“Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment.” - Morihei Ueshiba
All martial artists strive to stay vertical. In the beginning of Wong Kar Wai's movie, The Grandmaster, Kung-fu master Ip Man discusses the ethos of the martial arts and says, “Kung Fu, two words, horizontal-vertical. Make a mistake - horizontal. Stay standing and you win.” To me, Ip Man’s quote distills down what all martial artists are striving to do - live another day. If we can wake up, stand up, and fight another day, then on a certain level we have won. I once read that some 150,000 people die every day worldwide. So, if we are alive, then we are one of the lucky ones. If we are in fact one of the lucky ones, then what should we do with the opportunity that we have? Someone once said, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” To stand for something means to have purpose. I firmly believe that everyone has a purpose. With that being said, I also believe that most people are unaware of their life’s purpose. Some people are lucky and find their life’s purpose by happenstance, but for the rest of us, it requires a lot of trial and error. A martial artist may or may not know their life’s purpose, but they know how to find it. To study a martial art is to practice the art of incremental improvement. One way to understand this is based upon the Japanese concept of monozukuri (物作り) or the “craftsman’s mindset.” Monozukuri is a mindset, spirit, or philosophy of striving toward perfection - "striving" being the operative word, since perfection is not a destination but a journey. One thing that martial arts training teaches us is to have ichinen (一念) or "determined purpose.” Every day, when students and teachers show up to class, they should have something that they are consciously and mindfully working to perfect - this is a determined purpose. They should have a question that they are trying to answer to make themselves incrementally better. This quandary is what guides our training and helps us to make the best use of our time. For instance, let’s say that the last time you were in class, you bumped your head while being thrown. After class, you asked a senior student, and they showed you what you were doing wrong. The next day, you would purposefully try to be mindful of that nuance so that you could use it to perfect your roll. Having the mindfulness of determined purpose helps us to get good at a martial art. Later, we apply that same mindful awareness to other aspects of our lives outside the dojo and this is where training and life start to crossover. Viktor Frankl said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” A martial artist understands this and that is why they are people of purpose and strive to stay vertical.
Today’s goal: As St. Jerome said, “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best.”
Watch the opening scene from Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster