Last week I met an eminent martial artist for the first time. He is a prominent karate teacher who has been teaching for many years. Prior to this, I had only spoken with him over the phone. Incredibly, the stars aligned and we had lunch together, however briefly.
At one point, the discussion turned to politics. I mentioned that one of my teachers kicks our butts when we see him in Japan, which is wonderful and just what we need. When I saw him late last year, he was gracious enough to take the afternoon off from his job and we had a long, long practice that covered points of technique at a very high level. When one of my students was able to go to Japan for a month, my teacher also worked with him in the same way. However, when he comes to the US to teach a seminar with his American students, he allows them to take shortcuts and generally does not correct them on the same level that he did even with my beginning student. Yet the the teacher of the group he conducted the seminar with has been made the permanent head of the US organization, even though their practice is lacking. Why was that, I wondered?
The karate teacher said, simply, that the difference between me and my students and the other group was what we each wanted from our practice. Our group wants to acquire a skill, perhaps some philosophical insight, an aesthetic and/or historical experience. The other group is interested in power and control. If you have power, he explained, you don't need skill (except, I suppose, skill in maintaining power). He said that we were the more fortunate group, because the Japanese teacher was taking us more seriously as students. The other group wanted to control everything, and he was giving them what they wanted. Just keep practicing, the karate teacher said - you get what you want for your students, and the other group gets what it wants as well.
On a certain level, it made sense, but I was still troubled. It wasn't right, I said, that the mediocre group gets to call the shots for the rest of us in terms of how the organization of American students was run. Of course not, he said, it's a double standard, but that is how it is. If we want to study with the teacher, we should simply ignore the membership organization and its leadership and maintain a direct relationship with the dojo in Japan.
And with that, lunch was over, and I had to go back to work. I am still thinking about our discussion, and pondering if helping my teacher maintain a double standard is really a good idea.
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