Everything old is new again!

I was spring-cleaning my drafts email box when I came across this.  I believe I probably wrote it (it was undated) when I was not sure I would be able to log on to the blog from anywhere (I was wrong).  So, with minimal cleanup, read on...

People who know me know that I take a cultural- and aesthetics-based approach to iai practice.  This approach does not sit that well with some of my erstwhile colleagues, but that’s okay.  It’s mutual.  I don’t like their swaggering, I’m-a-warrior-and-I-kick-butt-with–a-sword (in a culture of guns) attitude.  However, that does not mean that good technique does not have a place in our practice.  But somehow, Americans, at least, think that’s odd.  It can’t emphasize aesthetics and also be effective, can it?

We are a culture of dichotomy, with so many examples abounding it hardly makes sense to point them out.  To be a Republican is to be a rabid libertarian.  To be a Democrat is to be a bleeding-heart liberal.  If it’s black, it can’t be white.  There is no such thing as grey, or marbling, or gradation.  If you are a Christian, you can’t be Jewish.  Or Buddhist.  And you CANNOT be nothing at all!  I could go on, but no doubt you get the idea.

Many years ago I spent some time practicing with a group that used a martial art style as an aspect of meditation practice.  The teacher was sincere about teaching the techniques, and a handful of students took him seriously, but the rest were simply lazy.  After a couple of practices, it was driving me crazy; watching the few committed people doing all the work of the practice (taking care of the space and the equipment, tending to the head teacher on his visits, and so forth), while the majority just showed up, used the equipment and paid perfunctory attention to the teacher who had flown hundreds of miles to work with them, and went home.  Finally, I said something to one of the senior, committed students.  His reply was surprising: “They aren’t martial artists.  They’re doing this for meditation.  They don’t care about the technique.” 

He could not have been more wrong in making such an excuse.  Meditation is actually seriously hard work.  It can take years of practice to begin to understand what you are doing in meditative practice, let alone to derive some sort of benefit from it.  Anyone who says different is lying.  Playing with a martial art form as some sort of prop to presumed meditative practice is ridiculous.  On the up side in this particular case, the teacher was getting paid, and now and then some students took the practice seriously.  But he faced criticism in the wider martial arts community for his lazy students and their poor technique.

If I claimed my practice was solely about culture and aesthetics and the students lazily sleepwalked through the forms, I would similarly not be taken seriously as a teacher, and my students would be mocked for their lack of technique.  Even though, as John Donohue has pointed out, “martial arts” should be more accurately described as “martially-inspired arts,” a certain level of authenticity and excellence in technique is called for.  After all, what good is your meditation if your technique for pursuing it is no good?  And how can you get inside the head (however minimally) of someone from a time when swords were common objects in certain households without taking the technique seriously, as they once did? 

Again, it’s a paradox that something so potentially deadly is also beautiful.  It makes people uncomfortable, which is one of the reasons I like it.

Bad Church Day

In celebration of Lent, I decided to read Christopher Hitchens' polemic, God is Not Great.  I always liked Hitch's writing, for its intellegence, lucidity and wit, even when I did not agree with him (his support for US adventurism in the Middle east, for example).  As the world knows, Hitchen's primary thesis is that religion is fake, and belief in religious all faiths has caused a great deal of suffering in the world - for centuries.

It is very hard to argue Hitchens' latter point - there are just too many examples to chose from where competing religious groups pummeled each other to death in the name of - whomever.  The Crusades.  The Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants in Europe.  The genocide of Native Americans led, in part, by missionaries (and in Africa, etc., etc., etc.).  Of course, Christianity can claim its share of martyrs as well - at the hands of the Romans or "pagan" believers.  Oddly, Hitch gives Buddhists a pass, more or less.   (His chapter on Buddhism mostly draws on Brian Victoria's work.  It's an ok thing to draw on, but left me a little surprised that Hitch actually did not know that much about Buddhism's imperialist misadventures.) Levels of tolerance or lack thereof exist everywhere there are belief systems, which is to say - everywhere.

I am a pagan (or as my sister has said, "a heathen," though, honestly, I don't know the difference).  To those rude enough to inquire (and in New York, there is nearly always someone who is) I say I am a Presbyterian Buddhist.  This induces one of several reactions - either the knowing snort of someone who gets the joke, or a serious look of incomprehension by someone who doesn't get it, but does not know what to say.  Both reactions, actually, are sufficient to inaugurate a change of subject.

This past weekend, I was visiting my sister in Georgia.  In honor of the occasion (and including that my younger sister would be visiting too), I was informed that we would go to church on Sunday, and that I should bring appropriate attire.

I didn't really care.  I parted ways with the church some time ago, but I would still go to church with my mother when I went home to visit.  It was win-win - it made her happy (win) and it made my dad happy that he was off the hook (win).  And I had decided, after years of college-age rebellion (mostly on the basis of Christian hypocrisy - one of my best friends was gay, and the Presbyterians, in spite of a committee report that suggested that gays were as qualified to be ministers as anyone, refused to turn that into a policy), that I was neither being a hypocrite myself, nor was I making a testament of faith - I was making my mother happy.  She knew my position, worried about my lack of faith, but was nice enough to not say anything.  Just like you can't win an argument with someone of faith, a person of faith can't win one with an unbeliever, either.

I came by my religious skepticism honestly - through a small book in my father's collection on world religions.  Up to that point, I only knew of Christianity and Judaism, and I loved Greek myths, Norse myths, and fairy tales (you could say my interest in paganism started very early).  The book, a pretty dry tome, actually, acquainted me with basic tenets of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism - stuff I had never heard of before.  I don't remember many of the specifics that were in the book (I later did more investigating on my own) but I was impressed that there were competing faiths, and, importantly, that they all thought they were right.

In later years, my father and I had several talks in which he claimed a skepticism, if not outright denial, of religion that would have made Hitch happy.  Unlike Hitch, he didn't begrudge people their beliefs; he did, however, rage about the intolerance that then, and certainly now, seems to be on the rise.  To him, no belief at all was better than hypocrisy.  And no amount of belief could justify cruelty to others.

For myself, I never understood the mutual exclusivity of Judaism and Christianity.  When I was a kid, we had the son of an orthodox rabbi in my elementary school class for awhile.  I thought he was way cool, especially that he got to have most of September off.  We even took a field trip to his house to see the tent in the back yard for Sukkot.  We had ice cream at the end of the visit! 

I tried to convince my mom we should celebrate Jewish holidays.

"We don't," my mom said.

"Why not?" I said.

"Because we're Christian," she said.

"But Jesus was Jewish," I pointed out. 

At which point the subject was changed. 

Back to church in Georgia.  White walls, white people, wooden pews, choir, two (count 'em) ministers, a reverend and a doctor.  The sermon was about how gen-Xers have turned away from god.  Examples included the guy who shot a bunch of civilians in Afghanistan and the guy who shot the kid in Florida and was not arrested.  If only they had known god, they would not have engaged in such violence.

Really?  REALLY?  For all anyone knows, both of them are church regulars.  In any case, I do not feel any sympathy for a pair of individuals with little in common except an obvious penchant for violence, because they have not found god.  What they did find was access to firearms, and they felt no obligation for discretion in using them.

The doctor might have made a few more points, but I had stopped listening.

Later, my sister expressed her dislike of the sermon, saying it was self-serving.  (I would like an example of a sermon that is not self-serving in this era of continual marketing.)  And anyway, it's not their regular church, which is smaller, less wealthy and more integrated. 

So why didn't we go there instead?  Maybe next trip.

What price legacy?

When my teacher died, he left me basically in charge of our dojo.  There was one person who outranked me, but, when he came to okeiko, his job was to teach.  Generally speaking, this arrangement worked out well.  I taught in his absence, which is to say, much of the time.  I thought - I hoped, at least - that we would be able to weather the storm that usually sinks so many places when the founding visionary is no longer around. 

I had a few reasons to think so: we had a sound organization - I managed, the sempai taught when he was there, the yudansha kai made decisions that affected the place as a whole, I handled day-to-day stuff.  My teacher, influencial as he was, had been retired for some time, so we had really been on our own, except when we sought his advice.  I felt that I had learned the things he taught me beyond technique - that iai was philosophy, that certain values (romantic values maybe) went along with the resonsibility of learning such arcane stuff - a sense of generosity combined with a sense of caution, for this was an art form that simply did not suit everyone, just as it never suited everyone when it was taught as a more practical matter (and even in those practical days, there was still, among many people, a larger sense of purpose that dated back centuries).  I felt that we were well-positioned to carry on his legacy, and that we could uphold my teacher's sense of excellence.

When the situation fell apart and I was left alone, I was not only bereft, I felt as though I had let down my teacher's legacy.  However, I knew that if I went back, his legacy would not be upheld in the new order anyway; only three students still training had any direct influence from our teacher, and I was one of them.  The sempai, who took charge and kicked me out, had no real interest in the past.  "I'm done with that," he said, even before I left.  His only interest in the past was using it to show that he should be the one in charge.  Any influence I may have had over the place left with me, surprisingly, since I had trained most of the students, but that is what happened.

That very long, hot summer, I would go and rent studio space and train by myself.  I was forcing myself to continue, even as, on occasion, I could hear my old group practicing in the same place, a floor below me.  In retrospect, it seems crazy, but I was doing what I needed to in order to keep going, in trying to find out what I should do next.

A women's karate group used to meet there also.  I am not a fan of women-only groups, any more than I am of men-only groups, but I used to enjoy seeing the women students come in, some with hijabs, taking off their jewelry and putting on their plain, white gi.  I had a minimal acquaintance with their teacher, who had a wonderful air of understated, but not-to-be-messed-with authority.  During my exile, I ran into her in the women's changing room.  She remarked that she had not seen me for some time, and I told her what happened.  Irritatingly, she did not seem terribly surprised that an older man had felt somehow threatened by a female half his size and had to get rid of her to make himself feel better.  My only regret at that point, I told her, was that I felt that my teacher would be disappointed in me, that I could not carry on his legacy in the place he founded.  "You're wrong," she said.  "The legacy," and she pointed to her heart, "is in here."

That was four years ago, and with the help of friends and fellow budoka, who cajoled me, trained with me, drank with me and otherwise helped me pick myself up, I am in the process of continuing Sensei's legacy.  I am telling this story because I know someone in a similar situation who is still attempting to carry on a legacy in a founder's group after the founder is gone.  No one else there has any interest in the founder's goals or ideas.  And I would just like to say: It's not so bad, actually, to set up shop elsewhere.

Get yer laws off!!

I have never written about anything quite as off-topic as the post below, but I can't help myself:

I cannot believe what is happening in the news.  After 40 years of more or less progress, suddenly there are men at the forefront of our government claiming to decide what women are good for.  It is so all-fronts I almost don't know where to start, but it seems to me that, unlike a Facebook friend's posting on a "secret war" against women's rights we are in the middle of an all-out assault, and I really mean, an assault.

Maybe we should thank President Obama for opening the can of worms, because it certainly brought out the radicalism of some politicians that normally hides behind a smug, rich, male facade.  Just as we were sitting at our desks, quietly trying to support our families and weather the economic storm that is continuing for many people here, while in the background we hear about Europe going under (though you would not much think so.  I was in France and England last year, and I can tell you that English bankers at least are spending their lower tax windfall at the pub every night while Westminster Abbey is mostly closed due to lack of public funds.  But that is another story.)  While we are pinching pennies and trying to pay the bills every month, sinister things are happening in the area of human rights, right here.

President Obama's order under the new healthcare act that women who work at religion-affiliated institutions should be eligible to have coverage for family planning services was like a bomb going off.  And, after the explosion, when the smoke cleared, we could see real destruction.  In this case, we could see righty radicals immediately wrapping themselves in their religious paraphernalia - how dare the government tell churches what to do - it's unAmerican!  Leaving aside for good and all the thought that the individuals involved who work for these institutions have rights too, even if they are female. 

Ever looking for something new to gnaw on, and getting bored with the Republican primaries, the media immediately, in its peculiar, stumbling way, jumped on the issue.  And some of the stuff that came to light is appalling.  As Dahlia Lithwick said in Slate, "Where's the outrage?"  Where indeed? 

Lithwick was reporting on a law that is being passed on Virginia to require ultrasounds for women who are considering abortion before doctors can legally perform the procedure.  Ultrasounds at a very early stage of pregnancy require the insertion of a wand into a woman's vagina, since a fetus at that stage is very, very tiny.  As Lithwick (barely concealing *her* outrage) points out, penetrating someone against their will is, in effect, the definition of rape.  So women who want to have abortions in Virginia will need to submit to being raped with a foreign object in order to undergo a legal procedure. 

Even more outrageous was some of the thinking among the supporters of the bill, that women should have considered that being penetrated in such a way was part of the consequence of becoming pregnant and wanting an abortion.  If they didn't want to be subjected to an intrusive ultrasound, maybe they should not have had sex.  Ha, ha.  Even some of the commenters to Lithwick's article were snarky, and, while they agreed the idea was outrageous, it didn't really resonate with them.  I think, just maybe, the snarkers were men.  Ya think?

What does this sound like?  It sounds like the "virginity tests" that female protestors in Egypt who had been arrested were being subjected to just last year.  Reports of that sort caused outrage here, while in the meanwhile a state legislature was planning to perpetuate, essentially the same sort of outrage - an invasive and medically unnecessary procedure designed to punish a woman for being "bad."

What in hell is wrong with people?  And what is wrong with women for keeping their mouths shut in the face of the developments of the past two weeks?  Women have always to a certain extent pretended to go along and then sort of quietly went about their business.  It was our way of getting things done and avoiding conflict.  But if stuff like this keeps happening, the only option for young women will be to quietly seek out a back alley.  Stand up.  Please stand up.

Lonely Buddha

Last week, I went to the Met to view the exhibit on Japanese storytelling.  I wanted to go before they changed the exhibit this week - they were planning on rolling some scrolls further along and changing some other details.  I will try to go again to look at the new stuff before the exhibit disappears altogether.

Like most New Yorkers, I usually only go to the Met when I have a visitor from out of town.  I did want to see this particular exhiibit, but it took about 2 months before I was able to get there, and then only because I was able to take the day off and take care of multiple things.  I was even contemplating whether I should go to the dentist that day, too (but I didn't), just to give an idea of how overscheduled I feel like I am.   

On my way in, I was drawn to a room not far from the entrance of the Japanese galleries in which some Buddhist figures were on display.  Seated in the center, facing the entrance, was a sculpture of the Buddha with some sort of historical significance.  He was very old, and his hands were missing.  The description noted that he was from Koyasan, which means we have some experience in common, at least.  He was given a fairly dignified setting, for a museum.  The curators even put a few guardian kings at the corners of the room, to give a sense of context, even if in a highly secularized, western-museum-art-history sort of way.

By way of disclosure: I had been celebrating my birthday that entire afternoon, and had consumed more beer than I had recently thought possible for myself at one sitting.  I was in a particularly contemplative mood, let's say, by the time I walked past this particular gallery.  So I walked in to say hello.

It was very sad to see him, sitting there, handless, by himself.  After over 20 years of going to Japan, and seeing truly compelling images of the Buddha and his heavenly retinue at home in their various temples, from the Garan in Koyasan, to the Daibutsu in Nara, to Toji in Kyoto and many other places, he seemed very lonely and out of place.  If he were at home, someone would have replaced his hands, the new ones held in an attitude - of teaching perhaps, or wisdom.  People would have been lighting incense or candles and leaving him coins.  His image would be contemplated by temple-goers as representing someone who might help solve the problems faced in their everyday lives.  He would be seen by people who understand him better than the museum-goers, who, if they notice him at all, are rushing through the gallery on their way to something more interesting and exciting. 

One person's religious symbol as another person's objet d'art.  I wondered how he got there - who would sell such an item, and who would buy it?  It seemed a very cold fate for an image that, even in its dimly lit, climate-controlled setting, still had a sense of spiritual power. 

So I was filled with a sense of compassion, even a little grief, for this damaged wooden statue.  I wanted to leave him a coin, to make him feel more at home, but I did not feel like getting kicked out of the Met, especially since I had not yet looked at the exhibit I had paid admission for.  From the soberness of Monday afternoon, it all seems a little stupid, but maybe I am not a totally lost cause after all.

Handsome is (or not)

I used to think, in my naivete, that good teachers attract good students, and that nice teachers attract nice people to be students.  I still believe this is overall true, but with a corollary: nasty teachers will not really attract nice students, but nice/good teachers will attract not only nice students, they will attract nasty people as well (one could say that nasty people are all over the place - I really don't think nice teachers attract any more than their quota). 

A good teacher might weed out students who don't fit in to her overall philosophy of teaching budo, but it seems that a nice teacher will not (and I think a bad teacher won't care).  Certainly, when I was teaching at my old place, I was careful to guard what I felt the place needed to be, and I had to do it from time to time in the face of my old sempai, who never wanted to deny anyone membership.  I would also give people a try, but unlike him, if a new student was disruptive or rude or bad-tempered, I did my best to minimize his (generally his) involvement, both to protect other people and in hopes that he would take the hint and find a place more suitable to train (i.e., not with us).  To be honest, there were really only three times that we had people troublesome enough to warrant a real reprimand, and in the way things were being run at the time, either Otani Sensei or a majority of the yudansha made the decision.  While I made suggestions, I never did anything by myself. 

As I have pointed out many times, good manners are a top requisite in a sword dojo.  The practice of iaido itself has been overlaid with rituals and politeness in order to deliberately impose a sense of decorum on practitioners.  Swordsmanship is so potentially dangerous as a practice, there is simply little else that can be done.  But, as I have found out, outward manners do not eliminate political intrigue.  Factionalism can take place all the while the proprieties are being observed.

When a nice teacher retires or dies (I have had an example one of each), if the not-nice students are still present, it is a strong bet that one of them will be the successor, in spite of the wishes of the previous teacher.  I have seen this happen two-for-two so far.  The nice people are pushed aside, the not-nice people assert themselves the way they normally do in other aspects of their lives, and the character of the group changes.  The nice people either hang on out of a sense of desperation or vestigial loyalty, or they will leave.  Or they will become more like the new teacher themselves, consciously or not.
One of my naive ideas does still hold true: students will do as their teacher does.  If the teacher is ignorant of the cultural context of practice, the students will exhibit next to no curiosity themselves.  If the teacher is arrogant and thinks he knows more than he really does, the students will do likewise and think nothing of it.  If a teacher is unscrupulous in his personal life (I know, I know - it's not anyone's business), the students will decide that maybe dealing honestly with people is not very important either.

Otani Sensei used to give us little homilies about behavior from time to time.  Generally speaking, all of us, including me at the time, used to listen politely but then not worry about what he was actually saying.  I had a moral education of a sort, so I used to blow off these exhortations the way I used to blow off church attendance as a teenager.  But I now see there was a reason for his mini-lectures.  He was trying to forestall what eventually happened - at least in America, aggression wins out, and the others either change to suit or go elsewhere.

Evolution

Many changes have taken place over the past 3-1/2 years that I have been teaching on my own, and I realized something in the process - as an old friend of mine used to say, "You can't go home again."  It's a cliche' but it's true - even home is not really home once you have really left it.  Sometimes, in fact, it is better than home used to be, but for sure it will not be the same as it was when it was really the only home you knew.

Early on in my independent career, I tried to replicate my past experience (and success, for that matter).  I rented space, hung out a shingle, and I attracted some students.  And it was paying for itself, more or less.  But for various reasons (and not all of them entirely attributable to me alone), the idea did not last.  Some people had to move on, we lost the space due to the studio closing, and the new space cost enough more money than the last one to make the losses significant.  People come and go through a dojo - only a handful will stay.  From a business perspective, one has to keep attracting people so that the "serious" people have a base from which to practice and learn even when attendance becomes thin.   

The next phase, as it were, was to teach at a community college.  An interesting, if not ideal, situation.  Community college in NYC is a unique animal.  It does offer practical-oriented education at a reasonable price; but the students who come are literally all over the map.  It is a credit to the system that the student mix includes people returning to try to finish their education, exchange students from everywhere, and people who are the first in their families to have any education beyond high school.  The drawbacks are also numerous - students can be very young, and sometimes from distressed families - family drama can force a student into an academic quarter off, or even force her to leave college altogether.  As an instructor in the recreation program, I get used to the endless cycle of class schedules and other things.  On the other hand, they can be a great deal of fun.  The women's movement has been very much under fire in the 00's, but one thing these mostly working-class kids have is much more respect for women than the middle-aged men who used to come to our old place.  Their mothers are often heads of households, breadwinners, and no one to mess with.  I am the recipient of this welcome change in attitude.

In addition, most recently, I have started teaching at a Japanese cultural center which was started by one of my students.  It's a nice space, though we frequently have to be careful of the overhanging artwork in the gallery-cum-classroom.  Important to iaidoka, it has a very nice, smooth, and flexible floor.  The students who come in are more of a mix of people - some of the community college kids, some from the outside.  The partners running the space handle publicity, and my job is to show up and teach - a relief to a former dojocho. 

All the same, there are times when I just feel like a hired hand, though of course, I am more than that.  And I miss the cameraderie of the old model, if not some of the individuals.  Recently a former student came to visit (she now lives in Australia).  Naturally we reminisced a little.  After she left, I began to reminisce more - like  the time a group of us went to Canada for a seminar together and got caught by bad weather.  Perfect dojo organization - three people stayed at the baggage carousel to collect our things while two of us, credit cards in hand, went to two different car rental kiosks to get a one-way vehicle big enough to accommodate everyone.  And we succeeded in getting everyone back before dawn. One of my former students behind the wheel, me playing navigator, driving through a night of big thunderstorms of an upstate New York summer while everyone else was asleep in the back.  There were Iai demos that I organized and scripted - the extra practices and handholding of nervous budoka, and the feeling of relief when it was all over.  And Otani Sensei - pushing, cajoling, and ultimately - approving.

Was that me?  Yes.  Is that gone?  Yes.  And since I can't go home again, I am hoping that whatever comes up next will at least be that much fun.