Martial Arts

Ahimsa and the Martial Arts – Part 1

Vikram M R4 Comments

AHIMSA – THE MARTIAL WAY

This article will attempt to expound on why Ahimsa can be truly understood with the practice of the martial arts, specifically armed combat. It will attempt to analyze why Ahimsa has nothing to do with either a lack of violence or a lack of fighting (combat). This article will in essence try to show how Ahimsa can be practiced and expressed most effectively through fighting and how it is a “state of existence during a fight”.

Ahimsa is sometimes translated as “non-violence”. But this seems an inadequate translation. If one is well versed in the vernacular in India, it is easy to realize that “Ahimsa” is the description of a situation which DOES NOT involve “Himsa”. “Himsa” is not “violence”. It is any situation that involves discomfort or any situation that puts you in trouble. Thus, “Ahimsa” becomes “not causing or giving trouble” to anyone.

The popular expression, “Ahimsa paramo dharma”, based on the above definition of “Ahimsa” boils down to “Ensuring you do not cause trouble to others is an important responsibility”. This of course is not a direct translation, more like something that captures the essence of the expression. Martial Arts in its truest form is about strategic positioning (Kurai Dori in Japanese). Being in the right position, in both space and time is what exposes an opening in the opponent or reveals a new weakness in the opponent. The importance of strategic positioning is of course heightened in armed combat considering the human effort needed to cause harm to an opponent is outsourced to a weapon.

Yudishtira learning from Bheeshma. A question asked by Yudishtira during this episode is where the phrase “Ahimsa Paramo Dharma” originally comes from, to the best of my knowledge. Image credit – “Mahabharata 4 – Yudishtira’s Coronation” published by Amar Chitra Katha.

Strategic positioning is in turn a consequence of consistent and concurrent response generation to an opponent. One needs to remember that we consider a “response” and not a “reaction” to what an opponent does. However, it is a response that involves experience and “mindfulness”, and not a result of analysis (which leads to a “full mind” and not “mindfulness”).

To be in the right position is what strategic positioning means. To be in the right position, one must of course MOVE. This movement of the entire body to put it in the most advantageous position in a given situation is what is called Taihenjutsu in Japanese (Taijutsu is slightly different).

Taihenjutsu when layered with strikes (either with fists or blades or anything else), locks, breaks and throws leads to other forms like Daken Taijutsu (any martial art that involves hitting or striking) and Jutai Jutsu or Kosshi Jutsu (any martial art that involves restraining, locking, choking or throwing). Of course Koppo Jutsu is a specialization of Daken Taijutsu. As any martial arts practitioner would know none of these art forms exist by themselves and are always used together, except in sports where specific rules prevent the same for safety reasons. Thus, Taihenjutsu is the base on which martial art forms are built. It is the absolute core.

It is also true that as martial artists advance in age and experience, reliance on strength and speed reduces both due to the aging of the body and the realization through experience that expending any energy more than what is absolutely necessary in a combat situation is wasteful. Only the energy needed to survive a situation and escape might be needed in most situations of conflict. Also, with age, the glee or “high” of a fight generally reduces.

With a reduction in strength and speed, the necessity for a focus on Taihenjutsu increases. It is an inverse proportion. With greater focus on Taihenjutsu, one learns to stay in the safest possible position and thus reduce the probability of physical harm. It also causes opponents to expend more energy while revealing chinks in their armour that can be exploited. This further reduces the need for speed and strength even more (a virtuous cycle).

A key aspect of the martial arts as one learns from highly experienced masters and practitioners is to not try to fight the opponent. This is not to be construed as not doing anything. It is just a reiteration that Taihenjutsu is to be relied upon, until an opening is revealed. It is also a reiteration that Taihenjutsu saves you, even if it does not defeat the opponent.

This tenet of “not fighting” is usually also accompanied by “do not use strength or power”. It is essentially the same thing, focus on Taihenjutsu. But this is easier said than done. Taihenjutsu as stated earlier is about responding to the opponent, not reacting*. So, what does Taihenjutsu entail? And how can one “respond” to the opponent? And how do these two result in not fighting or not being strong? The answers to these above questions will lead us to the notion of Ahimsa we started this article with.

In order to not fight an opponent, one can either get away from the opponent, maybe by running away. Alternatively one can stay in the fight and purely survive the fight, while not doing anything to harm the opponent. The latter helps us explain things better and hence will be our focus going further in this article.

In order to stay out of harm’s way, one needs to move expertly and evade all of the attacks of an opponent. Once this can be done, the next step is to move to a position that causes the opponent a disadvantage. This disadvantage can be the opponent losing balance, getting tired, losing focus or accidentally getting injured or worse. Any of the four outcomes mentioned lead to the opponent eventually losing the fight. Thus, one will have achieved a favourable outcome (not necessarily winning) by letting the opponent defeat herself or himself. Taihenjutsu of course, can be embellished to let the opponent “strike oneself”, “trip oneself” or in any general manner “cause harm to oneself”. But this aspect is not necessary for the purposes of this article and will be left out.

Thus, as seen above, it is possible to achieve the upper hand purely with Taihenjutsu. There is another overarching statement that encompasses both “do not fight” and “do not harm the opponent”. This is, “do not do interfere with the opponent”. In other words, let the opponent do whatever she or he wants. You just stay safe and on the lookout for openings with Taihenjutsu. This statement can be reworded to “do not cause any trouble for the opponent” with the same essence as earlier. Thus, we have the definition of Ahimsa that we started with. But we have seen how it is achieved with Taihenjutsu.

Krishna allowing Kaala Yavana put in all the effort, not getting in his opponent’s way, and yet leading him to his doom. Image credit – “Krishna and Jarasandha” published by Amar Chitra Katha.

The next question is, how does one achieve Taihenjutsu with Ahimsa? The answer lies in the fact that one should respond to an opponent and not react. With considerable experience in the martial arts one learns to “be aware of an opponent” or to be “mindful of one’s surroundings including the opponent” (this is Sakkijutsu in Japanese). This is not easy and requires many years of practice. But when one achieves the ability to be mindful at all times in a fight (preferably at all times in life). Once one is mindful of all of one’s surroundings, staying in the safest position in a dynamic situation even as an opponent is attacking is easier (never just “easy”), as there are in reality only a handful of actions open to any opponent at a given instant.

Once a martial arts practitioner can achieve mindfulness, it gradually becomes easier to read an opponent. Once an opponent can be read, his or her attacks can be responded to, sometimes even with accurate prescience. The need to react to an attack diminishes. Thus, an attack and a threat from an opponent can be nullified. This explains how to switch from reacting to being responsive. The next question that comes up is how does one achieve mindfulness and learn to be responsive and not just react. The answer to this can only truly be understood with experience and a lot of practice. It becomes evident as a revelation while training and not as a worded understanding. But an attempt will be made here to elucidate this in words.

To be mindful, the starting point is to not have a “mind that is full”. A mind is full, in the context of a fight, when one has an agenda or objective, specifically towards the opponent. This is especially true when one has a need to defeat an opponent and not “let the opponent stop being the opponent”. Also, generally, when one conceives of an opponent, the need to overcome an opponent has connotations with the EGO. One needs to achieve objectives in a fight to be satisfied with oneself, sometimes irrespective of the outcome of the fight itself.

The drive to achieve the ego driven and result oriented objective, especially with increasing time in a fight results in focusing on the objective rather than the actual reality of the opponent. This results in the mind being full and prevents mindfulness. This reduces the ability to read the opponent and thus potential opportunities in a fight. This also creates openings for an opponent to exploit. This last point leads to reactions instead of responses. Thus, there is no Taihenjutsu, only a fight.

Based on the above observation, the simple means to achieving mindfulness is to let go of all ego and individuality in a fight. Have no desire or emotion towards the opponent. Just accept the opponent, the space around (terrain) and all other factors. Have no complaints for the situation one is in, have no plan or desire for after the fight. Do not complain when the opponent seems successful in attacks. Accept hits and pain. Do not consider and worry about humiliation and reputations. When all of this is done, the mind is empty and capable of mindfulness. Control your mind to prevent these thoughts. In other words, achieve SELF CONTROL to achieve mindfulness. Self-control is the beginning of the path to efficient and effective Taihenjutsu. Self-control includes both mind and body, but generally begins with the mind as anyone who perseveres in any crisis knows.

We have now seen how Taihenjutsu leads to and is improved by Ahimsa. Also, the path to good Taihenjutsu, is self-control, starting with the control of the mind. Thus, Ahimsa is also a state of mind. One can be in a fight, which might result in a grievous and injurious outcome for the opponent, but that is not due to your intent to cause harm to the opponent. The bad outcome for the opponent is a consequence of his or her ill will which started the fight in the first place. Finally, this means that Ahimsa does not require one to suffer in a fight and definitely does not require one to shy away or run from a fight (except for survival, which is a tactical retreat). The notion of “turn the other cheek” is a fallacy with our understanding (It is only a good strategy in asymmetric warfare where one wants to shame the person slapping. But asymmetric warfare is beyond the scope of this article.).

In essence, “Ahimsa paramo dharmaha” only means that is always right not to have malicious intent towards anyone at any time, not because harming others is wrong, but because it maximizes the chances of the opponent causing harm to herself or himself. This way the chances of one starting a fight diminish considerably and the chances of effective conflict management increase exponentially. In conclusion, survival of life and life styles is of paramount importance and should never be held hostage to a false notion of non-violence, which has nothing to do with the concept of Ahimsa.

Notes:

This article is written with the example of a small one on one fight. But it applies to larger conflicts as well. All of the points above apply to any conflict management (conflict resolution is a bad joke) situation in all walks of life.

*- A reaction is thoughtless, mostly driven by conditioning (Jokin Hansha in Japanese). A response is based on the situation and mostly a “considered” action.

One can replace the word “mindfulness” with “awareness” if that makes one more comfortable reading this article. They are used in the exact same context here.

Expression through obstacles – An exploration of the “ART” in the Martial Arts

Vikram M R1 Comment

The martial arts are a passion for many. This passion is expressed in a multitude of ways; combat sports, gymnastics, dance & choreographed performances, weight training, obstacle races, through movies, TV & YouTube (watching, making videos), through books (reading, writing, fan fiction, narration), through video games, study of history, craftsmanship (smithy, engineering, cosplay) and of course, actual training of the martial arts (with or without weapons, with and without rules1, with physical or spiritual primacy2).

There might be several dichotomies in the range (perhaps limited) of expressions mentioned above. The means of expression of one’s passion for the martial arts by itself will create an opposition or derision for the means of expression of the same passion by another. And this is even before we even consider the range of negative opinions practitioners of one martial art form sometimes display towards the practitioners of another martial art form. We shall return to this aspect of opposition and dichotomy in a bit.

Beyond all this, each of the means of expression mentioned above itself is an offshoot of or root of another art form altogether. By this I mean that writing stems from literature and poetry, dance lends itself to music & song, video gaming stems from a multitude of visual & aural arts, spiritual martial arts are meditation with matter over mind and many other such examples.

But the one thing that is common to all of the above is that they are all forms of expression, with a myriad of objectives. And the flow of expression from inception to objective is the “ART”. This FLOW, is unique to a given space and time3, considering all the human abilities, memories, experiences and their concurrent environment (not necessarily physical). It would be appropriate to call it EPHEMERAL, to emphasize how incredibly unique an expression and the flow of the same is.

This ephemeral nature of the creation and expression of an art for is what brings us to the definition of ART. It very simply could be that “anything that once done can never be replicated (not repeated) is art”. This is one definition that my teacher Shiva once used in class that has stuck with me ever since.

This definition of art means that with each rendering of any piece of art, be it martial, musical, visual (architecture, painting, sculpture etc.) physical (dance, drama, cinema, watching a sport), even if experienced or consumed (food & beverage) multiple times, will result in the consumer or the one experiencing the art form have a different FEEL OR FEELING each time the experience occurs. The feeling itself is a melding of feedback from all human senses.

Thus, art is ephemeral at both source and sink. This opens the door to further generation of art and its experience (or consumption).

To consider the “sink” side of the arts, we see that the “feel” or “feeling left behind” due to the artwork is vital. The fact that a feeling is involved means that the senses need to be triggered, and any sensory trigger is essentially eliciting a reaction. This then could be described as the purpose of existence of any artwork. The purpose of art is to elicit a reaction. This again is something I saw a contributor to the Tor.com blog mention and it has stuck with me ever since.

With all the above in mind it should be quite clear that if we are to consider something a martial art, we need to find the “art” in it. This is circular logic, where we set out from an assumed understanding of martial artists in terms of their ways of expressing their passion, to understanding what is essential to being a martial artist.

We have seen above that all artists (practitioners of art) express themselves and elicit reactions. A painter expresses his or her vision of a snapshot in time & space, an architect designs and creates an expression of devotion, power, grandeur, passion etc. (each a subjective term) in his or her work.

A group of musicians attempt to trigger specific emotions in response to their use of sound and words with specific tones melded in harmony. Dancers, either alone or in groups attempt the same, with or without music. Writers attempt the same by allowing readers to create stories in their minds in response to words strung together in harmony. Film makers do the same using all the above! As do video game designers and gamers themselves!

Clearly then, martial artists are expressing themselves and trying to elicit a reaction, because they are creating “works of arts”, as they are practicing an “art”.

Here, we need to define the tools of the trade for martial artists (or practitioners of martial art), else all works of art they produce gets shoved under a generic term called “FIGHTING” which might lead to a reaction not different from the reaction to the word “VIOLENCE” (the rasa “BHEEBHATSA” or disgust, as the elicited reaction for a large part of the populace, comes to mind).

A martial artist begins his or her expression as a “reaction” to the attack or just any “threatening movement” of another (attacker or UKE4). The initiation of the movement could be by a single or multiple individuals.

He or she goes on to continue a series of movements, until the threat of the attacker or attackers (UKE) is nullified. The fact that no two attacks can ever be the same due to human nature, means that no two expressions of threat nullification can ever be the same! Thus, the “Art” is discovered!

Here then, comes the slight difference in the “expression” aspect where the martial arts are concerned. A martial artist with increasing experience and knowledge of the art form, is to express himself or herself seamlessly, while multiple impediments are triggered by one or many individuals to upset said expression!

Drona moving towards his objective despite all the obstacles from the Pandava Army. Image credit – “Mahabharata 33 – Drona’s Vow” published by Amar Chitra Katha

A martial artist expresses his or her movement seamlessly despite every attempt by the attacker or attackers. The attackers try to prevent the expression as that means they have achieved their objective.

The more seamless the expression, the more AWE INSPIRING the feeling. The less seamless the expression, the more the potential of said expression being classified as “fighting”.

Thus, “seamlessness” is the objective, and hence the art itself.

Abhimanyu in seamless flow despite being severely outnumbered. Image credit – “Mahabharata 34 – The Slaying of Abhimanyu” published by Amar Chitra Katha

Now then, we ask ourselves, how is one seamless movement distinct from another similar movement, when the end result is the same (nullification of the threat)? This in turn allows us to define the tools of the trade for a martial artist.

We saw that the initiation of expression comes from not the martial artist but from an external source, here the attacker (Uke). The response to this attack is the seamless movement. The movement can use a multitude of tools by itself. These are the environment the movement occurs in, use of implements (arms and armour) and the flow of movement (and intent) of the attacker or attackers.

The environment is nothing but the terrain and climate (indoor, outdoor, floor inclination, stairs, water, mud, rain, heat, cold, plants etc.). Terrain and climate can easily be “space and time”. Arms and armour of course include any and all weapons and their countermeasures. The last part is the use of the attacker’s/attackers’ strength, speed, desire for a specific attack and outcome, urgency, hubris and the like.

A variation in the environment, implements and attacker intent is what completes the artwork of a martial artist. It is what can be called the “flavour” or “essence” of any art work by a martial artist.

If a set technique is performed in a specific location, at night, with weapons against multiple attackers, as against the same technique in a different location, without weapons and in broad daylight, the art work comes to life! Nothing complicated there!

A secondary aspect of the art generated by a martial artist is that the feeling of awe it elicits is experienced differently by the attackers, other martial artists and everyone else. The very subtle and nuanced expressions of the movement can only be experienced by the attacker/attackers, and none other. Those who are not martial artists still do feel something, but maybe not the same as that felt by other martial artists, again bringing forth the “arts” in the martial arts!

In order to make the experience more accessible, martial arts can be choreographed, lending themselves to dance and gymnastics, but limiting the awe factor with a lack of belief as in movie, TV and video game action sequences. Alternatively, they can be bound by rules to ease the experience, as in most sports, combat or otherwise.

In both the above “constructs”, the ones creating the experience are still enduring the same awe as ever, even if to enable others to partake of the same, albeit to a considerably limited degree.

Thus then, like all arts, the greatest awe can only be truly experienced by the artist himself or herself, leading one to understand, given the ephemeral nature of all art, that there is only fresh creation, no room for derision. Also then, with enough time and experience (call the two together WISDOM) the need for any dichotomy, that was define earlier, with should itself be nullified. This closes this circle of thought and expression of wordy movement. J

Footnotes:

1 – Martial arts that are converted to sports and those that are not

2 – Consider Tai Chi and Kalari Payatt as examples at either end

3 – No speaker will ever use the same words in the same sequence in two separate renderings of the same thoughts.

No painter or sculptor can ever replicate the same colour or stroke or vision in two separate attempts.

No singer or dancer or gymnast will ever replicate the same tone or move in even consecutive attempts.

No writer will ever use the same words in the same combination in two separate renderings of the same story or situation. 4 – A reference for Bujinkan practitioners