Regarding Tygers

I've recently been reading William Scott Wilson's translation of Miyamoto Musashi's Go Rin no Sho ("The Book of Five Rings"). Thus far, I have really enjoyed it because I think Mr. Wilson takes a much more precise approach than some of the "interpretations" done by other authors. I have taken very much from some of the more "elemental" passages about martial arts as a way of training and a way of life, but I must admit, I have taken somewhat less from some of his more technical discussions of swordsmanship.

This is not because of some problem with Musashi's writing. I'm sure what he says is very informative... if viewed in the proper context, which I do not have, since I have never had my hands on Miyamoto Musashi, nor any exponent of his style.

The whole problem makes me think of William Blake's poem "The Tyger".

Let me start by saying that I really like this poem. I think it is a really concise, powerful meditation on the existence of evil in the hearts of men. I think it is one that employs powerful, emotive imagery.

... but there is something missing.

Some people don't know that along with being a skillful poet, William Blake was also a master engraver. He accompanied many of his poems with illustrative prints. "The Tyger", taken from his "Songs of Experience", is no exception.

To give you a bit of background, this poem was penned in 1794. Many people in Blake's native England had heard of a tiger, but very very few (ostensibly including Blake) had ever seen one. If you look at the above image, you'll see that it has all the proper characteristics of a tiger... four feet, stripes, a tail, and claws... but we all agree that something is missing. Somehow, despite the fact that Blake correctly executed the "tiger making" characteristics, his lack of real experience left Blake unable to convey the "soul" of what a tiger really looks like.

The reason I think this is relevant to my discussion of the Book of Five Rings is because I think many of us, as readers, are in a similar position to Blake and the people of England who had never had personal experience with a tiger. While we agree on many of the characteristics, lacking that "real knowledge", our picture is somehow inevitably skewed and never quite right... and this is obvious to anyone that really knows what the real deal is.

Among people who train in a common system of martial arts, have common vocabulary, and have a schematic through which to understand, I think technical discussions in the written word can be enormously helpful... but among people with no common experience, I think there will inevitably be a somewhat substantial "communication gap".

Which leads me to my conclusion. You can't learn martial arts from a book. I've known a number of people who have bragged to me about all the videos they have watched and the books they have read, and I always end up asking them the same question: what have you actually done? Without that direct contact with someone that "knows", and the feedback that comes from it, I do not believe people can learn something as highly technical as a martial arts system.

If real practice is the soil a plant grows in, books are just the fertilizer. (Feel free to insert your own "B.S." joke at this point.)

To Musashi's credit, he realized the same thing and stated as much in his book. He directly states that this his is an "oral tradition", meaning that it has to be passed down person to person - not through a book.

... so at least we're all on the same page.

The Vacuum of Respect

"Budo begins and ends with respect."

I'm not sure if there is one specific person this phrase can be attributed to, but I have heard it regularly through-out my training in Japanese martial arts. When I first heard it, I believed this phrase to be a quaint, kind of aspirational thing about how we should all be nice to one and other. I never really gave it any deep thought. As I have continued to work as a public defender, I've come to believe that it goes a lot deeper than a simple aspiration.

Recently, I told a massage therapist, "I envy you. Everyone is happy to get a massage. No exceptions. You deal pretty uniformly with happy people."

He chuckled about that, because he knows that my situation is different. I do indigent criminal defense work. Whether you are guilty or innocent, you've come to know me because the government wants to take away your freedom. Meeting me is not a happy occasion. I always come to know my clients in the middle of a crisis.

This makes for more than a few angry people. When I first started doing this work, I would get angry right back at them. I would use my education to alienate them, confuse them, and ultimately (and unsuccessfully, I might add) try and camouflage how green I was at my job. Somehow, I inevitably got drawn into their web of anger. Things weren't terribly productive.

Similar frustration ensued with my mentally ill clients. Lacking the training in dealing with the mentally ill, I tried to force them into my very limited understanding of the attorney-client relationship. I appealed to them with logic and reason, and expected them to conform to social norms.

They didn't.

As a result, I would get frustrated. Then I would get angry. Then they would get angry. And again, I wasted a lot of precious hours getting pissed off at people when I could have been helping them.

I have been fortunate enough since those beginning times to get a lot of professional training on how to deal with the angry and the mentally ill, and that training has been reinforced by many, many hours of practical experience in the trenches. I have had to apply this experience when failure meant violence towards me and the people I work with.

Having considered all this things, do you know what works best on these clients? It ain't arm-locks or a rattle-snake glare.

It is respect. Plain and simple respect.

I get a client who comes in unwashed, under the influence, and angry, and I sit him down. I start asking him about the weather and his trip my office. Suddenly I am asking a lot of practical questions - his contact information, his prior record, any issues he might have with probation. Before he knows it, he is sipping coffee like a civilized person and calmly answering questions when asked... all the while looking at me with a confused look on his face, like the world just turned upside-down. Somehow, I can tell that my behavior has short-circuited his brain, which was looking for a target for his anger and now cannot find one.

There is a very particular way to do this. I learned it through getting it wrong many, many times.

Many people seem to confuse manners and respect with submission. I see this as a big mistake. In my experience, when there were little signs of fear or uncertainty in my manners, clients would sense those flaws with their "gut perception" and some of them would turn those little cracks into big chasms and things got out of control.

I only got effective once I was able to be polite without appearing weak.

There is a real art form to being polite without "flavoring" it with fear (scared sixteen year-old working retail) or falseness (bored police officer who is only as polite as he "has" to be). I had to find this balance where I was committed to never being brash, short, or arrogant with my clients (i.e. - really caring about them and respecting them as people with rights)... but having total willingness to introduce their face to the floor if they tried to get violent with me or my co-workers.

I try for "opaquely polite". Neither aggressive nor submissive... just there.

Having been able to do this with clients somewhat consistently for about a year now, I can tell you that the result is this weird kind of "conflict that never is". This type of tempered respect seems to head off 99% of the potential conflicts that could happen with clients.

And while I can't scientifically prove this, I can tell you with the certainty of my gut that I would not be able to do this strange thing if I had not undergone a training regimen specifically designed to push those "fear and uncertainty" buttons in my psyche, as it relates to other people. What's more, I have seen other budo practitioners who can do this same thing. In fact, I can name a number of people who do it way better than me. (I call more than one of these folks "Sensei" because I desperately want to get better at this.)

When you consider the drastic amount that this type of thing can reduce violence potential, I think it becomes one of the most relied upon "workhorses" in a real budo person's arsenal. So now, when I hear the phrase "budo begins and ends with respect", I know this isn't just a trite phrase that looks good in a brochure.

Speaking with Authority

If you've got an astute detective's eye, you can see that I haven't posted anything here in a few years. This absence has been, in part, because my study of martial arts has grown to encompass my speech. Years ago, I deeply enjoyed the sound of my own voice (and its virtual manifestation on the internet). Rarely would a week go by without me cooking up at least two or three essays showcasing my "keen" insight into the universe. A few years in the trenches, working as a public defender, getting married, and most recently having a baby, have made me a lot less talkative. You could say that the world (along with my budo practice) has educated me in how much I don't know. As such, I try not to say much unless I really know about it, and it really has merit.

My time is so precious these days that I can't afford to squander it on "wasted speech". In fact, if you have been reading this blog for a while, you will realize that I have excised some of the more wasteful articles.

I try to ask myself three questions before I say anything:

1. What am I trying to express?

2. Why am I trying to express it?

3. With this medium and this audience, how likely is it that the message will successfully transmit?

That said, going forward, it is my hope that I only write about something when I take the topic and vet it against those three questions. Writing really only comes alive when it comes from the heart and rings of truth.