drunks. But what a great case he makes for internal styles like Baguazhang and Taijiquan!

Internal arts don't rely on focused use of the eyes, in fact my bagua training is full of exercises designed to get you to use your eyes in unusual ways. I would even argue that the different bagua Palm Changes can invoke different experiences of time, distortions if you will. If you are constantly spinning around or turning your head, you can get by without your peripheral vision.

Internal arts are based on the principle that coordination will be impossible in a real fight. That's why we only move from the dantian! (As I noted above, I don't believe fighting is the only reason we move the way we do, or even the primary reason...but it makes a great argument doesn't it?) In bagua and taiji we don't tense up our muscles, all movement is centralized in a single impulse. We use one unbroken spiral as our only technique.

Jumping rope? Waste of time too. It's fun training for sparing games, but in a real surprise attack two things are likely. One, you freeze and stop breathing like you are a frightened animal "playing dead." And two, the hormone cocktail will give incredible speed and stamina--don't bother training those either!

Lest I leave you thinking everything he says is pro-internal arts, I should point out the obvious. Any technique requiring sensitivity will likely be useless in a fight to the death. So is push-hands, which is all about sensitivity, really useless? Maybe it is. But he also makes the case that training to attack from a place of total stillness is great practice for teaching yourself how to get "un-frozen" when you are utterly petrified. Good Stuff!!!

note: I just I just Googled "Meditation on Violence" and I got Maya Deren's 1948 12 minute film by the same title, a classic if you haven't seen it yet.

More Spirit

The other day I was playing the role of interpretor for George Xu and a boxer who was writing about him. George gave the expression "More Spirit Defeats Less Spirit," as a fundamental martial arts principle-- a principle true for all martial arts.

Now most of my readers will recognize right away that the term "Spirit" here is a translation of the term Shen, in Chinese. But anyone that tells you a particular Chinese word has only one meaning, probably doesn't know. Shen is one of those words which is sometimes used vaguely to bolster a teacher or a doctor's authority. "Do you feel the shen?" "Does he look like he has more shen now" (asked of observers after the treatment/performance). (I wrote about this idea here, the idea comes from Elizabeth Hsu, The Transmission of Chinese Medicine.)

Anyway, at first we thought George was talking about something very obvious. We thought he meant ferociousness, apparent psychic or physical superiority, a kind of prowess. Like for instance, if Mike Tyson got in the ring with Pee Wee Herman--Pee Wee would be instantly overwhelmed by Mike Tyson's spirit.

But that's not what George meant. If I didn't have a background in Daoism, I don't think I would have understood him. What he meant is that a fighter or a predator, can defeat another predator by being able to embody a wider, more encompassing focus.

A predator like a Cheetah who is focused simply on the hunt, has a plural focus. He senses movement, perhaps even the heart beat of the prey. He senses the wind and the shadows, and is careful not to let the prey see, hear, or smell him...until it is too late.

But a predator, like a lion for instance, hunting the cheetah while the cheetah is hunting a deer, will have a more plural focus. In addition to awareness of the deer's movement, the wind and the shadows, he is also making sure the cheetah doesn't see, hear or smell him.

The process of being a great hunter/fighter in this sense, is to effortlessly integrate more aspects of one's awareness. As the Huainanzi puts it, "While traveling-- to be the last one to leave camp in the morning, packing up the kitchen; and the first one to greet everyone as they straggle into the next camp in the evening... with hot water boiling on the stove." (I'm paraphrasing from memory, but you get the idea.)

In mathematical terms: The equation with more factors, is more advanced.

But why would this be called "spirit" or shen? A plural focus means to have a better sense of space, better active and dynamic spacial awareness. When George was trying to explain this, it suddenly struck me that he meant spirits plural, not spirit singular. Perhaps what George Xu should have said was: The fighter with more spirits, defeats the fighter with fewer spirits!

If I'm trapped in a room with 5 attackers, my superior spacial awareness will be tracking and adapting to all 5 attackers simultaneously. There is both a plural aspect to it and a singular aspect.

In Daoist ritual, a priest commands Spirit Troops. These Spirit Troops are both visualized and spatially felt. They surround the priest and answer to his or her commands, marching, running, charging, swirling in chaos, or standing at attention.

The highest ranking priest can have a maximum number of 75 Spirit Troops at his or her command. In the case of a married couple who are both Daoist priests of the highest rank with 75 Spirit Troops each--they are able to share their troops, so they can command up to 15O.

So here we have another clear example of high level internal martial arts being linked to Daoist ritual practice.

(I just spent about 45 minutes looking around for references on my bookshelf so that people could further explore what I just said. They are there but I didn't find them, man...Google is so much easier. Here is a site with a lot of cool stuff about Chinese religion: Singapore Paranormal Investigation. Here is a page from that site which explains Zhuxi's ideas about guishen [I believe the same term I'm using for "Spirit Troops," but maybe someone can correct me, or I'll find a good reference next time I have the time to look. Also the picture of guishen above came from that same site.)

Taijiquan Classics

(Originally Published in Frostbell, the Newsletter of Orthodox Daoism in America, Summer 2001)

Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan
Fu Zhongwen
Translated by Louis Swaim
North Atlantic Books, 1999

Readers of Frost Bell who practice Taijiquan are probably familiar with some of the many translations of the 'Taiji Classics' which have been done over the years. These five short poetical texts written during the Ming and Ching Dynasties are considered essential distillations of the art. Teachers use these texts as a guide for measuring the slowly unfolding fruition of Taijiquan practice.

Finally a translation has been done by someone who has a really good grasp of classical Chinese and many years of Taijiquan practice. With modesty and clarity Louis Swain explains all the key terms, uniformly using the pinyin system of transliteration and including the original Chinese texts along side the translations for easy reference.

Taijiquan instructors will be more than pleased with the depth and precision with which he discusses not only the terms but also the difficult phrases in the texts. He leaves meanings open ended when he feels that they are meant to be read that way in the original, and he makes the point that there isn't much in the language of the classics which is overtly martial in content. He also thoroughly reviews most of the previous translations which have been done.

The "Translators Introduction" is eloquent and helpful. It explores some of the difficulties in translating Chinese anatomical and physiological concepts for which there are no equivalent English terms. It also includes a remarkable elucidation the notoriously enigmatic terms song and jin.

Swaim makes use of his wider studies to point out poetic references to different Chinese traditions with in the texts. This is immensely helpful for those practitioners who would like to distinguish between Daoist ideas of macrobiotic practice and Neo-Confucian ideas of discipline.

The five 'Taijiquan Classics' are actually included as an appendix and the main section of the book is a translation of a book by Fu Zhongwen, a senior student of the famous Taijiquan master Yang Chengfu. People who practice Yang's style of Taijiquan will find the minute details of his entire 'form' written out clearly with helpful commentary and drawings. Even if you practice another style, don't hesitate to get this book. Louis Swaim's introduction, final essay and translation of the classics alone are well worth the price ($16.95 paper).

Click here to buy it! Louis Swaim

Gaining Control

A female friend of mine was recently attacked by a crazed crackhead half block from her house.  He was big and he kicked her in the ribs.

She thought her ribs were broken, she feared for her life, and she thought about the lives of her two new born infants who were thankfully not with her at the time.  Then she "went crazy on him," and he ran off.

In telling me about the incident she said she wished she had studied martial arts because she wanted to make sure he didn't hurt anyone else.  That, I think was the rational explanation, the more spontaneous explanation, I'm guessing, would be that she wanted to kick his ass.

A few days later while we were sitting at an outdoor table at a local bakery/cafe, she asked me how much martial arts training would have helped her.  I dodged the question and talked to her a bit about self-defense and what kind of training we do.  Then a 300 pound guy sat down next two her on a large green wooden box which had a sign saying please do not sit here.  The purpose of the box was to guide the flow of foot traffic around the tables and chairs, and thus, not for sitting.   It promptly toppled over onto her--bruising her arm.

The guy was naturally embarrassed and apologetic.  But that prompted her to ask me if studying martial arts would have prevented her from getting hit by the box.

So I was cornered.  Would martial arts training help with a surprise attack or a surprise accident?  Yes, probably, maybe, I'm not sure, I don't know,... how could I know?

Hexagram 10 of the Yijing (I Ching) is about just such a situation.  The title reads Treading (Lu):

Treading on a tiger's tail: one is not bitten.  Auspicious.

The image is of an innocent, perhaps a 10 year old child, stepping on the tail of a tiger and not getting bitten.  Why?  We don't really know.  Perhaps it is because the tiger isn't hungry and 'though surprised, it doesn't feel threatened.

Chinese Internal Martial Arts cultivated with a Daoist perspective achieve quite the opposite results of what most people think.  These arts are not about gaining control.  They are not about preparing for some monstrous future attack.  They are not about trying to control or predict the future.

To the contrary, they are about giving up the effort to control.  The basic  assumption or experiment of internal martial arts is that other options will present themselves effortlessly when we give up trying to control.  Does this really happen?  Yes, probably...maybe...How could I know?  I don't know, I simply have the experience that being less aggressive reveals other options.  I certainly don't know in advance what those options will be.  I keep repeating and simplifying the experiments because having options sometimes seems akin to freedom.

In Buddhism they have the expression, "Skillful Means," to describe brilliant techniques on the road to enlightenment.  But it's also kind of a Buddhist joke because the end result requires no skill at all.

In my opinion, this friend of mine who got attacked, did everything right.  She did get some bruises on her ribs, but frankly a couple of weeks training in martial arts could easily produce the same injuries.  After she chased him away by whatever crazy moving, screaming and raging she did, she even had the peace of mind to record all the details about his clothing and appearance for the police.

Her innocent response was good enough.

And that is the point of this post.  Not only are we cultivating weakness, we are cultivating innocence.  The skills we develop in all the Internal Martial Arts involve discarding our learned responses, discarding our preconceptions about what our body is and how it works, discarding our ideas about how events begin and how they come to a resolution.

Discarding pretense, embracing innocence.

Emptiness

Appetite and desire, what's the difference?

Yes and O.K., what's the difference?

Jing and Qi, how can we differentiate them?

When we give a name to something which is subtle and difficult to discern, we risk obscuring it, even losing it, because the hardness or fixedness of the name shines light on something which only exists in the dark.  This isn't an argument against naming, only a reminder that naming is a kind of aggression.

Chapter 15 (Wangbi numeration) of the Daodejing,

The ancient masters of the Way

aimed at the indiscernible

and penetrated the dark

you would never know them

and because you wouldn't know them

I describe them with reluctance

they were careful as if crossing a river in winter

cautious as if worried about neighbors

reserved like guests

ephemeral like melting ice

simple like uncarved wood

open like valleys

and murky like puddles

but a puddle becomes clear when it's still

and stillness becomes alive when it's roused

those who treasure this Way

don't try to be full

not trying to be full

they can hide and stay hidden

This translation is by Red Pine and I think it is great.  He also translates commentaries on all the chapters, like this one by Ho-Shang Kung, "Those who aren't full are able to maintain their concealment and avoid new attainments."

What a contrary piece of advice:  Avoid new attainments.

What does someone who is "empty" look like?  Well, like they are walking on slippery thin ice without breaking it--very light, very delicate, precise with out being confident.

I think the phrase, "worried about neighbors" means attentive in all four directions.

Guests wait to be invited into action but help out generously if they are needed.

Melting ice is always becoming less.

The uncarved wood here is like big pieces of lumber, it is very useful but it is in a potencial state, uncommitted.

To practice being empty is a Daoist precept.  In martial arts emptiness seems like a pinnacle of achievement, but then I read this I'm reminded that fullness is hard to give up.

Empty and full, what's the difference?

Break a Leg, means Break a Leg

Before a performance I told a group of my 3rd and 4th graders to "Break a Leg." One of the students said to the others, "He means good luck." I said, "No, Break a Leg means Break a Leg."

The expression comes from the 2000 year old Indian text known as the Natya Shastra, also sometimes called the fifth Veda. I have a copy on my shelf. It's pretty cool, they talk about how auspicious it is if the performers on the stage get so rowdy and out of control that someone breaks a leg.

Update:

In response to the comments.

My copy of the Nâtyašâstra was translated into English by Dr. Adya Rangacharya, and published by IBH Prakashaha, in Gandhinagar, Bangalore, 1986.

It has been a while since I've read it cover to cover, I believe there is more than one reference that would be relevant to the martial artist/performer, but here is the quote I was thinking about:

Illumination of the stage (lines 90-93)

Holding the lighted torch one should run about the stage roaring, and cracking the joints of fingers, turning round and round, making loud noises and thus, illuminating the entire stage, should come to center of the stage.  Battle scenes must be enacted to the resounding accompaniment of conch, drum, Mrdanga, and Panava etc.  If in the course of that, things are broken or are cut or torn, with blood showing on the wounds, then it is a good omen indicating success.

A stage properly consecrated will bring good luck to the king and to the young and old of the town and country.

--Natyashastra, "Worship of the Stage and of the Gods (chapter 3)."

Are Some Ideas About the Heart Trash?

In chapter eight of the Neijing Suwen we have the saying:

The heart holds the office of lord and sovereign.

The radiance of the spirits stems from it.

That translation is from Claude Larre and Elisabeth Rochat, The Secret of the Spiritual Orchid. Often called the Inner Classic of Chinese Medicine, this 2000 year old text is referenced occasionally in the modern teaching of Chinese Medicine. It is used more often when teaching esoterica because it isn't all that specific.

The expression translated above as "radiance of the spirits," is actually a common martial arts term--mingshen.

Mingshen is mentioned in the taijiquan classics as the fruition of practice. I think it is what I see in a young student's eyes when they are ready and eager to learn. It is also that quality you see in a great fighter's eyes which is capable of ending the fight before it has even started.

Mencius said: If a ruler has mingshen, when he and his army invade a country, its people will lay down their arms and join him. Now that sounds like either a really good reputation or very potent shamanic prowess.

Descriptions of mingshen in the martial arts deal with perception, consciousness, proprioception, and kinesthetic awareness. These descriptions often sound mystical. Mingshen is the ability to wield forces that seem to be outside your body, outside your opponent's body too. This "space power" gives liveliness and dimensionality to our movement, it is the main subject of the highest level martial arts.

You can't really be a "modern" person and not ask the questions with regard to pre-20th century ideas, "What should I keep and what should I discard?" "What can I use, and what will just hold me back?"

Everyone has to answer these questions for themselves. Are useless acts good for the heart? Does extraordinary martial prowess have any real utility?
Hardly any country in the world has done as much discarding in the 20th century as China has. But it hasn't always been honest or well considered discarding. Now they are looking through the trash to see what can be salvaged.

Journal of Daoist Studies

There is a new publication coming out in June called the Journal of Daoist Studies, it looks really good, and I'm really excited, and that's not just because my 17 page essay is in the first edition!

The editorial board is a list of very respectable Daoist Scholars:

Shawn Arthur, Stephan-Peter Bumbacher, Yi Hsiang Chang, Shinyi Chao, Chen Xia, Donald Davis, Catherine Despeux, Jeffrey Dippmann, Ute Engelhardt, Stephen Eskildsen, Norman Girardot, Jonathan Herman, Adeline Herrou, Jiang Sheng, Paul Katz, Sung-Hae Kim, Russell Kirkland, Louis Komjathy, Liu Xun, Lu Xichen, Victor Mair, Mei Li, James Miller, David Palmer, Fabrizio Pregadio, Michael Puett, Robert Santee, Elijah Siegler, Julius Tsai, Robin Wang, Michael Winn, Yang Lizhi, Zhang Guangbao

As it happens, and as I'm told happens to writers all the time, they are not using my title. I'm so spoiled by the independence of blogging. My title (which I submitted late, after the first edit) was a hip reference to the 3rd century Daoist alchemist Ge Hong's writings: "To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, or Not." Pretty catchy huh?

The title I ended up with is, "Portrait of an American Daoist." That's Life! Order your subscription today!

The Sound of Wen and Wu

I woke up this morning with my arms crossed.  Actually more than crossed, knotted-up would be a better description.  One hand jutting past my armpit, the other arm wrapped around it twice and dangling between my ear and my shoulder.  It took a minute to figure out which arm was which.  My honey says I do gongfu in my sleep.

Anyway I've been reading a wonderful dissertation, which I will review when I finish reading it, called "Martial Gods and Magic Swords," by Avron Boretz.  The Daoist scholar Paul Katz recommended it.

Today I just want to talk about one of his footnotes.  In a discussion about the relationship between wen (civil, scholarly, cultural) and wu (military, martial) he mentions that the drum is wen and the cymbal is wu.  That really got me thinking.

The drum establishes order, it is steady and precise.  The cymbal is an explosion of sound, it breaks the air and shatters the peace.  When I teach kids or perform, I use the drum for stepping, and the cymbal for sudden kicks.

The large gong is, of course, used for bowing, but it is also good for transitions or even moments of transcendence.

The wood-block (called a fish in Chinese) is used for accenting orders or commands, it is often answered by the performer with a stomp of the foot (leading into cat stance or monk stance).  It is a high sharp sound.  Wood-blocks are used for chanting invocations, and by Buddhists for chanting sutras.  The same wood-block sound was traditionally used in formal arguments and teachings to accent an important point that had just been made.

"The Dao which can be named is not the true Dao!" "PAAHK."

The flutes and reed instruments mimic the human voice.