Lifelines

A white crane at the park outside the Okinawa Prefectural Budokan. Karate is said to be influenced in part from a southern Chinese White Crane style.

"So fair and foul a day I have not seen" is a line from Macbeth, if memory serves. This is a strange time for me. On the one hand, I am fulfilling the dream of a lifetime by coming to Okinawa to study karate in the land of its birth. I have finished three days of training and the trip has already met and exceeded all I had hoped.

On the other hand, I had barely finished the first day of training when I learned of the mining disaster in my state at a mine owned by a company that embodies all the things I have fought against for many years. To be away from West Virginia and West Virginians is hard at times like this, which, sad to say, aren't all that infrequent if you've lived a while.

I know that even if I was there, there would be little I could do right now other than mourn and vent with other members of my tribe. This is the time for rescue and recovery workers, for religious leaders and counselors to do their work, and for a community to grieve. Later, not much later, there will be other work to do, and plenty of it.

So now? Train. To someone who is not a martial artist (and to many martial artists for whom it is only a sport), the connection between karate and the fight for social justice may seem to be two different things. In reality, they should be one.

Looking back, it was through the study of karate that my sense of social justice and even politics derived. Karate ni sente nashi--in karate there is no first attack--is the motto of Okinawan karate. And these words of Gichin Funakoshi have burned themselves into my core:

True karate do is this: that in daily life one's mind are body be trained and developed in a spirit of humility, and that in critical times, one be devoted utterly to the cause of justice.

It's a spring morning in Naha. I plan on heading early to the Budokan today. My body feels like its cooking itself but I want to train hard today and I want it to hurt.

And so far this trip, I've gotten what I wanted.

The master text

I'm running down my chronological list of the 10 books that have had the biggest impact on me growing up. What are yours?

Brief recap: early childhood, The Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, The Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Junior high: The Lord of the Rings. High School: The Tao Te Ching and...

#6 Karate-Do Kyohan by Gichin Funakoshi. I've often discussed my lifelong love of the martial arts here. Funakoshi (1868-1957) was a sickly child who took up karate for his health on his native island of Okinawa and played a lead role in introducing the art to the Japanese main islands and ultimately the world.

This book by Funakoshi is considered to be the Bible of Shotokan Karate and related styles. If you're not into this kind of thing, it's not a page turner. Most of it is devoted to an explanation of techniques and the demonstration of the main katas or formal exercises of the style.

It is also full of Funakoshi's maxims on ethics and the relationship of karate to daily life. He was and remains one of my main ethical beacons. Sample quote:

True Karate-do is this: that in daily life, one's mind and body be trained and developed in a spirit of humility; and that in critical times, one be devoted utterly to the cause of justice.

SWORD AND PEN

Karate master, calligrapher and poet Gichin Funakoshi, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope this week is writing for social change. You'll also find links and comments about current events. If this is your first visit, please click on yesterday's post.

For me, writing and fighting (mostly metaphorically) have always been entwined. The idea that I should try to learn to write came to me at the same time in early adolescence that I aspired to learn traditional Okinawan/Japanese martial arts.

In that tradition, the two are connected. There is an old saying among samurai that goes something like "Ken Zen ichi," which means that the sword (or fist) and Zen are one. As a idiom, it also implies that mind and body and sword and pen are one. A basic idea of traditional martial arts is that one should develop one's full potential in all areas. (It took awhile, but I eventually found that Aristotle said pretty much the same thing in ancient Greece.)

Gichin Funakoshi (1868-1957), widely regarded as the founder of modern karate, put it this way in one of his early works:

Deep within the shadows of human culture lurk seeds of destruction, just as rain and thunder follow in the wake of fair weather. History is the story of the rise and fall of nations. Change is the order of heaven and earth; the sword and pen are as inseparable as the two wheels of a cart. Thus, a man must encompass both fields if he is to be considered a man of accomplishment. If he is overly complacent, trusting that the fair weather will last forever, he will one day be caught off guard by terrible floods and storms. So it is essential for all of us to prepare each day for any unexpected emergency.

It was also from that tradition that I acquired my one abiding political idea: to wit, it is dishonorable and disgusting when people with power try to kick around people who can't kick back. And since much of our political and economic world seems to run on precisely that, I tend to find myself going against the current.

I don't know if this is exactly what Funakoshi had in mind with the sword/pen thing, but to a martial artist good fighting (in the sense of the merging of techniques, tactics, and timing) can be as aesthetically pleasing as good writing, music etc. And in the context of social change, good writing--broadly conceived--can a powerful force in the fight to make things less bad or a little better.

For that matter, a good campaign or fight, metaphorically speaking, can be aesthetically pleasing and even elegant if it blends timing and technique and strategy.

They don't call them arts for nothing.

BUSHONOMICS. For many Americans, the recession of 2001 never ended.

JOBS AND HEALTH CARE. A new study suggests that rising unemployment will strain public health care programs like Medicaid.

BIOBIGOTRY. Here's an article about the human tendency to project moral categories onto animals.

WHO'D HAVE THUNK IT? Scientists are using bats to promote reforestation.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DOJO KUN

Gichin Funakoshi.

The theme of this week's Goat Rope is strategy and what people who want to make the world less violent and more just can learn from the theory and history of conflict. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

El Cabrero admits to being a fan of Sun Tzu from way back. I first learned about his Art of War when I began became interested in martial arts as a child. At the time, there were no classes in my little town and we couldn't afford the tae kwon do school in a nearby city, which charged high payments and made you sign contracts. (I've always been grateful to Lady Poverty for saving me from going that route.)

So for a few years, I just read whatever I could find about it. In the process, I learned about different religions, philosophies and traditions. Eventually, we found a non-commercial dojo which taught shotokan, a strict traditional Japanese/Okinawan style. Practice sessions are a mixture of ritual and drill, part boot camp and part high church.

Shotokan was founded by Gichin Funakoshi, an Okinawan schoolteacher, scholar, and calligrapher (Shoto was his pen name, and kan means school). A sickly child, he studied from the leading masters of his day and was a pioneer in introducing the Okinawan art to Japan and ultimately the world. His writings and example have probably influenced my moral and spiritual development (such as it is) as much as the Bible and the church I sometimes attend. Probably more.

In one of his earlier manuals, he wrote the following:

Deep within the shadows of human culture lurk seeds of destruction, just as rain and thunder follow in the wake of fair weather. History is the story of the rise and fall of nations. Change is the order of heaven and earth; the sword and pen are as inseparable as the two wheels of a cart. Thus, a man must encompass both fields if he is to be considered a man of accomplishment. If he is overly complacent, trusting that fair weather will last forever, he will one day be caught off guard by terrible floods and storms. So it is essential for all of us to prepare each day for any unexpected emergency.

Funakoshi drilled his students in ethics and courtesy as much as physical techniques. The result combined strong inhibitions against the use of force with a fierce, linear, all-out fighting style.

His master text, Karate-Do Kyohan, contains a section of maxims for the trainee which includes quotes from Sun Tzu as well as Confucian and Buddhist sources. They are quoted without attribution since it was presumed that readers would know the source.

Here are two well known ones. They are pretty basic but if you only keep two from Sun Tzu, they'd be a good choice:

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.

In other words, the ultimate level of skill in understanding conflict or strife is to accomplish what you need to without it. Understood metaphorically, it also means one should use the least possible energy and do the least possible harm in responding to situations.

Funakoshi also quoted Sun Tzu on the importance of knowledge:

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.

When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.

If ignorant of both your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.

In other words, understanding one's own capacities and limitations as well as those of one's opponent can help one anticipate developments and/or take advantage of openings in a given situation or avoid engagement altogether. Those two sayings taken together are pretty good advice for the most peace loving people, whether they are trying to effect some change or just deal with the ordinary collisions of life.

CITIES FIGHT BACK. Here's an interesting item from Business Week about how some cities are dealing with home foreclosures. It seems that many banks abandon homes after they force out the former owners for not being able to keep up with payments. The abandoned housing causes all kinds of problems. Some cities are taking banks to court to force them to keep up the property, demolish it or otherwise take some responsibility for the mess they created.

THE DIETARY DIVIDE reflects the economic one. The rich get organic and the poor get diabetes.

MASSEY IN COURT. Here's the latest on Massey Energy's most recent legal battle.

STATE OF THE STATE. Here's the text of Gov. Manchin's speech.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DO IT AGAIN

Gichin Funakoshi (1868-1957), widely regarded as the founder of modern karate.

The theme of this week's Goat Rope is endurance, physical and otherwise. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries. It is El Cabrero's thesis that making a practice of endurance activities can pay rich dividends in all aspects of life.

Although they might not be the first to come to mind, martial arts are another form of physical activity that stress endurance.

If you just watch the movies about it, you may get the idea that this kind of training involves having a wise teacher show you new and cool stuff. That may happen on rare occasions but the reality is much more prosaic. It's usually about doing the same basic things over and over and over again, often in the company of three old friends: boredom, fatigue, and pain.

Traditional martial arts training violates every rule of progressive pedagogy. The short version is "shut up and drill," at least most of the time. Old stories tell of students who spent years sweeping the training hall and cleaning toilets before anyone even spoke to them and then spending years more on one technique or kata (a prearranged series of techniques which can be performed solo but have practical applications).

Gichin Funakoshi, regarded as the founder of modern karate do and particularly the Shotokan style, describes the old days of training in Okinawa when karate was still an underground activity and he studied under master Yasutsune Azato:

Night after night, often in the backyard of the Azato house as the master looked on I would practice a kata ("formal exercise")time and again, week after week, sometimes month after month, until I had mastered it to my teacher's satisfaction. This constant repetition of a single kata was grueling, often exasperating and on occasion humiliating. More than once I had to lick the dust on the floor of the dojo or in the Azato backyard. But practice was strict, and I was never permitted to move on to another kata until Azato was convinced that I had satisfactorily understood the one I was working on...

Although considerably advanced in years, he always sat ramrod stiff on the balcony when we worked outside, wearing a hakama, with a dim lamp beside him. Quite often, through sheer exhaustion, I found myself unable to make out even the lamp.

After executing a kata, I would await his judgment. It was always terse. If he remained dissatisfied with my technique, he would murmur, "Do it again," or "A little more!" A little more, a little more, so often a little more, until the sweat poured and I was ready to drop: it was his way of telling me there was still something to be learned, to be mastered. Then, if he found my progress satisfactory, his verdict would be expressed in a single word, "Good!" That one word was his highest praise. Until I had heard it spoken several times, however, I would never dare ask him to begin teaching a new kata.

Funakoshi was a big believer in the value of tempering the body and spirit. In his master work, Karate Do Kyohan, he quoted the ancient Chinese sage Mencius (Mengzi, c. 4th cent. BC):

When Heaven is about to confer an important office upon a man, it first embitters his heart in its purpose; it causes him to exert his bones and sinews; it makes his body suffer hunger; it inflicts upon him want and poverty and confounds his undertakings. In this way it stimulates his will, steels his nature and thus makes him capable of accomplishing what he would otherwise be incapable of accomplishing.

So here's to the strenuous life. Within reason.

WV'S DELEGATION STANDS FOR CHILDREN. Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 225-204 to expand health insurance coverage for children with the CHAMP Act. I'm pleased to say that WV's entire delegation supported the measure. Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito was one of only five Republicans to support the bill. Here's more. Congratulations and thanks to all our representatives.

Yesterday, the Senate passed its version of the bill by a veto-proof 68-31. The Senate version increases funding by $35 B over several years, compared to $50 B in the House version. Reconciliation of the bills should be interesting.

A PAINFUL REMINDER. The Minneapolis bridge disaster is a reminder of the importance of investing in and maintaining infrastructure. This is from Joshua Holland via Alternet:

...skimping out on infrastructure investments in the name of a low tax burden is a triumph of ideology over commonsense, but it goes beyond that. Conservative philosophy stresses limited government, not bad government, and nothing can change the fact that the public sector remains the only way to organize collectively when there's no profit involved. So nobody seriously believes that the the hidden hand of capitalism is going to step in and inspect and repair bridges that are open to the public. When lawmakers don't fund that work, they know full well that it won't get done.

What's more, the evidence that infrastructure investments result in increased economic productivity is fairly conclusive; some studies have estimated that every dollar invested in public infrastructure yields 104 percent return through increases in productivity (PDF).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED