Oyama Archives - Ichi Kyu Diary

Water, Karate and Ceremony

A Different Kind of Birthday Party

Today we celebrate my daughter’s sixteenth birthday, and it will be like no previous birthday celebration. Obviously the pandemic has changed how we observe all sorts of events. However, last night, I put together a collage of photos for today’s family birthday Zoom.

While looking through the pictures, few of her birthdays, I realized, were alike. One year, she invited thirty kids from different friend groups and wanted them all to sleep over. We told her that was way too many kids. She insisted, because she’d already told them all they were invited. I negotiated with the grandparents (remember they live in our home, too). We landed on a solution: a two night birthday event. She divided her friends into two groups of fifteen. On Friday night, several came and celebrated. Some slept over but many (mainly the boys) went home. By Saturday evening, the first shift had cleared out and the second arrived.

Another year, she wanted a beach birthday party. It was too cold to swim in the ocean in January, so we had a family celebration then, and her actual friend birthday party took place on the beach, in June. We managed to pack a Porto’s cake into a freezer bag, and had cake with her on the beach. Keeping the candles lit was a feat. A friend kindly provided a tent for the party.

Ceremony and Change

For every birthday, some things were consistent: candles, a cake, gifts. Other things shifted: family and friends celebrating together, or separately, or the place and even the time. We try to be flexible. As she grew, what she needed and wanted changed, too. As a baby, mom and dad could be sufficient. Later, toys, books and sweets mattered to her, and the presence of friends grew in importance. As a teenager, time with friends became paramount. Last night, she had a Zoom movie night with a close friend. Next weekend, she’ll Zoom with the teen group. Today, we’ll have a separate family group.

Likewise, as your skills grow in karate and in life, what you need and want from it will change. Some things will remain the same: karate can remain a stabilizing force in your life, helping to keep your focus on health and well-being. As a child, you may care about trophies, contests and tournaments. When you are a young adult, a sensei might require you to compete in tournaments and ask you to demonstrate your breaking skills for the dojo during holiday events. As you age, however, you may be more drawn to the spiritual aspects of karate: meditation, teaching, perfecting your techniques. Karate provides space for and places importance on all of these things.

What is Karate Outside the Dojo?

During the pandemic, we’ve had to alter our methods for teaching and how we perform promotions. When California first went into lockdown last spring, we took a hiatus while figuring out our next step. We scrambled to keep our community together when financial disaster struck our dojo. Like the schools, we shifted to instruction primarily over Zoom. Promotions, however, were still held outdoors, in parks, along with occasional in-person classes as permitted by the county. We could not make attendance at any in-person event mandatory, since that might penalize members with elderly parents or persons with health conditions at home. Sensei R. researched the effects of the virus and its spread; he encouraged us to purchase sports masks. During workouts, he required thirty feet between participants, and substituted hard cardio work-outs for kumite matches. He found a way for promotions to take place.

Most promotions we performed, in order to avoid attention, required participants to wear work-out clothing. We only wore belts to signify rank. As the pandemic worsened in our area, we had to reduce attendance at promotions to just the persons promoting and the judges.

Right now, our promotions do not look like those we held in the dojo. Gone are the gis, sparring matches, fellow students shouting encouragement, sharing food afterwards and big parties to celebrate our accomplishments. Here’s what’s remained: beginning and ending meditation, perfecting one’s kihon, performing rank-related kata, syllabus and exercise requirements (push-ups, sit-ups and squats), hard physical and mental exertion, the ceremony of presenting an earned belt, both praise and correction from one’s senseis and senpais.

What is Karate Without Kumite?

Kumite, long considered part of the core of Kyokushin, is a shadow of what it was in our current practice. We miss it. However, we would miss lost friends and family members, and peace of mind much more, if we permitted it, and one of our members or their families contracted the virus with devastating consequences as a result.

Water as Spiritual Strength

ocean wave, taken on the California coast

Karate teaches us that life is change. When our dojo joined the IFK, we adopted the wave as our symbol and sewed it into our gis. According to the IFK’s USA site:

The International Federation of Karate logo, worn at the top of the right sleeve of the Gi, has as its central symbol a rising wave, which is taken from Saiha Kata. This wave symbolizes the fact that no matter how great an obstacle or problem you may encounter, with patience, determination and perseverance (Osu 押忍) you can rise above and overcome it.

United States Kyokushin Karate

My daughter, by the way, loves water. When we took her to the beach as a toddler, she charged right into the surf. My husband or I needed to be right behind her to insure she did not go to deep. She loved the ocean and had no fear of it. In elementary school, she decided she would eat no fish because she, herself, must be part fish.

She still loves water and still applies its lessons of perseverance to all she does: learning and teaching karate, programming, academics and her new job as Dungeon Master.

Water as an Ancient and Enduring Symbol

Water is necessary for all life; many cultures use it to symbolize purification, renewal, wisdom, or even the flow or time or life itself; its symbolic nature is unparalleled.

The quote, “Still waters run deep” appears in Shakespeare and, according to Wikipedia, was a Latin proverb. Even the Biblical 23rd Psalm of David refers to deep water: “he leads me beside still waters” (paraphrased.)

Confucius said, “Balance is the perfect state of still water. Let that be our model. It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface.”

Water is also an important symbol for Daoism, the grandfather of Buddhism, including Zen, and karate. It is used to show how the soft (water) can overcome the hard (rock). In the words of Lao Tsu:

“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”
Lao Tsu

Ocean waters eroding islands from land, Oregon Coast

Mas Oyama appears to be referring to Lao Tsu’s quote when he says, “Always remember that the true meaning of Budo is that soft overcomes hard, small overcomes large.”

Since water adapts, changing its shape to fill any container that holds it, it refers to both adaptation and consistency. It takes the shape of any vessel, but remains water. Its essence is not in its shape. When heat or freezing temperatures are applied, it may vaporize or freeze. However, when temperatures are not extreme, it remains in a liquid state. In short, water changes but remains what it essentially is.

Kumite as Challenge

During our last promotion, I repeated something to my kohai that I’d hear Sensei R. say to me and many others: “On this day, you fought yourself. You had to face your own exhaustion, limitations and fear. You fought those and overcame them.”

While we do miss the ability to spar with each other, we do not find obstacles in short supply during this pandemic. The spirit of kumite: the desire to overcome any obstacle, like that ocean wave invoked by the IFK, remains with us.

In karate, and in life, we want to be like water: adapting to what we must, but holding fast to our essential nature.

Lessons from an 82-Year Old Engineer: Persevere and Practice!

Celebrating and Learning from Our Elders

Today, we are celebrating my father-in-law’s 82nd birthday. While my son was on his religious school zoom and daughter prepared to host a Dungeons & Dragons session for younger children, I straightened the kitchen. The bell rang. Still in plaid pajamas, I rushed around to find a mask. I considered running upstairs to grab a housecoat, though it was warm and my pajamas are quite modest. The ringing was insistent. I went to the door. An older man, most likely Armenian from his accent, stood with a large “tree” of fruit dipped in chocolate. The fruit tree had a balloon attached. He asked for my father-in-law. “Richard is asleep,” I told the man. I accepted the gift, and called to the man as he left, “Richard just turned 82 today!”

Who sent this fancy, thoughtful gift? This I wondered while I sprayed it with a diluted bleach solution.

Kindness Remembered

Richard has a cousin in Orange County. She immigrated to the US from Hungary, Richard’s mother’s the country of origin. Actually, she and her husband escaped from Hungary. When they left, the Soviet Union controlled it. Richard’s family helped the young couple get on their feet in the US. Richard has been close to his cousins through his adult life. She sent the gift. During Richard’s birthday Zoom, she told him, “More than anyone else, you helped me adjust to life in this country, and I will always appreciate you for it!”

Richard grew up in Detroit, attended the University of Michigan, and studied engineering. After working in the pharmaceutical industry, he chose to go into academia. During the Zoom, we looked at old family photos that relatives emailed or mailed. We reached one in which he, his wife and cousin were sitting together on a stoup. Miriam was pregnant. He quipped, “I was in a race between the birth of my first child and finishing my doctorate!” Everyone laughed, and one relative remarked, “You can’t lose in a race like that!”

He taught chemical engineering at Vanderbilt University. After retirement, he and Miriam moved to Burbank, to be with us. He currently volunteers at Cal Tech and received a visiting professorship there. He loves listening in on presentations, reviews academic papers for colleagues, and mentoring young undergraduates and the occasional graduate student adjusting to life on campus.

Wisdom in Everyday Choices

In our home, he’s constantly looking for novel uses for objects we might otherwise discard: every room in our contains an old milk jug, filled with water and sanitized with two drops of iodine, in case of an earthquake. Above the sink sits a plastic glass, from a milkshake he purchased over a month ago, that he uses every night as his water glass at dinner.

Miriam and Richard have been married for over fifty years. During his anniversary celebration, we asked them, “How do you manage to stay married for fifty years?” He answered simply, “Every day is a choice. I choose her, and she chooses me, every day.”

Perseverance and Humility

My son’s science homework, the kind of thing his grandfather helps him with!

He has taught me a lot about perseverance. When they first moved to Burbank, he contacted several schools and local community colleges in the area, volunteering his services. He just wanted to keep his mind engaged, and be useful to someone, somewhere. He spoke with our kids’ teachers, and friends of ours who were teachers. Our daughter’s preschool was happy to have him come and demonstrate simple experiment with eggs or potatoes. He counseled the teen son of a friend on studying engineering. As our kids grew older, he helped them with science projects and homework.

However, the colleges he contacted showed no interest. Though he felt discouraged, he persisted, and found individuals to help. My husband had a friend through his job, who had a relative at Cal Tech. They arranged a meeting between Richard and his contact there. The scholar he met at Cal Tech invited him to other meetings, and he found his way to his current position.

Interestingly enough, it was not his ambition to land at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Rather, it was simply his ambition to be useful to someone, and stay engaged in retirement. Sometimes, it takes a significant amount of intelligence to see the value of those right in front of you.

Focus on Your Practice

Persistence and practice go hand and hand. Sometimes I’d wander into his office and notice scrap papers–he only uses scraps, torn envelopes, the backs of junk mail pages–scrawled with equations containing Greek letters. I’d ask, “What’s that?” He would then explain about a colleague who sent him a paper to review, and he was checking the math. If I stuck around, he’d explain about peptides or acids and bases. Like Mas Oyama, he focused on the work.

“I realized that perseverance and step-by-step progress are the only ways to reach a goal along a chosen path.”
Mas Oyama

Our humble karate club is also doing its best to stick to those twin principles: perseverance and practice. During a pandemic, after our dojo closed and we cannot meet in person, continuing to meet using only Zoom has taken some perseverance. Yet we continue our practice.

Break it down and mix it up!

Last Tuesday, Sensei R took three sequences from Kanku and used them as our kihon. He first had us practice uchi uke followed by a punch. Later, we practiced the quick junzuki turns with stabs, followed by blocks and breathing. Finally, he went over one of the more complex sequences, holding one fist above the other to one side, then doing a mae geri (front kick), followed by the simultaneous side strike with both a fist and kick, ending in a twisting elbow-strike to the hand. (This sequence, by the way, is also in Pinan Sono Yon.) He wanted us to break the longer kata down into pieces, and perfect each piece separately.

On Friday, our weapons Senpai, Senpai SL, reviewed some basic nunchuck moves, then we practiced his personal nunchuck kata. He also reviewed one we’d learned with Sensei R. Finally, he asked for suggestions, and worked out nunchuck versions of Tsuki No and Gekisai dai. In each case, he had us first review and practice the kata before attempting the weapons version. The class was fun and challenging, though much of it was review.

Finally, on Saturday, we had a guest instructor, Sensei AJ. She reviewed the hapkido stick moves that she’d previously taught. Like Senpai SL, she taught us to follow a series of steps and punches without the sticks, then we added sticks!

Choose to Practice Every Day

Whether we are pursuing karate for its health and spiritual benefits, or pursuing a career, playing a musical instrument or hoping to finish high school or college, persistence and practice are necessary to achieving most worth while goals.

I wish you persistence in your endeavors, and inspiration to practice! Like my father-in-law, focus on the work, on being a useful member of society. Keep your marriage to karate strong by choosing it daily.

“One becomes a beginner after 1000 days of training. One becomes a master after 10,000 days of practice.”
Masutatsu Oyama

Flowers in Griffith Park, taken on January 3rd, 2021, on hike with karateka kids

Kanku on Halloween, and Vote!

Tuesday Night with Sensei R: introducing Kanku

Last Tuesday, Sensei R discussed and demonstrated kanku kata over Zoom. He also shared the following video:

Kanku is one of the longest kata, but also beautiful and a go-to kata for shodans and high rank karateka seeking a good competition kata

As you will see if you watch the kata, and as Sensei R pointed out, this kata contains over 70 different moves. According to Sensei R, some karate practitioners believe that the Pinan katas were basically pieces of this kata. Early karate instructors, then, had separated it into pieces. While there is no proof that this origin story for the Pinans is true, said Sensei R, Kanku certainly contains many moves from the Pinans.

In fact, many of the more difficult from the Pinans, such as the kick-punch combination as well as the forehead block with strike in Pinan Sono Yon, or the Osai-uke followed by a stab in Pinan Ni, are found in Kanku. Luckily, many of the moves are repeated and mirrored on the other side of the body. However, the kata is still a bear to learn.

I was “monitoring,” or basically doing “tech” for the Zoom session, during that class, so I didn’t really follow along. When others weren’t following, I let Sensei R know or controlled the spotlighting.

The Night Before All Hallows Eve: partying and practicing

Luckily for me, Sensei T covered that kata again on Friday night. We had a very small adult class. It was Sensei T, Senpai DJ and me.

The Youth Counsel planned a Halloween bash/movie night over Zoom. Most of the kids, including a couple who showed up on the regular karate class Zoom, went to the party once they found out about it. This was expected and encouraged. Given trick-or-treating has been discouraged in our area due to the pandemic, these parties have taken on much greater importance. They are a poor substitute for kids getting together in costume and haunting their neighbors, granted. Nevertheless, these events serve as an important way for kids to celebrate and spend time together.

The kids had maybe fourteen separate households attend their Zoom. They played games, gossiped, showed off their costumes and their pets, and watched movies.

Sensei T asked DJ about her last promotion kata, so we reviewed those, then he basically taught me a good portion of Kanku. Given the complexity of that kata, it was great to have that training. Learning it, and I’m sure teaching it, over Zoom was a challenge. Sensei T was careful to demonstrate the turns from different views, so DJ and I were able to understand them. I have enough trouble keeping track of left versus right without having to interpret these through video. However, Sensei T watched carefully and really helped us. I learned so much from that class!

It’s funny: I had considered suggesting we cancel the class, since we knew that the youth party would greatly reduce our attendance. I’m so glad we didn’t. Personally, I really benefitted from that class.

Saturday in the Park: learning Kanku

We met in a local park in Burbank for our Saturday morning class. We’ve been meeting outdoors roughly once a month, and it’s great to practice in person. I admit, though, it’s easy for each of us to forget to social distance, particularly given how excited we feel to be together again. We do our best. When we forget ourselves, usually someone will remember, caution the group, and then we’ll spread out again. During the actual exercise portion, we make an effort to keep our groups more spread out than usual.

Sensei T had me lead warm-ups, and I got us to run in a wide circle as Sensei R had often done with us, do side-shuffles, high-knees, butt-kickers and just generally jog to get the blood flowing. Then, of course, we moved on to my nemesis, stretches, and ended with the shuto ukes, which I love.

I just looked up shuto mawachi uke, and this brought up a video of the Kyokushin warm-up for a Japanese dojo, and the teacher leading it is our style’s founder, Mas Oyama!

Sensei T then assigned students to lead sections of kihon, and we did a vigorous “speed kihon,” in which we just run through the techniques without needing to name them. We did twenties, so we were out of breath at the end.

He then covered Kanku, affording us the opportunity in person to practice what we’d been learning over Zoom. That was a different experience for sure. Sensei T demonstrated the kata for us, too, and his moves are elegant and powerful at once. He is such an insightful and sensitive teacher, too: he gives both praise and correction in a kind, straightforward manner.

A moment in Time: remembering Kanku at the dojo

While driving to attend the class in the park, my mind went to the first time I’d seen this kata performed. One of our instructors in the dojo had been a kata champion, and she’d both demonstrated and taught that kata. As a low-ranking student, I was in awe of her and her beautiful execution of it. Kanku also appeared to me, at that time, as one of those near-unattainable goals. It was so complex, powerful and elegant. How could someone like me learn to do that? I could but watch and dream.

However, this week, I was actually learning it!. Given my mastery of previous kata and approximately seven or eight years of practice, I feel I understand much of it. Now don’t get me wrong: learning it will still be challenging, and I’m sure I won’t be doing flying jumps. While watching Sensei T perform it in the park and on Zoom, I recognized so much of it from our previous studies.

I have a karate New Year’s resolution ready to go: learn Kanku. What do I plan to give myself for the holidays? Knowledge of Kanku!

Halloween Gifts

While the gift of Kanku knowledge, courtesy of Senseis T and R, was perhaps my favorite Halloween gift, our family also received a wonderful “boo bag,” for perhaps the second or third year in a row. We do not know who gave us this thoughtful gift: a friend, a neighbor? We’re not even sure if these gifts came from the same person or persons who “booed” us last year or the year before. This year, two pairs of Halloween-themed socks, along with baked goodies and candy corns, were included. We are guessing our friendly ghost knows two children reside in our household. The bag contained two or more of everything.

The first time we received a “boo” gift, it came with instructions, including a sign to hang on your door, indicating you’d been “booed.” This year, there was simply a card announcing “You’ve been booed!” We made our own “we’ve been booed” sign to put on our door.

S and I also purchased and delivered a “boo” gift to neighbors up the street with three children. I confess we reused the cute “boo” card from our gift, but the fresh baked goods from our local cupcake shop were no re-gift, unless our neighbors dislike cookies! S took them to the door, rang the bell and ran to my car. I hesitated just long enough to see the door start to open, then drove away. S giggled the whole time, sputtering “Hurry Mom! Drive away!” between giggles. I hope they enjoyed their boo gift as much as we enjoyed ours!

Vote! Then find peace with your decision and those of others

And it is November 1st, so go vote! For practitioners of karate of our style, remember Oyama’s three points on why we practice karate:

to be a better person (more fit, healthy but also more at peace)
to be a better family member
to be a better member of society

Karateka strive to be better members of our societies. In a democracy, this includes our civic responsibility to vote. Please vote!

Recognize both your power and your limitations

Also, given all the stressors coming with this particular election during this particular pandemic, I’d like to remind folks of two things.

First, recognize that your vote counts and this is a very important election. Do not underestimate the importance of your vote. Our American leaders, for both better and for worse, have significant influence over world politics. As an American, your decision can influence not only American lives for the next four years, but it can influence people across the globe.

Lake in Colorado; do your best, then do your best to let go

Second, recognize that American politics has its limits. Do not overestimate the importance of our decisions. No president or other elected official is going to single-handedly cure COVID-19 in a day, though they may help or hinder our human group efforts towards a cure. Presidents and other elected leaders are not gods or goddesses. Also, despite what we decide, the sun will rise and set. The earth will rotate and follow its course around the sun. The moon waxes and wanes, regardless of our decisions. Find peace in knowing, whether or not your chosen politician wins the day, and whether or not you are in step with the rest of your nation’s other voters, that these changes are temporary.

As an American karateka, if you have carefully considered your decisions and cast your ballot, you have done your part. The rest is up to everyone else. Let it go now.

Coronavirus, Stress, Mortality and Karate

Sunday October 4th, 2020

I spent perhaps far too much time reading the news yesterday and feeling stressed. So I felt this was perhaps a good topic to cover. Hoping others will find this helpful.

Coronavirus in the News

With so many of our elected leaders and their staff, acquaintances, friends and family afflicted with coronavirus, let us keep them in our thoughts and prayers. This disease, striking the powerful and the weak alike, reminds us of our own mortality.

The AIDS epidemic was the last time our nation faced anything similar to COVID-19 in recent memory. That disease, as frightening as it was, is not comparable. According to a CDC publication from November 1995, total deaths that year from AIDS had reached 311,381 persons nationally. The death rate for infected persons was a frightening 62%. Due to better education, activism and treatments that rate finally started to fall in 1996. Antiretroviral therapy in particular, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, was perhaps the key factor in that reduction.

This year, in the US, roughly 208,630 have died to date with this disease (KFF). The gross death rate is roughly 3 to 4%, so considerably lower than that of AIDS at its peak. However, unlike AIDS, it is highly contagious, and currently we have about 7.44 M people infected. So the likelihood that one might contract this disease is high. Also, similar to AIDS, a person can be a carrier for some unknown length of time and transmit the virus to multiple persons without being aware he or she is spreading the disease. Finally, unlike AIDS, we hope this first year will be the peak.

The rough, lower death rate for COVID-19 is misleading. This disease is opportunistic. It effects the more vulnerable. So the elderly, along with immunocompromised individuals, are more effected. Minority communities as well as those impoverished suffer from it disproportionately.

Stress and Karate

It is well known that a regular exercise practice, as well as mindfulness and mediation, can reduce stress. Karate, with its roots in Zen Buddhism, emphasizes breathing and meditation in addition to rigorous training.

Friday’s Class: Stances and Backwards Kata

Friday night’s class, led by my daughter F, was enough to move my mind from the week’s concerns. Rather than kihon, she had us hold stances for a minute and a half. I found this hilarious video of a karate father demonstrating how to get in a work-out doing this with small children:

Afterwards, she had us practice Pinan Sono Ichi backwards. Concentrating on this certainly focused my mind, at least for the duration of that exercise.

Saturday’s Class: Renraku

Yesterday morning, we met in a park in Burbank for a distance-respecting work-out. Sensei T led the class and called on me to teach kihon. I was a bit out of breath by the end of kihon, though we only did tens. Normally, for adult classes, we will do twenty of each exercise. Yesterday, we had a number of younger children in class. When this is the case, we do fewer exercises.

Senpai T covered the first three IFK basic Renraku exercises. Here’s another great video demonstrating some of the material we covered:

This gentleman demonstrates several more renraku. We covered the 9th and 8th. The 8th renraku is very similar to the 9th, but you lead with a kick, rather than a punch. The 7th focuses on blocks. By request from young Senpai TD, however, we jumped to the last renraku, which is all kicks! Then Senpai T called on us to do it on both sides. That was a challenge. I found a fun video that shows most of the renraku. Go to the end: that’s where you’ll see the kicking one!

This IFK group in Israel is awesome. Fun to watch!

Mortality, Nature and Karate

Queen of the Night opening Wednesday night

While karate certainly doesn’t dwell on our mortality, it does emphasize self-defense for the preservation of one’s life, as well as exercise for health.

Oyama also emphasized practicing karate and meditation in nature. Famously, he spent months honing his skills, alone, in the wilderness. The book I recently finished by him, “This is Karate,” is full of beautiful photos of karateka practicing on the beach, in the forest, in snow or before stunning landscapes. Hence, both our dojo, and now the club, tries to get out in nature to practice.

Queen of the Night

Wednesday night, the night of my son’s birthday, we had a rare opportunity to observe the opening of Jessica’s Queen of the Night plant. I had written about hoping to see this event back in July. We looked for it on the 22nd, and I described missing it on the 23rd.

This past Wednesday night, we watched its progress. By 7pm, Jessica came to watch its opening. She sat on a chair with the plant until the mosquitoes convinced to her leave. I offered to keep watch and send photos. By 10pm, the two blooms on the plant were completely open. They already had a smell then, but you needed to bend down to smell them. By midnight, they released the most amazing smell.

Queen of the Night, no flash, both blooms

I took several photos of each bloom from various angles, with and without the flash. Our outdoor light gave the white blooms a pinkish tinge. Some of the photos came out looking quite abstract, particularly the close-up ones.

The grandparents, kids and D came out with me at various points to examine and smell the flowers. Richard noted that it was a full moon, and asked if these plants primarily bloom during full moons.

Each bloom begins in a teardrop shape and puffs out over one or two days. In the evening, it begins to open slowly, but by midnight, it is in its full glory.

Flowers, Pandemics and Brevity

Like the pandemic, the night flower is also a reminder of mortality, albeit a more glorious one. The bloom is spectacular in size and smell, once fully open, but the fact that it opens just once, and only at night, makes it unusual. So to see it, you must stay up late. It’s quick, too: in just two to three hours, it will open completely. By morning, it has returned to its teardrop, but droops down.

However long we as humans may live, even our lives, when long, pass quickly, when compared with stately, centuries old redwoods or the ancient stars above. All living things die. We are no different. We come into the world totally helpless, and if fortunate, learn to crawl, totter, walk, run, dance, perform karate, walk, perhaps the totter returns, then nothing. All human life is brief. What more impetus do we need to treat each other, and ourselves, with compassion?

Another Approach to Tensho

Friday September 25th, 2020

The passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, one week ago today, saddened my family. She served her country well, was a leader of the highest moral caliber. She set a high bar for the rest of us to follow, as a person of education, determination and ethics.

I want to recount Wednesday morning’s entry. Sensei taught for us Tuesday evening, and I found his treatment of tensho enlightening.

Wednesday September 23rd, 2020

It was inspirational to do another class with Sensei. He taught tensho the Goju-ryu way. We keep the lower body: legs and abdomen, rigid, while the rest of the body remains flexible and relaxed. Here is the way he explained it: everything below your belt-knot is “the mountain,” your solid foundation. Everything above your belt-knot is “the clouds:” fluid, relaxed, but also fast, capable of “lightning” speed for effective strikes. Sensei said this metaphor of the body, a mountain with clouds above, comes from Tai Chi, which, like the Goju-ryu version of tensho, play with slow movements and fast ones, strength and fluidity. And, similar to Oyama’s overall descriptions of circles, points and straight lines in karate, Sensei pointed out that this kata, too, plays with circles and straight lines. It is a kata of contrasts, seeking balance.

He showed a video that went over the bunkai for tensho. The elderly gentleman who demonstrated the bunkai for the kata often followed up a block or grab with two fast strikes. While listening to Sensei’s explanations and watching the video, I realized that the circular move in the kata, following the up-ward, shotei block, was really a shuto hizo uchi strike. Now when I practice tensho, I try to make that move an actual strike, rather than merely quickly moving down for the lower shotei block. The upper shotei, then, is the block. Once that is executed, both the shuto hizo uchi and the gedan shotei are strikes.

Contrasts in kata: rhythm, balance, circular motion versus straight lines

I can’t find the specific video Sensei showed us. When he sends it to us, I’ll post it here. However, while looking for a good example of tensho different from my favorite one posted previously, I came across this excellent karate demonstration from the WFK World Karate Championship of 2012. These women are excellent karateka. While you watch the video, think about speed versus slowness. They are masters of rhythm. Notice when they are fluid and when they are rigid. I love the fact that they mix in bunkai with karate moves. Yes, as you would expect in such a competition, they are excellent showmen. Look for circular motion punctuated with straight lines.

I’d like to think that Ruth Bader Ginsberg would have enjoyed watching this performance of skilled, strong young women.

Two Kyokushin Tensho demonstrations

Since this entry is about tensho, I’ll end with an excellent IFK rendition of tensho that I used while practicing for my black belt test.

I am grateful to Oishi of Cape Town and his dojo for posting this kata:

Oishi of Cape Town

If you are learning this kata, he makes it easy to follow along. Also, his karate is simply beautiful.

Finally, Masutatsu Oyama loved tensho, so I have to include this:

He certainly demonstrates the mountain and clouds, circles, points, straight lines, slowness and speed.

Heat, Fire, Smoke, Survival

Sunday September 13th, 2020

Maybe because last week was a shorter week, the workdays and evenings were extra hectic. Nevertheless, it was meditation week, so I want to share at least one meditation entry. Our daughter has been having some issues with friends. This required more grown-up involvement than usual, so my attention has been there. I hope to do a better job in the future of keeping up with this blog.

The weather in Burbank is playing a prominent role in our lives right now. The wildfires in Southern California have pumped enough smoke into the air that it is not healthy to be outdoors. Ash so coats the leaves of my crepe myrtle that newer leaves are a different color than older ones. Our karate club had discussed meeting in a park, and we opted for Zoom instead. A week ago, we had a record-breaking heat wave to keep us indoors. This is all in addition to the pandemic.

Meditation Entry from Tuesday, September 8th.

I meditated for ten minutes today. It was quiet. I heard a cricket, but no birds at first. One airplane roar overhead. The air is damp–it’s cloudy and feels as if it may rain. We need it. Over the weekend, we had record-breaking beat. I brought two plants indoors: a “volunteer” walnut tree and a Santa Barbara hibiscus. I’d early lost the walnut sapling to the heat. The hibiscus suffered from the heat, too, and is struggling. It wilted and is in shock. Its leaves are brown, wilted and shriveled, but it has very small green leaves.

Last Friday, I hurriedly dug it up and put it in a pot. I feared the coming heat wave would finish it off. Transplanting it most likely added to its stress. However, I feared the 106 degree temperatures on Saturday and Sunday would finish it off.

My husband is a “lead” for a neighborhood website called NextDoor. People post everything from ads for garage sales, inquires on local street name origins and notes about lost and found pets. One neighbor had posted that a couple squirrels in their backyard died due to the heat wave over the weekend. Remembering this during meditation made me think about our own squirrels and birds. I’ve been looking for a little black and white Phoebe that likes our compost. I haven’t seen it today.

The next time we have a heat wave, I should open the shed and put out bowls of water. Yes mosquitoes may benefit from standing water, but other wildlife may as well. The neighborhood wildlife enriches our lives and is certainly worth preserving.

Focus, Phones and Wildlife

I have been having an on-going debate with F about whether or not to give her her cell during on-line classes. Her father and I contend having a phone during class will be distracting. If she texts or receives texts while the teacher talks, she will miss important concepts. Also, if she were in a physical classroom, the students would not be allowed to have cells out during class.

To make a point, I asked S to text F while I read an article out loud. I chose an article from the LA Times concerning the effects of global warming on vintners. She seemed to retain a remarkable amount of information when I questioned her. Then she confessed that S’s text messages had not come through. I aimed the rest of my questions at S. We discovered that he, in fact, had not absorbed as many of the points from the article as F, since his attention was divided.

Then we performed the same experiment on S. I found a different article about big cats being sited more frequently in Chile, also from the LA Times. Covid-19 restrictions had reduced traffic and other human activities, allowing cautious big cats to explore the suburbs. This time, the experiment went as expected: S received a few silly texts from F. Honestly, I was surprised each of them retained as much as they had. However, each also missed one of the major points of the article. I was still able to make my point: divided attention is not as effective as focused attention.

On-line learning and Socialization

F’s high school had Open House on-line this past Thursday. D and I put the question about phones and communication to each of F’s teachers. F’s contention was that, during a normal class, she would be able to talk to other kids in class. During on-line learning, her phone could provide a means to talk to other kids.

At least one of her teachers, her pre-calculus teacher, wanted nothing interfering with her students’ abilities to focus. She suggested a quiet place with no distractions for students. She asked parents and kids to put away phones during class.

Other teachers allowed the use of Zoom or Google chat for students to communicate, or used break-out rooms so kids can see each other and work together. Perhaps her Chemistry teacher, an older, animated gentleman, was most concerned about the loss of social interaction for the kids. He actively looks for ways to help kids connect to each other, as well as to him.

Overall we were impressed with the teachers and how they are handling the restrictions placed on them by the pandemic. We were also not convinced F needs access to a cell phone during class time. Her grandfather was less convinced, and suggested we try it out for a bit. He is often the one suggesting we test out our assumptions, and advocating for giving the kids more autonomy. So maybe the Chemistry teacher might allow the use of a cell during his class.

Finally Karate and Zen

So how does any of this relate to karate and Zen, other than through our lives? I acknowledge that’s the most important through-line. However, I’m towards the end of Oyama’s “This is Karate.” He dedicates a while section to Zen, and begins it with “Karate is Zen” (pg 320, What is Karate? by Masutatus Oyama.) He goes on to describe Zen as that which animates great artists and swordsmen, in addition to karateka.

What does it mean to say that karate is Zen? We could try to define Zen, but, by its own definition of itself, it resists such analysis. However, if we look at descriptions of what it does when it is attained, it may be best to understand it in this manner.

One Spirit to Cleave Stone

Oyama goes on to tell an old Chinese tale about a man who practiced archery late into the night, out in the country. This archer wished to truly master his art, and practiced constantly. One night, under a bright moon, he practiced in the woods. The only sound he could hear was his own arrows. Suddenly, up above the man on a rocky outcropping, the man saw the shadow of a great cat, perhaps a tiger, crouched to spring. The creature growled. The man swiftly drew an arrow, aimed, and let it fly; it hit the tiger. The man returned home.

The next morning, he decided to visit the spot to discover the kind of great cat he had killed the night before. He found no animal carcass, but rather his own arrow, stuck deep in a stone of the nearby crag. According to Oyama, the instant that the man thought his life was in danger, “… all of his spirit was immediately concentrated in the arrow, which he let fly with greater force than ever before ” (pg. 321) Oyama calls this concentration of spirit, or focus, “one spirit to cleave a stone.” He gives other examples of legendary swordsmen who fight with a single-mindedness that also reveal Zen.

Zen and Single-Minded Focus

By Oyama’s description, Zen, or the nothingness that one reaches, is actually a complete, single-minded focus–a focus so strong that one’s self seems to fall away, or be entirely concentrated in some activity, be it archery, swordsmanship, karate or meditation. When we practice karate, we strive to reach that single-minded state, where there is only that specific action: a strong upper block, or the downward force of a shutō-uchi on a brick, for the forward momentum of a mai-geri to an opponent’s middle section.

Zen in karate, then, can be described as the laser focusing of the self into an action such that there is no self. There are no concerns about dinner or chores or friends’ gossip or one’s hairstyle or scratching a mosquito bite on your ankle. The mind is clear.

I could point out to F that it is no accident that we do karate without phones. We do not and send and receive text messages while training. She knows this already. She easily focuses when she stands among karateka. Encouraging her to bring her karate to pre-calculus, or chemistry, or any other challenging school subject is what I ought to do.

Full Circle: Zen, Nature and Our Duty to the World

Finally, Oyama, as well as many Zen masters turned to nature as a source of renewal or inspiration for finding Enlightenment. Oyama, according to his own accounts, left human society for three years to live in the mountains, and at temples, to study Zen and practice karate. Reputedly, he meditated under waterfalls, struggled with wild animals and smashed stones.

I wonder how he would feel if he were alive today and living in California. Record-breaking heat, wildfires and smoke, clearly all made worse by human activities, threaten our health as well as our ability to go out into nature. I’m guessing he would recommend we devote effort to preserving the natural world. One cannot meditate under waterfalls if there are no more natural bodies of water, or struggle with wild animals where there are none.

Macro-micro

Santa Barbara Hibiscus before the heat wave

The two articles we read in our little concentration test were both about the impact of human activities on the natural world. Global warming adversely effected the crops of vintners: they planted crops earlier and those had less time to mature due to the more blazing summers. On the converse of this, reduced human activity in Chile, due to the pandemic, was allowing wildlife to flourish in more suburban areas, and their presence was both studied and welcomed by the human residents.

Within the little eco-system of our yard, I nearly lost my little walnut sapling to the heat. It had turned to a single sad stem with only tiny leaf-buds remaining. I was sure it was dead. However, bringing it indoors during the worst of the heat wave, watering it, and moving it between the shade and sun seemed to help it. It sprang back. Now my little purple hibiscus has suffered an equally sad fate and I’m hoping to nurse it back to health.

Conclusion

We have to do what we can to heal this world of ours. However, small, we can turn off lights when not in use; take care to avoid pesticides or poisons with the potential to kill wildlife when we garden, leave out water for wildlife during a heat wave. And yes, as humans, we are also obliged to look at the suffering of other humans and do what we can to help others. We can donate to charities that feed and clothe those less fortunate, especially the homeless.As humans, we are not separate from the natural world, but part of it. For this reason, Oyama reminds us that karate can help transform us to “better humans, better members of society and better family members.”

Friday August 7th, 2020

Tomorrow is the big day! Today I am not doing exercises, unless we do some during the karate Zoom class tonight. Sensei said our belts will not have IFK markings, but will have something to distinguish them as his style. So that’s interesting.

Karate as a sport started relatively recently. Masutatsu Ōyama founded his own dojo around 1956. He formally named his style Kyokushin in a ceremony in 1957. American football, in contrast, morphed from rugby around 1875, according to the History Channel’s on-line article on football. Shotokan’s founder, credited to Funakoshi by Wikipedia, lived from 1868 to 1957, to contrast with Oyama. For the first time this year, the Olympics included karate. Due to the pandemic, the Games have been rescheduled to the summer of 2021. While karate’s roots may be ancient, karate as a sport is relatively new. Kyokushin, itself, is as young as its founder.

Now that F and I are approaching our shodan tests, I see how fluid, and non-standardized these institutions are. Karate organizations are people, their approaches and interpretations of history. Even Oyama, in his book, sometimes argues with invisible colleagues over the merits of callouses or the practicality of certain skills. He occasionally laments the loss of more rare skills. He saw karate as changing, and changed it, himself.

So karate is international, with a long, illustrious history. Like Zen, small groups of individuals teach others one on one. Instructors and senpais transmit knowledge in a personal way, tailored to kohai. Yes there are standards, but these are subject to constant interpretation, evaluation, re-interpretation, re-discovery and refinements. There are tug-o-wars over authenticity, alongside both useful, and not-so-useful, innovations. Like any living art, it changes, growing up and out from where it started, but it still remains rooted in fertile soil.