Levels of the Martial Arts Experience
Reprint from Black Belt Magazine, June 1979
Skilled movement and artistic excellence are achieved through discipline in which the skills are most often learned analytically or by mental imagery, i.e., one must think about and visualize what is correct form, balance, etc.. By long practice and observation, one gradually develops an intuition of correct and effective technique which is then translated into movement. Later, all the training culminates in a free and flowing spontaneous execution of technique. This is true of all sports and physical skills.
Martial arts are meditative because focus is necessary to learn them and focus is produced by performing them. This is the initial relation to meditation. As stated above, meditation is not a disengagement from responsibility and practical involvement but rather a discipline that can produce a state of mind in which responsibility and activity are more effectively engaged in due to a greater alertness.
To do anything well usually takes concentration, that is, total attention to what is at hand. If I am distracted by thoughts of injury while I am sparring or of death while in a real combat, I am not totally concentrated in my activity. This is why the samurai warriors of old sought out the wisdom of the Zen masters, who had learned to be alert. This concentration in turn provides a clarity of thought from which wisdom more readily arises.
Alertness and concentration are not achieved exclusively by just sitting and meditating, but such techniques are a common starting point. Once the practitioner has mastered the basic, alert attitude in privacy, he can carry it anywhere. He need not sit in a corner chanting to achieve this.
Once we have reached some level of proficiency in each of the levels, must we stop there? Is that all there is? Any human enterprise is largely determined by the limitations we imagine it to have.
We are the creators of our own horizons within the vague limits of our humanity, of which there seems to be no exhaustive or completely adequate account. If a martial art is to be a means to greater development of the individual rather than just an end in itself, further levels are to be reached.
Levels VI & VII
The sixth level of martial arts is the philosophic. A person must decide what is most important about his art and how he, as a member of the human community, should use it to improve his own life and the lives of those around him. He also must consider how the practice of his art relates him not just to other persons but to being. He must consider that mind/body is an expression of the universe, that all the slow energy that we call matter is the stuff of the universe of which he is made and that his consciousness is part of the process of the evolution or unfolding of being.
The rational attempt at questioning and expanding our horizons yet maintaining a structure which most adequately expresses our personal and group commitments, given the limitations of thought and language, is the philosophic level. Every human activity has both philosophic implications and philosophic presuppositions, e.g., suppositions about what is valuable and what is real. And these suppositions have direct implications for daily activity.
If martial arts are not pursued on a philosophical level as well as on the other levels, one's use of the arts may very well be misguided and counterproductive with regard to important values and reality commitments. Important insights may be arrived at by questioning our motives and attitudes as they pertain to martial arts.
The final level encompasses all the others. It represents the highest level to which any human enterprise proceeds. This may generally be referred to as the spiritual level. Here the term spiritual does not refer to any literal or dogmatic assertions about man's "true" nature nor to some ethereal substance or entities (e.g., soul, etc.) but rather to that in man which is both actual and potential, i.e., what is and what can be realized and the indomitable spirit or drive or tendency which makes the potential become actual.
In his expansion toward this potential, man is always on the way. His enterprises, such as martial arts or any art, science, feeling, or thought are never just ends in themselves with which he identifies and fortifies his personal needs, but rather are stepping-stones or vehicles. One does not seek new techniques to fortify old habits, but rather for genuine personality evolution. There comes a point at which technique is transcended and it is seen as a stepping-stone or preparation for becoming more fully human and alive. If we stop with the perfection of technique, that wholeness is lost.
At this spiritual level the artist does not just contemplate the philosophic dimensions, but puts these insights into living practice and feels himself as an expression of or creation of the universe, cosmic consciousness, basic energy, being, etc.. This is the most significant level for any human activity. It is not necessarily religious in any dogmatic way. That is, this kind of experience requires no set of given beliefs, but rather a feeling for and an acknowledgement of the obvious interconnectedness and holism that both science and religion have discovered and attempted to express in various ways.
