Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

Making friends with Chaos 2

As we enter Randori (literally chaos practice) it is easy to be overwhelmed and feel lost. We are wandering through unknown territory.
Kata and Kihon (including randori sequence exercises, chains, renkzoku waza, etc) indeed all structured exercises that comprise a martial arts form or style, from the informal ad hoc type to the time honored and traditional, offer us a sense of direction and a comfort in “knowing where we are at” in relation to the practice. In relation to offense and defense, in relation to right and wrong, in relation theory and projection; they serve as maps to the territory.
Some maps are better than others, depending on your purposes and your paradigms. The variety of perspectives demand that many maps contradict each other -- some presuppose an attacker with superior speed, strength, skill, and good luck. Others are working out details for overcoming resistance and scoring a competitive point. Still others have theories that are far more esoteric or idiosyncratic than I have been able to fathom (this is either because they are indeed unfathomable to anyone other than their inventor or because my own approach to them has been too cursory and shallow-- time will tell). Some forms specialize in breaking all the rules that others hold inviolable. That doesn’t make them worse or wrong, just different-- rather than focus on normative curves they concentrate on outliers-- both are “true” but both are different. In all this radical variety, one thing is certain, each formal practice specializes in perpetuating their own version of “reality,” and each functions as its own standard for verification and correctness.
Because we spend so much of our time in studying martial arts working within these structures, going on guided tours, maps in hand, sight seeing so to speak; we can begin to mistake the map for the territory and herein lies some of what can feel so uncomfortable.
Please understand, that no matter how complete, detailed, elegant, or well thought out (according to whatever standards of “well thought out” you are using) a Map you are using; the Map by definition cannot be the Territory it describes. However you try to pin down randori and its inherent chaos, and make it a predictable, manageable object that you can understand and reference on your map of kata; no matter how much exhaustive detail or cogent analysis you give to it, the chaos itself , the territory will trump your hand-- it is only a matter of time and probability in action.
This doesn’t make the map useless or pointless as some immature advoctes of the JKD world might argue-- it just recognizes the limitations inherent in the map as a map.
Bottom line is that the discomfort of chaos tends to be proportional to the level of fixation with the orderly map-- If you let the map become a crutch for you, a place to hide behind, or a “measure of all things true and correct” then chaos (which after all is completely inevitable on planet earth) will seem truly frightening.
In my experience, the way forward with chaos, the way out of the frightening dilemma is to practice and cultivate a sort of freedom of mind more in line with the zen school of psychological conditioning than with any of the rationalist agendas-- who all seek to find comfort in the bigger better kata, the sharper keener weapon, the better way to nail down chaos and feel cozy again. Zen invites us to practice turning toward chaos, lean into the scary places and methodically cultivate the centered, calm, moment to moment activity of perception without indulging in much neo-cortex level brain function, a sort of awake quietness, what has been called Mushin (no-mind) in traditional circles -- and then acting and reacting from that internal stance, that kokoro no kame (posture of the heart). This is Musashi’s “no concept or design” and some describe this as “moving with heavenly Ki “or “staying centered in the moment.” Language does not really do it justice (another map/territory problem there) All I can say for sure is that it works if you work it. And that after awhile you might find that from the mushin mode of operating, far from being a scary and uncomfortable experience, it turns out that chaos is very good news.

Dear Nick,

One of your comments on randori has prompted some questions I have been thinking about. I have been reading different posts on Aikiweb for a while that concern "internal skills". According to these posts there are various individuals who have "it" and can teach "it" in a systematized manner. "It" is defined as internal skills.

My questions are as follows:

1) Are these "internal skills" that some people have and most others don't (according to the people who have them) the sharper sword or better techniques that we search for to keep us cozy in the face of chaos?

2) If these "internal skills" are in fact the holy grail of aikido and various other martial arts, then does our school teach them in a systematic manner? Do some of our people (not me) have these skills?

If you have looked at these posts on Aikiweb, then I would value your input. If you have not, then I would not waste my time on reviewing them as there is quite a bit of politics, innuendo, name-calling and the like that you have to wade through.

Thanks you.


S

AC Clarke wrote something like : any sufficently advanced technology, viewed from the perspective of a primitive culture will be interpreted as magic. Laying aside the obvious problem here with defining what counts as a "primitive" culture -- i would say that what goes by the term "internal power" (at its best) in the martial arts world is to my mind nothing more (nor less!) than a complex of highly internalized reflexes that have been shaped according to highly efficent principle and whose effect can produce counter intuitive results that have been intrpreted by some as a form of magic (which is how at its worst it leads to obvious fraud ans snake oil). I should say that I wouldnt go so far as to say that there aint no magic, but just that the internal power stuff is not proof of it-- in my universe, the real magic lives down the street in the depth psychology of the martial arts world.

As to systematic training: The development of "Internal power" requires lots of repitition of good reflexive activity and lots of practice of sensititvity and timing-- and yes we do build these skills systematically-- all folks who have been playing round here for the long haul (decade or two plus) will exihibt "internal power" skills to greater and lesser degrees without even trying-- ironic in the face of those who try so intently to develop such "powers" -- we treat them as side effects-- there are no shotcuts, because there is no end. Such abilities are novel and interesting, but in the end are just what happens after ridiculously high numbers of repitition of good ideas. Of course if you do really high reps of bad ideas you do get good at those too and can develop "other internal powers," and to be fair you can probably get away with it if you are dedicated enough, but finally you wind up at a dead end technically, typically. Your martial arts life gets very flat. To progess we gotta keep going up the mountain.


People do get cozy with these "internal power" concepts as well as with concepts of "empirical rigor" or "real life battle tested" or "proven in competition" or " true to the founder's intention"-- all just more or less useful maps given where you want to wind up. None particularly better in any absolute sense-- all of them can leave you stuck if you fall in love with them.

I don't know if this has anything to do with anything, but this conversation reminded me of something I experienced back in college.

I'd been drawing my whole life, and by comparison to many of my fellow students, I was a pretty good artist. I knew I wasn't the best, of course, but I felt pretty good about myself =) Then one day, in a watercolor class I was taking, the whole class gathered around while our teacher did a "small" demonstration.

He was probably in his sixties or so, and had obviously been using watercolors for decades. He grabbed a paint brush, slopped it in some water, slopped it around with some paints, seemingly grabbing colors at random, and then slopped it all on the paper, all the while talking to us. It looked ridiculously easy and effortless. If anyone else were doing what he was doing, they'd get an unrecognizable mess.

But in literally ten minutes, he had painted this beautiful landscape with a lake, a farmhouse, a multi-colored sunset. He just "whipped it out" like he was doodling on a scrap of paper while talking of the phone! And this thing was miles ahead of anything I could paint. It blew my mind.

Up until then, I'd seen the artwork of masters in texts and magazines, etc., but I never seen a master actually produce a piece of work. Speaking of magic, what that guy did in that classroom, to me, was absolute magic.

It came, no doubt, from years of "ridiculously high numbers of repitition of good ideas". In budo, I've surprised myself from time to time with things that I'll do that I didn't know I could do, things that seem effortless. But then there are things the Nick or Jim or Chuck would do that would just blow my mind. Easy, but miraculously effective.

Someday, maybe I'll get there =)