Many years ago, I was in Taipei for a conference at the National Theatre. At noontime, I would go to a nearby park to have lunch, trying to beat both the searing heat that is Taipei in July and the corresponding freezing air conditioning indoors.
The park - New Park - featured lots of outdoor activities. A couple of times during lunch I watched a kungfu group practice. Most of the students practiced in pairs or small groups, except for one American guy. He practiced alone. He did fantastic, almost crazy things - leaping into the air, landing on his shoulder or hip, spinning in the dirt. Within about 1/2 hour, his black practice outfit was brown with dust, and he dripped with sweat. I wrote to a friend of mine at the time that the guy reminded me of one of the crazier students in our home dojo. We had one dojo mate who practiced more, and harder, than anyone else. He was there during my first trip to Japan, along with another sempai. Throughout the trip, he insisted on wearing a happi coat. He tried very hard to speak Japanese, but, since he studied from books and not with an actual teacher, he frequently got things wrong. Our Japanese hosts were exceedingly polite, but they admitted they thought he was eccentric. (In private, they were probably laughing their butts off; at least, I hope they were.)
I asked someone in Taipei about the crazy kungfu practitioner. "Oh, that guy? Yeah, he practices by himself. He's sort of intense. He kept hurting his training partners, so the sifu said he could stay in the group as long as he kept to himself." My stateside dojo mate also was so intense, he kept hurting his kendo partners. He thought it was a normal part of practice. No one agreed with him, but, at the time, we had no regular teacher for kendo. We just tried to avoid him to the extent possible.
What both of these guys - the crazy kendo guy and the crazy kungfu guy - lacked, was perspective. They focused so single-mindedly on their practice that they ignored everything (and everyone) else. In the process, they became isolated from other people, and, at the same, time, did not really advance very far in their respective arts. Both this style of kungfu and (naturally) kendo needed sparring partners in order to gain skill. Since no one would train with either of them, their ability to learn was limited. Their single-mindedness made their practice more about themselves than about one of the ostensible goals of practice; that is, to continue to improve.
Single-minded devotion to budo practice (I am using kendo, a martial sport, as an example, but I could just as easily sub in some non-competitive style) to the exclusion of everything else is just as unhealthy as a colleague I knew who lived for her job to the exclusion of every other type of interaction. One needs to find balance. But what form should that balance take? And how does this problem arise in the first place?
To begin with, we should consider who these people - the crazy kendoka, the crazy kungfu practitioner, and even the crazy overworker - were. They were all Americans. I know plenty more, including a budo teacher who insists on such a high participation rate for his students that they spend all of their free time in the dojo. Their technique is really good, but then, it should be. And everyone here in the U.S. thinks this teacher is somehow superior to others, because of his demanding nature. But here's the thing. No one in Japan trains like that. And Japan is where budo originated. Even the samurai, unless they were training for some imminent conflict, were studying tea, calligraphy, dance, poetry or other art form. Their budo training was part of their job, which, by the Edo Period, also included some sort of government function. The rest of their time was their own. My old Japanese kendo teacher never practiced with us on Sundays, because that was "family time." I remember the American sempai used to blame his wife for interfering with his practice, but maybe he enjoyed that time with his kids. He wasn't crazy - they were.
I lived in Japan for a short time as a student. I was able to attend the dojo more than some of my Japanese colleagues, because I was in a relatively privileged position - no family around, and I was able to set my own schedule. I was also able to observe the other students, who simply came to okeiko whenever they were able. During breaks, they talked about their jobs and their families and whatever other things interested them. Budo was not a profession or an intense hobby, it was a part of their cultural existence; and, as such, was not the sole focus of their lives.
But Americans are different - we long so much for identity that we are happy to latch on and suck dry whatever role life offers us. You can't just be an M.D. who wants to help people; you have to be a surgeon, or at least a specialist, where the intensity and the concentration are potentially overwhelming. And we reward the specialists over the generalists with greater status and more money. The idea of integrated medicine has so far been forgotten it is being reintroduced in med schools. (It took a chiropractor who studied whole body integration to figure out my chronic headaches were originating in my shoulder. The neurologists offered me pain pills.)
It's not for nothing that the only Americans who seem really interested in "work-life balance" are women with children, and the argument keeps getting marginalized for that reason. American workers are what their jobs are; how dare anyone suggest that there needs to be a balance between your job and your life (unless, of course, it is to take on the "other" job of parenting. And the people who do so are considered less "serious" than their single-minded coworkers).* The same thing seems to apply, for some people, to their budo practice. And they disparage other people's practices as being inferior because they are not working as hard.
This single-mindedness affects the prospective students who come into my dojo. They think the students there must be making a major life commitment, and, since they already have lives, they don't sign up because they can't devote themselves entirely to okeiko (thanks, hard-assed teachers who demand lots of practice time!). I try to make them understand that none of us really do that, and it's not necessary, as long as people come as consistently as they can, but they're too American. They have no balance. All I can do is give them the most positive experience I can. I hope they change their minds at some point, but I doubt that they will.
I sometimes get apologetic students who have to drop out of practice for a shorter or longer time, whether for school, family or work reasons. I remind them that our practice has been around for about 400 years and will still be there when they get back. Sometimes I worry that they think I am being facetious, but I'm not. Do I wish they would come to okeiko more often? Of course. But as much as I enjoy practice, I limit my time there. I have other things to do.
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*Yes, yes, the Japanese sarariman's devotion to his job is legendary, but it's based on a Western model. Walk into a family-owned small business in Japan and you get a completely different idea of the work ethic.
