Inflexibility, Part 2

It had been a very long and pleasant evening. We had a nice sushi dinner, sipped beer and sake', and now, here we were, at a little place on the same street as the hotel, having a last round (or two, or three). The teacher's eyes were somewhat unfocused, though his hand was steady as he held his glass. He complimented the progress our fledgling group had made at learning his style. Then he said:

"D (his wife) and I are looking forward to the day when you make this style your whole practice."

Say what?

I wanted to chalk up what he said to how much we had been drinking, but inside me, I knew better. He meant, of course, that we should give up our entire current curriculum, as taught by my original teacher, and focus exclusively on the style he practiced. The problem was not the style - a documentable form that reliably dated back to the end of the 16th century. We loved it. The problem (outside of the rather major point of being a real diss to my teacher's memory - he being only recently deceased) was that the idea of a mono-practice was entirely outside of my training experience.

To be sure, there is precedent for affiliating with a single teacher, and many people still only affiliate with one. Back when, the techniques taught in the training hall were kept fairly secret in order to (hopefully) have an advantage over possible opponents when that actually meant something, as well as enforcing Confucian ideas of loyalty. It was also a time when training halls taught multiple types of personal combat - horsemanship, grappling, swordsmanship, spear, glaive, etc., etc. A samurai's service to a particular house was bound to that house, and training was a part of it. People who wanted to practice with another teacher went "on the road," seeking new types of training, and held loyalty to no one. The down side, of course, was having to fend for themselves, without real employment.

But that was a different time. Nowadays, it's not unusual to find practitioners (including teachers) of multiple arts, both here and in Japan. Of course, discretion is called for - it's bad form to arbitrarily blow off an obligation to one teacher in favor of another (and, if it is truly a problem, then a choice has to be made between them). And, in spite of international membership associations, dojo-hopping in Japan is frowned upon, and not well-tolerated here either. Some teachers are jealous, and some are extraordinarily generous - it's up to the student to figure out whom to study with.

In my own training, we did whatever my teacher or sempai felt like during a given night, whether sword, jodo, empty hand, or the latest techniques someone may have picked up at some seminar the week before. One time we hosted a visiting naginata teacher on her way home from a seminar in Canada (which was really cool). To be honest, we did not always retain the seminar stuff, but it didn't matter. We learned to adapt all the time. No one complained. If we didn't like it, we could always go elsewhere, except, at the time, there wasn't really any other decent place to go. If we were truly interested in something not taught at our dojo, the "unwritten rule" was that it was courteous to have shodan rank at least before branching out. When I told my teacher about my interest in the above-mentioned particular style, he said, "That's okay. Once you know the principle, the technique doesn't matter." He knew me well enough to know that I was not going to abandon his dojo. In fact, it was this generous sensibility that allowed us to host this teacher (among others) to give a seminar with us in the first place.

So, I was rather shocked at the drunken teacher's assertion (I can't really call it a request, because it wasn't one). He was the highest-ranking practitioner of this style in the US, so while I figured he was serious, I decided not to bring it up again anyway. I was hoping that he would be okay with our budo academy approach once he got to know us better.

However, as our training progressed, I began to chafe under some of the rules imposed on students. It was not the monthly per-student charge sent to the American honbu. It was not even the silly uniform gi we had to wear, with its patches sewn on precisely in the same place, or the fact that only students at certain levels could wear certain colors (none of this stuff was done in the Japanese honbu, by the way). It wasn't the regular video-taping of classes sent in for the American teacher's review, which was picky, but helpful. The problem was that some rules were written to control our little group alone, being, as we were, at some distance from the American honbu. Monthly reports became weekly reports. After years of successfully teaching according to my own experience, I was given a standard curriculum and told I had no choice but to follow it.

Eventually, I got tired of adapting to their increasing inflexibility, as did my students. A mild, polite protest produced a threat of expulsion unless we complied with everything. We did not comply; and, while we were disappointed, we were also relieved.

So, I thought this was an anomaly, until, several years later, I was informed by a teacher from Japan, with whom I had had a very long association, of the same thing - that in order to progress further in his style, I would have to exclusively devote myself to it. What struck me odd about this request was that I knew this teacher had other students in other locations who had added his practice to their existing curriculum, with his approval. Moreover, he himself practiced and taught other budo forms. Interestingly, my old group did throw out our teacher's original curriculum in the new guy's favor. Perhaps he thought I would follow suit. I did not. I politely, but firmly responded that my teacher's generosity was the reason why I was able to train with him in the first place, and I had no intention of abandoning that legacy.

Previously, I wrote about inflexible students unable to adapt to new circumstances or techniques. I constantly meet people whose inflexibility limits their options in life and causes them anxiety. And I try like hell not to be one of them. A colleague, who studies calligraphy, gave me a sample of his work, which reads, "ju nan shin" - flexible mind. Good advice for both students and teachers alike.