Month: January 2023

Vali, Sugreeva, Rama, Dropping out, Takagi Yoshin Ryu and Kyojaku jugo Arubekarazu

Vikram M R, , , , , Leave a comment

Remember that part of the Ramayana where Rama has to shoot Vali from hiding, while the latter duels Sugreeva? This sequence brings so many thoughts, what an incredible archer Rama should have been, to be able to shoot one of the duelists, while the duelists did not position themselves in any predictable manner! Or was Sugreeva moving in a specific manner in the duel so as to allow Rama a clear shot at Vali while ensuring he is out of the way of the arrow; how difficult must this have been, while fighting for one’s life and also knowing you could be shot by an arrow intended for your opponent.

A few months ago*, we were applying the feeling and concepts of the Takagi Yoshin Ryu with the Sanshin no Kata and Kunai Waza feeling. This was then added to the Japanese poem about a lack of dualities and how to keep the heart in the place of nothingness to start on the path to wisdom. This was the first time we had heard the poem in its entirety and that too in an artwork created by Nagato Sensei. We had until now only heard the first of the four lines of the poem, “Kyojaku jugo arubekarazu”.

During this training, I observed my teacher Shiva actively let go of all body tension and cause severe problems to the attacker (Uke). He was constantly dropping out of any uke nagashi or movement he made, and this caused serious impediments to the ability and will of the Uke to keep up the attack, and this was clearly visible in a Jutaijutsu like situation. This observation and learning are what prompted the train of thought I am expressing in this article.

So, back to the Ramayana. It is known (I mean from other stories in the Hindu scriptures) that Vali was a warrior of unparalleled strength and skill. He was invincible one on one, there is no doubt there at all. Vali defeated Ravana in single combat so effortlessly, it was not even a fight, just a humiliation for Ravana. And Ravana was as fearsome a warrior as one can imagine. Also, Vali had a boon which rendered his opponent at 50% of his or her fighting ability, and the remaining 50% got added to Vali’s own fighting ability. So, an opponent, the moment he or she chose to become Vali’s opponent was diminished while facing an opponent vastly superior to what one might have been prepared to face.

An aside here, a whole article can be considered to discuss how an opponent’s ability reduces by 50%, from a martial arts perspective, at least from a Bujinkan perspective as I see it.

It is also known that Sugreeva could not take on Vali in a war, where armies would be involved. Sugreeva was a fugitive in Vali’s kingdom and had a band of followers, not an army. Further, he would not have gone to war even if he could, for he did not want a civil war. He only wanted his wife back (held captive as a wife by Vali) and Vali eliminated for the person he had become post the Dundhubi episode. So, it was always going to be single combat between Sugreeva and Vali. Vali himself was never going to shrink away from a duel, such was his justified confidence in his own ability. So, he would not use his troops to cheat and eliminate or capture Sugreeva without defeating him in the duel.

Sugreeva also knew he could not defeat Vali in single combat (Dwand or Dwandwa yuddha). This situation set up the need to eliminate Vali by stealth. We also know that Rama was extraordinary as a warrior. And superlative as an archer. Of course, Vali was a fantastic archer as well, but the duel between him and Sugreeva did not involve bows and arrows. Also, Rama was also really strong, as seen from the ease with which he moved Dundhubi’s skeleton. His strength is also demonstrated when his one arrow felled seven coconut trees. His archery skill is also shown earlier in the Ramayana where he is the best at not only hitting the target but also with the speed of reloading, shooting and restringing his bow.

So, Rama is the perfect choice for taking the shot while the duel takes place. There is also an additional complexity in the situation. Vali and Sugreeva, being brothers, resemble each other very closely. In the first duel between Vali and Sugreeva, Rama cannot decide who to shoot due to this resemblance. Sugreeva has to flee for his life, abandoning the duel. Vali seems to have been satisfied with his victory and his brother’s humiliation and not expanded efforts to eliminate his brother and his band in a great way after this first duel.

With all this as background, let us look at the second duel. This time Sugreeva wore a garland to allow Rama to distinguish him from his brother. Also, I have not heard of, read of or seen any specify strategy planned ahead of the duel that would allow Rama to shoot Vali with minimal risk to Sugreeva. I also do not know if the duel was nudged by Sugreeva by his movements to maneuver Vali to a position where he would be a target while reducing risk to himself.

I also do not know what Vali’s state of mind was or his method of fighting in the second duel. With that said, imagine how incredible this shot that Rama took was. He had only one shot. Clearly the duel was far enough away that he could not distinguish Sugreeva without the garland. The shot had to ensure it hit its target in the midst of a dynamic duel. A fight between two accomplished warriors (Sugreeva was a great warrior, inferior only to Rama, Vali, Ravana and the other superlatives) sees the two always in motion. Neither stands still even if not in contact, to achieve an advantageous position or posture. In this dynamic situation, ensuring that an arrow hits its target before he moves while also being sure that that the arrow does not hit the other person, who might occupy the same position where the target was just a moment ago is scary to even think about!

If the duel was with spears or some other long weapon, the situation might have been easier for Rama because a pole weapon puts a lot of space between the duelists, more than sufficient for an archer as good as Rama. Bur from what I know, the duel was with either gadas (maces) or an unarmed fight (grappling and striking). The gada is not a long weapon and does not put the opponents at a distance that is safe for one from an archer, not to mention unarmed combat, which puts far smaller space between the two.

So, Rama had to not just take a shot, but understand Vali in this specific duel! How difficult is that! If Vali was being nonchalant and letting Sugreeva do the work and fall into strikes or locks, he would have to predict Vali’s nonchalance! If Vali was angry at a second duel in a short span of time and against an opponent who ran away the last time, would he be aggressive and go for the kill and thus ensure a short duel? If this was true, Rama had to be sure to predict Vali’s next attack to take the shot at the right time, considering any delay might spell doom for Sugreeva. And he had to do this with only one reference fight to go by! However much Rama had heard of Vali’s fighting, he had seen him fight only once! So, getting the right shot by going with the flow of a fight he was not involved in; can anyone imagine that! And in a life-or-death situation for his friend; Rama would be considered divine for this ability alone, let alone all his other qualities as a human being! Yes, I am aware of all the exclamation marks in this paragraph, this is how awesome the situation was.

Now let us look at this situation from Sugreeva’s perspective. We do not know if there was a plan beyond Rama killing Vali while he dueled Sugreeva. Sugreeva has received a hiding and barely got away with his life in the first duel. So, what levels of faith mush he have had in Rama to try the same thing again! Imagine this, he was wearing a garland to distinguish himself from Vali. But we do not know what the garland was made of. If it was any regular garland, how much effort would he have to expend to ensure it was not ripped off his neck? And worse still, the garland gave extra holding space for Vali, who was already the superior fighter. Would this be a fatal disadvantage?

Next, how did Sugreeva feel about Rama taking a shot at Vali? How nervous would even a great warrior feel knowing that the slightest error from Rama might end up killing him and not his opponent? Would this knowledge affect his fighting style? And would this change result in Vali realizing something was wrong? And if that had to be overcome, would any change he made to his fighting movement result in a fatal error? Again, this was the second time he was putting himself in harm’s way in a short span of time. If he had a plan and this was also known to Rama, would that even come to pass? What changes in Vali’s state of mind and fighting style would render their plan useless or would that be an advantage?

We can see a lot of questions come up in the mind of any martial artist as we see above. Given all this, both Sugreeva and Rama would have had to go with the flow of the duel and implicitly trust each other’s ability. “NO PRESSURE” in all caps does begin to express the extraordinary danger that Sugreeva was in and hence the expectation from Rama. Did Sugreeva have any sacrificial moves to render Vali open to Rama’s shot? We do not know. But we do know that the plan succeeded. Sugreeva survived, Rama’s shot was successful and fatal for Vali. This achievement in itself calls for reverence not just in Rama, but in Sugreeva’s judgement of people’s abilities and his own skill as a warrior (he had Hanuman in his band after all, that should have been a dead giveaway 😊). Also, as a martial artist, it kind of encompasses the meaning of the “Kyojaku jugo…” poem. Both Rama and Sugreeva had to let go of so many necessities for a PLAN to succeed and trust to just an objective (Vali’s death) and a path (there will be a duel and a shot in stealth at Vali). There could have been no option for any detailing, just a lot of faith in each other and the need to achieve the objective. How incredibly cool is that?

*This article was written back in the beginning of June 2022, before I had started a blog.

The Way of the Beginner

Vikram M R, , 1 Comment

Happy New Year everyone! Considering it is the beginning of a new year, this topic seemed natural. 🙂

How often do martial artists with some experience have trouble training with beginners? Fairly often, I would think. This is especially true as you cannot hurt them initially. Add to this the fact that one is probably trying to demonstrate a defined technique with specific moves to the beginner or on a beginner, and this problem is very apparent.

In the initial years of training any martial art, we all learn set movements and movement patterns to enable us to learn further techniques and concepts of said art. These are the basic building blocks for one to learn the essence of the martial art in further years of training. The basics for any martial art are a consequence of heritage. They originate from its history and evolve over time based on the purpose of the martial art in the time during which they are trained, the societal culture they are trained in and the purpose they are trained for. This is true for both unarmed and armed martial arts.

In some ways, the basics are a form of indoctrination, and they are specific to each martial art form. And the basics for each martial art are a result of the heritage of that martial art, or a lack of it. Martial arts in their advanced stages emphasize unlearning. This is to ensure practitioners know that dependence on the basics in the exact form they were taught as beginners need not work in any real scenario or when some of the rules applied during basics training are removed. If the martial art itself does not emphasize this, many martial artists realize and practice this with experience. This is due to exposure to real life and other martial art forms and modern technology that renders basics ineffective if not downright dangerous. This is the usual antidote to the indoctrination of the basics. This is not to say that martial artists give up on the basics. They practice the same, but know what their purpose is, while also understanding the need for adaptation and not relying on the basics blindly.

An aside, real life and real fight have the same term in the Bujinkan, Jissen, in Japanese (though the Kanji might differ). This is because living a normal life is as filled with challenges as a much shorter fight may be.

One of the things that is taught as part of the basics is how to attack. Each martial art has its own specific nuances of the basic attack. And this basic attack is the initiation of the defined movement set for the basic defensive manoeuvres. This is true as most martial arts have defence as a primary motive. Beginners never get the initial attack right, for they either are not confident of doing the same, or simply do not know how to attack as expected for the basics. It is also possible that they do not want to hurt a senior or the teacher demonstrating the form, or are just not ready to accept that they might be the attacker, even if it is just practice in a safe environment.

Additionally, beginners might have already seen the end result of the set movement or kata or waza and might not want to be at the receiving end of it, for lack of faith in their own abilities to not get hurt or because they do not yet know that the demonstrator can protect them from injury or simply because they are afraid of pain and assumed humiliation (of ending up on the floor in an undignified manner or just plain defeat). It is also possible that enduring the pain in graduated levels is the lesson and they do not want that specific lesson on that particular day at that particular time. In all, a lot of mental blocks prevent beginners from carrying out the attack as expected.

Now, considering that the basic kata is designed around the attack (or a series of those) and its (or their) consequences, the lack of a “correct” attack mitigates the performance of the kata. In this way, the beginner has effectively defeated the kata by not attacking “correctly”. Not attacking correctly is another way of saying, “changing the attack”. In other words, as an advanced practitioner, since you had a preconceived set of movements to execute and could not adapt to the changed attack, the kata either failed or was less than efficient, or plain ineffective. Thus, the advanced teaching of “adapting to the situation” (read changed attack) could not be applied as the objective was to perform a defined kata and that could not happen as the defined attack was not available in the first place. This is a problem that is faced by advanced practitioners while training with or teaching beginners. This problem is also true with not just attacks, but also with basic defensive movements.

Beginners do not attack as expected, and if attacked, do not defend as defined for that specific attack. This means advanced practitioners cannot be effective against beginners without applying the concepts of adapting at all times and unlearning of set kata or waza. In other words, when the attacker has no idea how he or she is attacking (like beginners), one cannot expect to know how to defend against the attack and one must be in the moment to survive the same. This leads us to the purpose for this article.

Sakkijutsu is a key concept that advanced practitioners in the Bujinkan are expected to practice. This is to develop one’s intuitive abilities to the extent that one that does not need to analyse them or mistrust them, and more importantly to act on them. This is not magic, but more a consequence of years of training time. With a lot of experience in physical training one gains an ability for the “feel” of a fight. This in turn helps one to intuit a likely threatening movement and the need to move to mitigate the same. This is not to say one can see the future or be sure where the attack is coming from. It is more a need to change position to protect oneself. Also, this is not true just for the Bujinkan. Nor is it true just in the martial arts. It is relevant for any conflict management scenario in life, beyond physical fights. Many martial artists eventually develop the intuitive ability due to experience, even if it does not bear a specific name in said martial art.

Now consider a scenario where two experienced martial artists are either fighting or training with each other. If both have developed abilities with Sakkijutsu, will they both not be able to intuit an attack from the other, even if not the exact attack, the end of the same and the time of the attack? If yes, how is this loophole to be overcome?

Here is a fun fact. There is story in an old Flash Gordon comic called “The Trial on Mars” which depicts this exact scenario. The image at the beginning and the two below are from that comic.

My teacher sometimes says, “Because you know it, your opponent knows it” and conversely “If Uke (opponent) knows it, you know it”. He is referring to having a specific motive or a planned kata in mind, not every random movement that might happen. This is the problem statement. As a solution, he used to state, “At the very last instant before you carry out the movement, don’t do what you were going to do, or change what you were going to do”. This idea was used as a stepping stone to learn to unlearn waza and kata. This was to overcome your Uke “realizing” what you are up to. Of course, this again is not magic. It is just a gateway to un-conditioning our training and following of the basics. My teacher’s statements are self-explanatory, but doing it in practice was and is very difficult, for it means not only being more nimble in the body, for it takes effort to change what one was doing time after time, but also to tell your mind to stop focusing on a specific action and outcome. As an example, think of all the times a practitioner was confused when you named a technique and did it very differently to what it was originally described as..

If one can achieve the ability to control oneself from doing what one had planned, even if it was a for just a few moments prior to making the move, the statement used earlier changes to, “If you do not know what you are going to do (or can do), how can Uke know what you are going to do?” This is specifically true when training with another practitioner with a lot of martial arts’ experience. And this brings us full circle.

If you can ensure that you cannot know what you are doing, you have taken yourself back to being a beginner, who also has no clue what to do. And just like a beginner can cause you trouble with weird and uncharacteristic moves (“without the indoctrination”), so can you cause trouble for the opponent, despite the years of training. This would achieve the “Way of the Beginner”!

“The way of the Beginner” is how I think of it. It encompasses “learning to unlearn” and “being in the moment” (Nakaima). Before expanding on these two points, I use a quote yet again. I have been told by my mentors that Soke Hatsumi Masaaki has stated in the past that, “techniques will get you killed in a real fight” and that “the book will not fight for you”. What Sensei means in the two statements is that one should not depend on waza or kata as they are not defined and learnt to work in a real fight. These should be used to learn to move one’s body in a manner that is safest in a given situation and perhaps also give one an edge over the opponent.

When one learns to not depend on the kata and focuses on the concepts of the same, that is unlearning and the means to do that was what I referred to when I mentioned the statements of my teacher. Once we are fine with unlearning and no longer expect kata and waza to work, we are forced to be “in the moment”. This is more about mindfulness and doing only that which is necessary in that instant.

We do not need to be in a real fight to do this. Even if we are doing Randori with fellow practitioners or more interestingly, with multiple opponents, we can experience this (as most waza and kata are defined against a single opponent). We can also experience this by training with armour on, for armour negates many attacks. One added advantage of overcoming our own plans and intentions in a movement is that we create an expectation in the Uke’s Sakkijutsu and by changing at the last instant, we are creating an opening against that expectation and perhaps a Suki (opening) in the Uke’s moves. This of course, also might cause an experienced Uke, during Randori, to do something we never thought possible and that in turn forces something that could only happen in that instant, which is the definition of “being in the moment”. This whole back and forth flow with Uke(s), is like a negotiation, which is what the objective is when applying learnings from the Bujinkan, in conflict management in life beyond the dojo.

That brings me to the end to this musing. May we all be beginners to one concept or the other all our lives, at least in the Dojo of the Bujinkan. Wishing you all a happy year ahead and also wishing we can emulate the “Way of the Beginner” in our lives.