Blue Cliff TKD Blog

This is admittedly a slightly strange post for a TKD site, but I’m enjoying some music today and found some videos of great songs that most people don’t know about.  In different ways, I think each of these songs touch the spirit of our training: hope, chivalry, helping others, overcoming evil, and striving to be our best against impossible odds.  That is our training, and I think this is a fun way to look at it from time to time.

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This first song is called “Transit” and is performed by an artist named Richard Shindell.

Lyrics:
The merge from the turnpike was murder, but it’s never a cinch
It was Friday at five, and no one was giving an inch
They squeezed and they edged and they glared
Half them clearly impaired by rage or exhaustion
The rest were just touchy as hell

Somewhere near Paterson everything slowed to a crawl
The all-news station was thanking someone for the call
It’s a van from St. Agnes’s choir
There’s a nun out there changing a tire
By the time they got by her, tempers were out of control

So they all hit the gas in a dash for position
Bobing and weaving and flashing their highbeams
Fliping the bird and screaming obscenities
A well-insured hoard hell-bent on Saturday

And so they continued west-bound and into the sun
Law and decorum constraining nary a one
By then it was devil-may-care
Not one even vaguely aware
That they had come all the way to the Delaware Water Gap

But how had it happened? They had all missed their exits
How had it happened? Was it some kind of vortex?
And in they all went, bumper to bumper
Faster and faster, no sign of a trooper
In they all went, like sheep to the slaughter
Bankers and carpenters, doctors and lawyers
And in they all went, families in minivans
Ashcroft republicans, weekend militiamen
They followed the river, and rounded the bend
Between minsi and tammany and into their destiny
Lying in ambush right their before them
The angry old sun right on the horizon

Sister Maria tightened the bolts of the spare
She said a quick prayer and put the old van into gear
Thank God that the traffic was light
If she hurried she might not be late
For that evening’s performance at the state penetentiary

She entered the common room and their was her choir
Altos and baritones, basses and tenors
Car thieves and crack dealers, mobsters and murderers
Husbands and sons, fathers and brothers
And so it began in glorious harmony
Softly and Tenderly – calling for you and me
With the interstate whining way off in the distance
And the sun going down through the bars of the prison
They poured out their souls, they poured out their memories
They poured out their hopes for what’s left of eternity
To sister Maria – her soul like a prism
For the light of forgiveness on all of their faces

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And here’s a strange one by Damien Rice with Lisa Hannigan called “Eskimo Friend.” Supposedly Rice was having writers block and wrote this song about a friend he had who, he thought, looked like an Eskimo.

Lyrics:
Tiredness fuels empty thoughts
I find myself disposed
Brightness fills empty space
In search of inspiration
Harder now with higher speed
Washing in on top of me
So I look to my eskimo friend
I look to my eskimo friend
I look to my eskimo friend
When I’m down, down, down.

Rain it wets muddy roads
I find myself exposed
Tapping doors, but irritate
In search of destination
Harder now with higher speed
Washing in on top of me
So I look to my eskimo friend
I look to my eskimo friend
I look to my eskimo friend
When I’m down, down, down.

When I’m down, down, down.
When I’m down, down, down.

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Josh Ritter’s “Girl in the War” is a beautiful song that is wide open to interpretation. I personally view it as an anti-war song with layers upon layers of meaning, but I’ll let it stand on its own. If you aren’t familiar with Josh Ritter, check him out! One of the great writers out there today.

Lyrics:
Peter said to Paul,
“You know all those words that we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go”
But now talkin’ to God is Laurel beggin’ Hardy for a gun
I gotta girl in the war, man I wonder what it is we done

Paul said to Petey
“You gotta rock yourself a little harder;
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire”
And I got a girl in the war, Paul the only thing I know to do
Is turn up the music and pray that she makes it through

Because the keys to the kingdom got locked inside the kingdom
And the angels fly around in there, but we can’t see them
And I gotta girl in the war, Paul I know that they can hear me yell
If they can’t find a way to help, they can go to Hell
If they can’t find a way to help her, they can go to Hell

Paul said to Petey “you gotta rock yourself a little harder;
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire”
But I gotta girl in the war, Paul her eyes are like champagne
They sparkle, bubble over, in the morning all you got is rain
Sparkle, bubble over, in the morning all you got is rain
They sparkle, bubble over, in the morning all you got is rain

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And an old Bob Dylan song made new again by Buddy Miller: “With God on Our Side.” It was originally written about the events of the sixties, but has taken on new meaning with time. Miller is often an inspirational gospel singer: see his album Universal United House of Prayer (which this is on). For me, however, this protest song is the most inspirational spiritual song because he is talking about standing up against taking the name of the Lord in vain in the truest sense of the commandment. That’s my interpretation: see what you think. The slideshow that accompanies the video is stunning and moving; I hope you enjoy it.

Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

I’ve learned to hate others
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And except it all bravely
With God on my side

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they died
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

But now we got weapons
Of chemical dust
If fight them we’re forced to
Then fight them we must
One push of the button
It shocked the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side.

In a many dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
My words fill they air
They fall to the floor
That if God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war.

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And a really beautiful song from The Mountain Goats that has seen me through many a dark day. The video’s imagery is a bit weird and dark, but I think the total package works pretty well. The song, in fact, is kind of dark, but it is about holding hope through the darkest times.

Lyrics:
I broke free on a Saturday morning
I put the pedal to the floor
Headed north on mills avenue
And listened to the engine roar
My broken house behind me
And good things ahead
A girl named Kathy
Wants a little of my time
Six cylinders underneath the hood
Crashing and kicking
Aha! Listen to the engine whine

I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me
I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me

I played video games in a drunken haze
I was seventeen years young
Hurt my knuckles punching the machines
The taste of scotch rich on my tongue
And then Kathy showed up
And we hung out
Trading swigs from a bottle
All bitter and clean
Locking eyes
Holding hands
Twin high maintenance machines

I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me
I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me

I drove home in the California dusk
I could feel the alcohol inside of me hum
Pictured the look on my stepfather’s face
Ready for the bad things to come
I down shifted as I pulled into the driveway
The motor screaming out
Stuck in second gear
The scene ends badly
As you might imagine
In a cavalcade of anger and fear

There will be feasting and dancing
In Jerusalem next year
I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me
I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me

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And I’ll close it out with a song by Pearl Jam, a group that most people know. However, you might not have heard their song “Thumbing My Way,” my favorite song from the group.

I have not been home since you left long ago
I’m thumbing my way back to heaven
Counting steps, walking backwards on the road
I’m counting my way back to heaven
I cant be free with what’s locked inside of me
If there was a key, you took it in your hand
There’s no wrong or right, but I’m sure there’s good and bad
The questions linger overhead
No matter how cold the winter, there’s a springtime ahead
I’m thumbing my way back to heaven
I wish that I could hold you
I wish that I had
Thinking ’bout heaven
I let go of a rope, thinking that’s what held me back
And in time I’ve realized, it’s now wrapped around my neck
I can’t see whats next, from this lonely overpass
Hang my head and count my steps, as another car goes past
All the rusted signs we ignore throughout our lives
Choosing the shiny ones instead
I turned my back, now there’s no turning back
No matter how cold the winter, there’s a springtime ahead
I smile, but who am I kidding?
I’m just walking the miles, every once in a while Ill get a ride
I’m thumbing my way back to heaven
Thumbing my way back to heaven
I’m thumbing my way back to heaven…

We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are “news”; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.

–The Dalai Lama

Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity–but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our “biography,” our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards. . . It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?

Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?

-Sogyal Rinpoche

I will be holding a large test on September 12, 2008 for several people testing for their next ranks.  If you would like to test, start preparing today!  Also, talk with me about testing so that I can give you some tips for things to work on between now and then.

I will be taking a rare vacation and will be cancelling class on August 8th.  Remember to practice on your own to work on your techniques for the tests coming up in September!

The near enemy of love is attachment. Attachment masquerades as love. It says, “I will love you if you will love me back.” It is a kind of “businessman’s” love. So we think, “I will love this person as long as he doesn’t change. I will love that thing if it will be the way I want it.” But this isn’t love at all–it is attachment. There is a big difference between love, which allows and honors and appreciates, and attachment, which grasps and demands and aims to possess. When attachment becomes confused with love, it actually separates us from another person. We feel we need this other person in order to be happy. This quality of attachment also leads us to offer love only toward certain people, excluding others.

–Joseph Goldstein

The Shotokan link is often ignored in many Tae Kwon Do histories, for obvious reasons, but I think that understanding this connection is crucial to understanding how our art developed, why it looks the way it does, and why the style of Tae Kwon Do practiced at Blue Cliff does not look like most styles of Tae Kwon Do practiced today: we practice a style that is closer to the way that Tae Kwon Do originally came to this country with Grandmaster Jhoon Rhee.  The original system, as it hit these shores, was more Shotokan than Tae Kwon Do for the reasons outlined below:

When [General Choi, the most commonly acknowledged founder of Tae Kwon Do] became older he went to Japan to study. Choi had been studying calligraphy and Taek Kyon in Korea under Han Il Dong and upon arrival in Japan he started to study Shotokan Karate as a student of a Korean named Kim Hyun-soo, and after two years of intensive training he was presented with a first Dan Black Belt in Shotokan. He then went into Tokyo University where he was able to visit the Shotokan and perhaps train on occasion under Master Gichin Funakoshi, founder of Shotokan. He gained his second Dan and, around this time, started teaching, and became an instructor at the Tokyo YMCA. (There are pictures of Gen. Choi as a student at the main Shotokan dojo when he was a student in Japan which have been published in “Taekwon-Do Times” magazine.) Conscripted into the Japanese army in 1943, he was posted to Pyongyang where he became involved in the Korean Independence Movement, resulting in his imprisonment. Wanting to maintain good physical and mental health during his imprisonment, he practiced Karate, alone at first, then by teaching it to the staff of the prison and the other prisoners. Until his liberation at the end of the war he practiced and developed much of the martial art.

Becoming an officer in the new Korean Army after the end of the war, he continued to teach his martial art to his soldiers as well as to American soldiers serving in Korea.

His beliefs and his vision of a different approach to teaching martial arts led General Choi to combine elements of Taek Kyon and Karate techniques to develop a modern martial art. He called it TaeKwonDo, which means “the way of the feet and the hands”, and this name was officially adopted on Apirl 11th, 1955.

–http://www.allmartialarts.co.uk/articles_62019.html

As it was originally founded, therefore, our system of Tae Kwon Do had deep Japanese influences that should not be ignored.  This is how Tae Kwon Do was first practiced on our shores, complete with Shotokan forms.  As time went by, those directly affiliated with General Choi followed his lead and changed the forms to incorporate a Sine Wave movement, straight steps in front stances (instead of a C step), and various other changes.  My line of instruction was not directly affiliated with the General, so those changes were not made.  In fact, we even kept the Shotokan forms in addition to the TKD forms that were eventually handed down (and my instructor received a certain amount of grief for this choice - anymore, I just get a raised eyebrow every now and then).

I suspect that many of the changes to TKD that were made by General Choi in the intervening years before his death were due more to political reasons than effective martial arts.  There was a push to make the art distinctly Korean, so (I believe) changes were based on the need to make TKD look different - not perform better - than Shotokan.  These politics also ultimately resulted in the creation of Olympic or WTF Tae Kwon Do.

I have, for various reasons, chosen not to make these changes: partly because I just don’t like them from a pragmatic and stylistic perspective, and partly because I am ornery.  Mostly, however, it is because I am very proud of what my teacher taught me, and I have seen the incredible results that it has produced in generations of champions - not “Tae Kwon Do champions” who only compete against other Tae Kwon Do stylists from the same organization, but open tournament champions competing in forms and fighting against all styles.  So our art stays the interesting pastiche of flavors that it was originally: Tae Kwon Do kicks, Shotokan hand strikes, Katas from both, Aikido locks and grappling (OK, that one is from Mr. Staple and myself, not General Choi), various other street-wise self-defense maneuvers, and the English language - not Japanese or Korean - spoken in the classroom.  Not to mention good old blood, sweat, and tears: the magic elixer of Martial Arts training.

The present moment is the most profound and challenging teacher we will ever meet in our lives. It is a compassionate teacher, it extends to us no judgement, no censure, no measurement of success and failure. The present moment is a mirror, in its reflection we learn how to see. Learning how to look into this mirror without deluding ourselves is the source of all wisdom. In this mirror we see what contributes to the confusion and discord in our lives and what contributes to harmony and understanding. We see the realtionship between pain and its cause on a moment-to-moment level, we see the bond between love and its source. We see what it is that connects us and what it is that alienates us.

– Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield

Consider the following quote in light of the school motto, “With whom shall I battle, for I am my own enemy?” by Dharmarakshita.

Hatred is far worse than any ordinary enemy. Of course, ordinary enemies harm us: that is why we call them enemies. But the harm they do is not just in order to make us unhappy; it is also meant to be of some help to themselves or their friends. Hatred, the inner enemy, however, has no other function but to destroy our positive actions and make us unhappy. That is why Shantideva calls it “My foe, whose sole intention is to bring me sorrow.” From the moment it first appears, it exists for the sole purpose of harming us. So we should confront it with all the means we have, maintain a peaceful state of mind, and avoid getting upset.

–The Dalai Lama

In a continuation of last night’s class discussion, I would like to offer this wonderful quote from Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander’s The Art of Possibility:

The British neuropsychologist Richard Gregory wrote, “The senses do not give us a picture of the world directly; rather they provide evidence for the checking of hypothoses about what lies before us.”  And neurophysiologist Donald O. Hebb says, “The ‘real world’ is a construct, and some of the peculiarities of scientific thought become more intelligible when this fact is recognized….  Einstein himself in 1926 told Heisenberg it was nonsense to found a theory on observable facts alone: ‘In reality the very opposite happens.  It is theory which decides what we can observe.’

We see a map of the world, not the world itself.  But what kind of map is the brain inclined to draw?  The answer comes from one of the realities of biology, the survival of the fittest.  Fundamentally, it is a map that has to do with our very survival; it is designed to provide, as a first priority, information on immediate dangers to life and limb, the ability to distinguish friends and foes, the wherewithal to find food and resources and opportunities for procreation.  The world appears to us sorted and packaged in this way, substantially enriched by the categories of culture we live in, by learning, and by the meanings we form out of the unique journey each of us travels….

Recognizing Pablo Picasso in a train compartment, a man inquired of the artist why he did not paint people “the way they really are.”  Picasso asked what he meant by that expression.  The man opened his wallet and took out a snapshot of his wife, saying “That’s my wife.” Picasso responded, “Isn’t she rather small and flat?”…

It is these sorts of phenomena that we are referring to when we use the catchphrase for this chapter it’s all invented.  What we mean is, “It’s all invented anyway, so we might as well invent a story or a framework of meaning that enhances our quality of life and the life of those around us.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in this subject because it focuses exactly on the point above: creating a positive framework from which to view the world and taking absolute responsibility for our choices in life, including our outlook.  Two people can look at the same situation: one is overcome with fear and anger, and another sees opportunity abounding even in the face of tragedy.  Which one is right?  They are both looking at the same event, so which reaction is the correct one?  I would say that neither one is correct, per se, but one of them is much more likely to be happy.

The problem arises when we forget that all of the ideas that we fight and die for are actually stories we tell ourselves: the idea that Tae Kwon Do is its own style, independent of Japanese, Chinese, or American influences.  And this happens across the board: my art is the best, so that means my country is the best; we use this as a device to divide rather than seeing it as what is more likely true: Tae Kwon Do is one expression of martial arts from all over world, existing within a web of martial knowledge so interconnected that no style could exist as it is without the others.  We see this same attitude with countries: does a squirrel notice the difference when he crosses the border from the US to Canada?  Are the acorn tastier on one side of the imaginary border than they are on the other?

I do not offer this “invented” idea to absolve anyone from responsibility for their actions.  If anything, I think it places ultimate responsibility on you and me, because it asks us what we will create with this freedom.  I want to create a world that is free from suffering: one where I can free myself of my own ego needs so that I can honestly and freely give of myself to others.  The funny thing is that when we let go of these ideas of separateness, even of separateness of self and other, we appreciate just how special we all are.  Compassion is now freely given, and we are free to care for people rather than fighting to maintain the trappings of ego.  Rather than getting into a fist fight in the stadium because someone insulted “our team,” we can simply enjoy the game.