Do Not Get Hit

Aki had attended a very special school. It was one of the only traditional training centers remaining in his country (and unlike anything in the United States, to the best of my knowledge). Aki and his fellow trainees had entered their dojo as children. It was not easy to get in. They and their parents had to pass interviews and tests. And then for years they received only philosophy and strenuous disciplines for self-control. There was no sparring for them. There were no flips and falls. They had been prepared to expect this. They had been told that if they wanted to learn fighting, there were countless dojos whose only requirement for entry was the payment of tuition. And this had been made emphatically clear on the first day when the highest instructor, the one Aki called karate master, gave the orientation.

Each time a new group of beginners formed, Aki told me, the karate master would gather the youngsters at his feet. He would stand towering above them, looking stern, and he would explain that for four years they would practice mental and emotional disciplines. For four years they would learn self-control - four years before they would try any of the physical tricks and tactics that other dojos offered on the very first day. If any of them disapproved of this idea, they were requested to leave now, before the instructors should waste even an hour's time on them.

"Nobody ever wanted to leave," Aki said. "In many years we saw so many new students coming. It was so difficult, but nobody wanted to leave. Sometimes they were put out by karate master's deciding."

The karate master cautioned the new pupils that this first four years was a test period. Every day was to be a test - both inside and outside the dojo. They were to maintain good health, attend school regularly, get good marks, and above all, they were not to fight - not at school or at home or at play or ever.

"If you should ever fight," this teacher had said, "ever even once during these four years, you can change to another dojo. You cannot continue here."

This last admonition had caused a stir in Aki's group (as he supposed was the case with every new class), and the children began talking among themselves.

"What if someone starts a fight with us?" one youngster asked.

"Yeah, some kids are always starting trouble," another added.

"Well, just don't hit first," someone offered.

And another: "Right. We should just explain that we're not supposed to fight."

And someone said something like, "Turn the other cheek."

The suddenly they felt the master's sharp gaze and they fell silent, realizing they had been chattering among themselves while he watched.

"You do not sense my meaning, so you discuss it among yourselves? How useless! Why do you not ask the one who said this? Am I not still here?"

They waited.

"Well, ask me!"

"What do you mean?" someone asked meekly.

"What do I mean by what?"

"What do you mean by saying, 'Do not fight'?"

"I mean," said the teacher, pausing for effect and speaking slowly, "Do not get hit! If you get hit, you fail!"

Aki assured me that his master had explained there was no blame or shame in such failure. He knew that he was testing his young aspirants from the first day on a principle he would need four years to teach. "Something may happen to you which you will think is not your fault. You will blame someone. But I will blame no one. This is because I understand how things happen. Or, you will call it chance. But I will call it your doing. This is because I have great admiration for you. I understand and respect your capacity for self-control. My expectations for you come out of this respect. Perhaps, if you can feel my respect, it will help you on your way."

[...] The one who hits and the one who gets hit are together in that arrangement, I thought to myself. Together, on that inside level they co-create the scenario that is then projected on the outside.

[...] One practices one's posture - one's mental-emotional posture. The first step in Aki's training was attitude control. Before Aki and his young classmates could begin to practice their physical stances, they had to practice their mental-emotional stances. When Aki talked about his episode in Central Park, I was struck by his eminent attitude. It was his unique emotional control that was his special strength, and this strength was apparent in his very nature. But he had practiced it for years. He had learned to be attentive to his attitudes and to the circumstances they created. Attitudes radiate, and subtle or subliminal thought they may be, they invariably invoke response.

[...] it was the concept of self-mastery that was presented in the first four years of Aki's training, before he could start with his physical training - the throws and tumbles that other dojos took from the beginning. More than four years, it seems, would likely be required to develop and perfect it - more than a lifetime, perhaps. But it was as useful as it was exceptional, in Aki's view, to begin with and to build upon the concept of self-mastery rather than the notion of self-defense.

[...] It is not self-defense but self-mastery that the adepts have learned. To maintain and assert the illusory sense of a separate, contending self, to encourage and nourish a preoccupation with adversity and defensiveness - this is precisely what martial arts is not. Self-mastery involves developing a concept of self quite different from the contemporary meaning implied when using the English words "self" and "defense." Self-mastery involves overcoming the illusion of the isolated self.

This basic principle of self-mastery must be what Aki's karate master had in mind when he told his new students, "Do not get hit." Aki's style and philosophy seemed to suggest a sense of collective self - of an interplay between mutual and individual will and intent. Because of the interrelatedness of all things, each "self" is a responsible participant in the collective will of all of life. One way of saying this is that both "hitter" and "hittee" are co-creators of the scenario in which someone hits someone.

Such a thought threatens those who prefer to hold onto a we-they, victim-consciousness point of view. But a we-they point of view is threatening in itself. It will be a co-creation philosophy, rather than a self-defense philosophy, that will provide workable solutions for our contemporary social problems.

[Doug Boyd]
Mystics, Magicians and Medicine People: Tales of a Wanderer, p. 59-63, 65-6