Kenneth Joseph Mortimer
The
Ascending Way, Palma, NDU, 1 - 1994
K.J.Mortimer, 3rd Dan Judo, 2nd Dan Karate JKA
"Judo
is the most efficient way of using one's physical and mental strength.
With training, one should discipline one's body and spirit by
the practice of the techniques of attack and defence to master
the essence of this Way. And it is the ultimate aim of Judo by
employing these means to build for oneself a perfect personality
and so serve the world."
This was
the famous Last Testament of Dr. Jigoro Kano, the Japanese intellectual
and educationalist who founded the now familiar art of Judo, the
Gentle Way. This consisted of an adaptation of traditional techniques
of unarmed combat to friendly play, leaving the more lethal forms
and the blows and kicks to more advanced students of proven moral
character. Timid pupils become strong and those with brutal personalities
learn self-control, kindness and generosity.
Unfortunately
all over the world the moral aims of Dr. Kano have become empty
words. Judo and the other martial arts are no longer an education,
but spectator sports for professionals.¹ Serious examinations
for grades are often things of the past, so crowds of youngsters
are attracted by a too easy distribution of grades and by the
hope of becoming champions; but they turn away as soon as they
discover that they have neither the spare time nor the exceptional
qualities necessary for outstanding achievement. Classes have
become a wearisome repetition of the two or three techniques most
likely to give rapid results in face-to-face, one-against-one
competition at the next local, regional, national or international
championships.
The purpose
of such great masters as Jigoro Kano, Koizumi and Funakoshi (Karate-do)
was to set their students on a Way of physical and philosophical
formation that they could follow into extreme old age.
But one has only to watch the championships with their lowering
standards, at least at ordinary levels, to realise that the ideals
have gone and only the medal-grabbing remains. Forty years ago
in London, Koizumi, the first apostle of Judo outside Japan, committed
suicide because his honour could no longer bear association with
what Judo had become.
How does
this concern us as believers in God? All goodness in Nature reflects
the goodness of God, its creator and model. "And God created
man to his own image; to the image of God he created him."
Genesis I, 27. So all perfection of oneself is an approach to
God, in order to be better fit to receive him as uncreated grace
and to share in his divine life, the direct vision he has of himself.
Nature perfects itself by evolution, but we must perfect ourselves
by the conscious effort of asceticism. When we prepare ourselves
and pray to be instruments pf God's will, he will in due course
reveal how we are to serve him and "serve the world."
In a modern
context, asceticism seems outrageously medieval. Yet never have
people driven themselves to such extremes of endeavour whether
in super-élite army units, in sport or in adventure, not
for money or fame but for the sheer satisfaction of self-conquest
and achievement. This suggests that the present decline of Christian
asceticism is due to its largely negative nature; it has been
largely a matter of suppressing the physical side of one's personality
rather than of using it. This is no doubt due to Platonist and
Pythagorean influence,² for Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas
both insist that body and soul form one, while divine revelation
insists on the resurrection and glorification of the body with
Christ.
Obviously,
as human intellect and will do not lend themselves to experimental
science, western psychologists have largely ignored them.³
So it is to the Ways of India and the Far East that we must turn
for a body of wisdom about developing the whole human person;
these Ways all insist on body-soul unity to achieve liberation
from everything that impedes the full flowering of the personality.
Yoga is
a school of self-mastery involving an active introspection very
different from the morbid and paralysing introspection in post-fourteenth
century Latin Catholic and Protestant spirituality. Postures and
breathing exercises teach the adept to relax both body and mind,
and to concentrate better on prayer and study by improving the
blood supply to the brain.
Yoga was
certainly long established in India when Prince Siddharma Gotama,
563?-483? B.C., later known as the Buddha or Enlightened, left
the luxury of his father's palace to discover how men could free
themselves from the world of suffering. After finding that the
extreme austerities of the Hindu fakirs were no answer to his
problem, he concluded that the cause of suffering was desire,
attachment to the world and to ourselves. Therefore to be free
and to end the cycle of reincarnation we must reject desire. But
how can we lose desire without having at least the desire to lose
desire?
While
many Buddhists reasoned themselves into knots over this problem,
a more practical and direct solution came when around the year
500 A.D. Indian Buddhism met the Way of the Tao in China and the
blending of the two produced the Way of Zen. The semi-legendary
Indian missionary Bodhidharma strengthened his adepts with military
physical exercises so that they might better stand the strain
of his vigorous methods of meditation. This training also enabled
the monks to defend themselves when on the road, and an association
was established between Zen Buddhism and techniques of combat
that continued into the Japanese martial arts.
Taoism,
which reacted against Confucianism while retaining its humanitarian
aims, taught harmony with Nature, with one's own nature and with
Nature as a whole. The Taoists denied that good deeds and habits
could make a man virtuous. To be pure, a river must be pure at
its source. As Saint Paul said: "and if I should distribute
all my goods to the poor and have not charity, it profiteth me
nothing." I Cor. XIII, 3. Even kind actions may come from
an excessive egotism that they only reinforce. One wit said of
a woman, "She is very kind to her friends; you can tell her
friends by their hunted look." On the other hand some people
without any obvious activity attract friends by an innate goodness
which is sincere and spontaneous.
Let us
see some examples of how desire can be its own enemy. Pain or
indigestion apart, what prevents an insomniac from going to sleep?
Nothing but his own anxiety and his own efforts to go to sleep.
He must do something to forget that he wants to sleep. Franz Werfel
in his book "Song of Bernadette (of Lourdes)" described
the well-intentioned but neurotic efforts of a nun, Bernadette's
novice-mistress, to become holy, and her perplexity before the
spontaneous holiness of her pupil. She failed in her efforts because
holiness means forgetting oneself, the opposite of what she was
doing. For five centuries, Latin and Protestant spirituality largely
forgot this. On the other hand, liturgical spirituality, contemplation
of the divine mysteries through participation, safeguards mental
equilibrium.
It is
clear now that according to the Way of Zen liberation means being
spontaneous, uninhibited and natural. Unfortunately for the heirs
of Adam's sin, being natural is the most difficult thing in the
world. Let a Judo instructor tell his class to face each other
in pairs, hold each other by lapel and sleeve, and then walk about
in a relaxed, upright and natural way. The more he says Be natural!
the more his pupils push each other about like wooden dummies.
He has to exhaust them by violent exercise before they lose their
stiffness.
Taoism
took philosophical form about the fifth century before Christ.
Some of its early masters had personalities strong enough to upbraid
maniacally sadistic feudal rulers to their faces and walk out
alive. But on the whole Taoism suited elderly gentlemen in dignified
retirement from duties to family and State, surrounded by all
the beauty that Nature and craftsmanship could offer. Zen on the
other hand provided hard and prolonged training and discipline
by which "no-mind" might ultimately be achieved.
Needless
to say, one's nature has to be formed, refined and elevated before
it can be allowed to act spontaneously. A notable and easily accessible
example of this formation is that of Zen painting, which reached
its apogee in China with the Sung dynasty, about the year one
thousand. It should be remembered that in China the arts were
the subject of highly sophisticated criticism and appreciation,
with an abundant literature. For decades the aspiring artist would
study bamboo or animals, whittling
them down to their barest essence, with quick strokes of supple
brushes and monochrome ink on wet silk; then, in the agonisingly
short moments of inspiration and communion with Nature in its
subtlest mood, he would catch the wind breathing life into the
fingered leaves and knotted stems of reeds nodding over a rippled
lake, and the flash of sinuous fish darting through floating weeds,
with every scale and with every fold of their mouth and gills.
He could
outline white hares crouching in the snow so that one's fingertips
feel the ridges of bone vibrating with fear under their soft fur.
But the miracle is that representation is not through solid masses
of colour but by emptiness, by the spaces which the brush has
not touched. Christianity has so far never satisfied the Nature-mystic,4
while western Romanticism weakens the will with empty sentimentality.
But whatever the medium of expression, Zen Buddhism puts man in
contact with Nature and forms characters of steel. Our only problem
in appreciating the finest eastern art is that for the Taoist
or Zen artist the essence of art lies in purity of purpose, unalloyed
by the desire of lucre or of fame.
So the
greatest Chinese artists, poets and musicians, practising art
for art's sake in their mountain hermitages, are at the same time
the most obscure. The most sublime painters have left the fewest
surviving works and are known mostly through copies of their masterpieces
or by the eulogies of past scholars and literati.
As a way
of self-liberation, Zen has often lacked the moral altruism of
other eastern philosophies, Buddhist or non-Buddhist. This is
particularly true in Japan, where there are still Zen monasteries
with scholars of international repute. Neither the warrior monks
of the medieval monasteries, nor the modern Tokyo businessman
using Zen to combat mental strain, have been overmuch concerned
with the welfare of others. The constant principle is that purity
and "emptiness of mind", living in the present moment,
remove all fears and inhibitions that are obstacles to perfect
technique and living. The basis of all Japanese martial arts is
to have no concentration of mind and no imbalance of the body,
so as to be in a state of total potentiality, ready to pass into
act against attack from any side;5 also to be fluid and nonresistant,
so that the adversary's force is dissipated into emptiness and
he can easily be thrown or brought under control in the direction
of his own movement. But as we have indicated earlier, the martial
arts can be raised to a high moral purpose. In addition to the
three masters alluded to earlier, Morihei Ueshiba, the founder
of Aikido, calls for special mention. He was a true Nature-mystic
who saw the martial arts as a Way of Love and perfected techniques
to reduce aggressors to reason without inflicting on them injury.
There
are many approaches to God, through his revelation to us, through
the study of his works (Romans I, 20, and Summa Theologica, quaestio
I, Articulus I) and through the arts by which genius lets a higher
light shine into the world. But intellectual knowledge is not
enough. We need strength of character to fight God's fight. Young
people must be able to resist the temptations of drugs and drink
and violence, and of the sexual perversions now offered them in
the place of married love and fulfilment. Forty years ago it was
noted that just as Japanese Catholic samurai had once excelled
all other samurai in knightly courage and devotion, so their descendants
excelled all other Catholics in their zeal for the life of the
Trappists, the severest and austerest order of monks in the Catholic
Church. It is hard for us in the West to know how far these Japanese
Christian monks have cultivated their national traditions and
could impart a training like that given by the Zen monks of old.
But with so many young people in the world seeking self-fulfilment,
one wonders if they might not restore the martial arts to their
former purity of purpose, and give them a yet higher purpose,
to guide those who know that without God life is nothing.
1- Aikido and the Japan Karate
Association and its dependent organisations
still strive to maintain the true martial art spirit. Aikido does
not have
competition. The JKA accepts championships for those suited, but
does not
give them undue importance. Addendum 1999.
2-
Arnold Lunn, The good Gorilla, Hollis and Carter, London P.192
.
3-
J.B.Watson, leader of the Behaviourists, in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, quoted by David Stafford-Clark, Psychiatry Today,
Penguin Books, London, "So far in his objective study of
man no behaviourist has observed anything that he can call consciousness,
sensation, perception, imagery or will..." (David Stafford-Clark,
a religious believer, is completely critical of this view.)
4-
Perhaps the nearest approach to Christian Nature-mysticism is
to be found in the Byzantine tradition with the idea of all creation
reconciled in the Incarnation. The icon-painters felt that they
were representing an all-pervading life, as shown by their exclusive
use of animal and plant colours, without mineral pigments.
5-
In Thomist Aristotelian language, the less the act, the
greater the potentiality.
Other
Articles by K.J. Mortimer:
For
St. Valentine's - A History of Love
Teaching Good English
English, soon an extinct language – It is
being murdered!
To keep the faith – Home is not enough!
Reading
Keats
On
reading a modern poem about Gibran and Lebanon
Manners maketh the man
Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909)
Geoffrey Chaucer is a
poet I feel to be really modern
