Learning To Be Silent

By William Terrell

I distinctly remember the first time I worked a full shift at the Sheriff’s Office. I was driving northbound on the interstate enjoying the sensation of being THE MAN. The Poe-lease. The Five-O. I was armed with a 9mm Smith & Wesson semi-automatic firearm, pepper spray, a ticket book and just enough experience to be dangerous. A poet I was not. A warrior I was really trying to be.

Then, reality. My mind began trying to embrace the reality that whatever came out of that state-of-the-art super-duper Motorola radio would be my responsibility. Whether it be a burglar alarm, a murder, a broken down vehicle, a rape, a funeral escort, a suicide, a stranded traveler, an armed robbery, an unruly juvenile, a molestation, a hazard in the road or any of the other innumerable versions of malice and mayhem I would have to respond.

My mind might have the luxury of having a few minutes to formulate a plan en route. Or it might not. It could erupt so quickly right in front of me that my body would respond quicker than I could think. And either way I would have to get it right. And fix it. Or at least contain it till the fixer could get there. This was heavy and I was suddenly not sure I could handle the weight.

What to do? I could trust my instincts. Believe in my training. Clear my mind. Respond to the situation at hand with flexibility and react appropriately to even the smallest changes.

Sounds easy enough.
Except it isn’t.
It’s life and death.
To be unprepared is to be defeated.

How did I get myself into this? Am I as ready for this as I can possibly be given the amount of mental and physical preparation available to me? Many times while practicing Aikido I have asked myself the same questions.

One of the reasons Aikido attracted was the notion of being a gentleman warrior, to be able to defend myself without resorting to unnecessary violence, to possess the latent ability to respond to a threat quickly and effectively, to be a coiled spring. To contain the dichotomy of the calm, polite, well-mannered berserker.

There has been a great deal written about the concept of the warrior-poet, just exactly what the term means and the role of such a person in different cultures. It is an interesting concept but I am too much of a novice to speak intelligently about anything but my own experience.  I profess to be no expert. My thoughts reflect a great simplification of a very complex concept and are not my final thoughts on the subject. This is just one of the ways I have examined the idea of a warrior poet in my own life.

For me the concept of the warrior poet can be fairly straightforward and not necessarily an esoteric dissertation (although there is a time and a place for such things) on mind and no-mind. Simply stated in this train of thought the poet is my conscious mind, the warrior is my body. Training the mind is much harder than training the body.

There are times when my body takes over with reflexive movement faster than my conscious mind can formulate. Call it instinct. Call it training. Call it muscle memory. Either way I know that in some threat situations my body will respond independently without me knowingly/deliberately willing it to.

One day at the office a co-worker came up behind me wielding a pencil as if it were a knife. My arm rose in response so fast I drove the pencil lead into my arm where it promptly snapped off. I do not remember seeing her until after I responded. My body acted of its own accord. There was no time to dash off a haiku. No time for mushin no shin. No time to decide which stance I should assume in response to what was basically a shomenuchi attack. My body responded in defense of itself, true self-defense.

In this situation it is to my advantage to have a body that is flexible and strong, to be relaxed but alert. The kind of body developed through the steady practice of Aikido, the situational awareness fostered through the consistent practice of Aikido techniques both on and off the mat and the mindset of not expecting a threat to be around every corner but to be prepared for it nonetheless.

One night while again patrolling a stretch of I-95 I pulled over a passenger car for speeding. The location of the stop was miles away in either direction from the nearest exit. Any backup would be at least 10-15 minutes away.

The driver got out and so did five other adult males. Then to really jack things up the driver proceeded to urinate right in front of me. He was saying he believed himself to be the alpha male and that I was just another dog.

My first response was to notify dispatch to have my brothers in arms coming to me. Just in case. In this case having a strong and flexible body would help. Aikido technique would help a great deal but if the situation escalated the S&K .45 semi-automatic high velocity projectile tsuki would have been my optimum technique choice.

It was my strong and flexible brain, the poet, the thinker, the rational, conniving part of me that kept me alive. The Aikido training, the breath control, the soft focus, the confidence. No panic. Staying calm and cool and waiting for backup. Keeping all of them in sight and not let them get behind me. Use my training and experience both on and off the mat to place my body in the best possible defensive position. To keep my weapon guarded but available.

And to talk. The five passengers leaned against the car and broke out the cigarettes. I kept a running conversation going with the driver, consciously trying to defuse the conflict, to avoid the use of deadly force. But if they had bumrushed me the warrior, the instinct, the training, the muscle memory in me would have taken over and I would have fired at them. I would have done everything possible to go home and not to the morgue at the end of the shift.

Of course the best possible way to avoid conflict would have been to never have put on the badge. Or the gi.  But where’s the fun in that?

Editor’s note: William is the author of November In My Soul, and is a recipient of the Thinking Blogger award. He is also the creative mind behind The Bosom Serpent.

By William Terrell

I have no romantic notions of what it means to be a warrior. I served in the United States Marine Corps and worked for ten years as a deputy sheriff. I have seen the dead and the dying, the deliberate and the accidental. I have seen people shot, cut, burned, beaten, strangled, crushed, even literally hammered to death. I understand how fast violence can erupt/interrupt into our everydayness and destroy our lives. My goal is simply that of any warrior/father/husband: to be prepared to protect and defend myself, my family, my community.

One of the ways I choose to do that is through Aikido. I enjoy Aikido because it is hard, because it forces me to change, because it forces me to face myself. My first Sensei was irascible and difficult but he gave me a solid foundation in some of the basics. His emphasis was on techniques for the world off the mat, especially the breaking and keeping of uke’s balance and in delivering solid strikes.

He believed (and rightly so) that Aikido is not a game nor is it a sport. Aikido is a matter of life and death. To treat it as anything less is a waste of time and an insult to the memory of O-Sensei. What we do on the mat is sacred. It is life writ small. It is tradition lived in the present. Aikido is the gift to us from O-Sensei and all those who taught him. His gift passed through Yamada Sensei to Dee Sensei to me. I am being forged as the next link in the chain.

Some critics dismiss Aikido as at best anachronistic and at worst a waste of time that instills a false sense of security in the practitioner. Would O-Sensei have developed and promoted Aikido if he did not believe it to be effective? Of course not. My answer to the critics is get on the mat and hang around long enough to understand what is going on. Feel the burn of nikkyo, the swirling confusion and abrupt reversal of irimi nage, the panic of koshi nage done full speed. Test yourself in randori. Find out how to react when facing multiple attackers. Learn that getting your lip busted or being thrown hard will not kill you. Understand the power of Aikido before passing judgment.

Accepting Aikido as a way of life has to be a choice. A choice repeated week after week, day after day. The mat is the battlefield upon which we overcome ourselves and it is in the persistence, the refusal to succumb to inertia that we are made strong. Week in and week out I get on the mat because I have to, because it satisfies a basic primal need and is a way to channel the warrior instincts. It is not just the mat, Aikido permeates my life. Even driving 100 miles round trip is in itself an act of entering, of being uke. Trying to perfect the process of resolving one conflict while looking/preparing for the next. It is in the knowing when to push and when to pull, when to enter and when to turn.

Am I absolutely prepared for anything life throws at me? Of course not.  Am I much better prepared? Indeed, I am.

By Carl Frederick

For as long as I can remember, I have been involved with the martial arts.  I connected with it, and like a musician to his instrument, I seemed to have a talent which I was able to tap into.  I remember my master in Tang Soo Do, very early on in my training, explaining to me the power of martial arts, and in particular Tang Soo Do.  He stated that what we are learning was meant for one thing, and one thing only: war.  The techniques we were learning were tried and true battlefield tactics, and were meant to kill.  But we don’t live in feudal Korea; we live in a world that prefers movie flash to real tactics.  The fact remained, however, that what we were learning was deadly, warlike, and chaotic. 

Today, martial arts are a form of self-defense, meant to be used only in the most dire of situations, and not to be taken lightly.  I am equally amazed and scared by the things that I know.  But something that I have realized in my time in Aikido, was that my Tang Soo Do master was right.  Everything I knew was chaotic.  My attacks caused injury and pain, and possibly even death.  Even my ability to block incoming attacks had a chaotic motive.  Like an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force, there was no harmony or balance in what I did.  It was simple: defend myself against an attacker, and never take a life unless no other option was feasible.  Even then, I should try to find a way.

This is what draws me to Aikido.  I have a choice whether or not to cause injury, pain or death.  In this sense, Aikido leaves you no choice, its intent is harmony and non-violence.  There is no chaos.  I also like it in the practical sense of my career–it would look bad for a police force to have a cop roundhouse kicking felons.  So I like the immobilizing, passive defensiveness of the art.  But also, it makes me realize that I don’t need to cause injury to defend myself.

Granted, I still like my “harder hitting” style.  And yes, any time there is a technique on the mat that seems more brutal, I get a gleam in my eye.  Although I don’t believe in the whole idea of “bringing uke back into harmony, and making them one with the world,” when a sociopath is willing to kill me so much as look at me, I still believe in the principle of non-violent solutions.

By Robert Carrera

Many people I know think that my martial art training is just a hobby. I continuously have to tell and show them that what I do is much more than just a hobby, it’s my life. Ever since I started my training, I have changed as a person in so many ways. For a long time I felt that there was a space, a void in my life, something missing. As soon as I started my training in the art of Aikido that space seemed to be filled. I seemed to become enlightened, completely reborn as a stronger, more confident individual. My training has also opened my eyes to an amazing, beautiful culture as well as many different ideologies. I have learned so much about the Japanese culture and have learned to appreciate the art of Aikido so much more. 

Several people I know think that learning a martial art will only make you want to fight more, just because you think you can take on the world. This to me sounds like any typical teenager. In actuality, I believe that martial arts do the exact opposite. I think that learning an art of fighting, at least for me, has made me realize that solving conflicts without violence is much more self rewarding. Solving issues without violence makes one feel like a bigger person, and gives one a feeling of self accomplishment, because it takes self control for someone to just turn the other cheek.

The great Bruce Lee taught Jeet Kune Do, an art that he said was fighting without fighting. I have come to believe that many different martial arts are the same way. Martial arts are not supposed to be learned just so you can go out looking for fights or for becoming so arrogant that you think you will never lose a fight. Martial arts should only be used in defending one’s self. As Bruce Lee once said, “showing off is a fool’s idea of glory.”  I believe that it is relevant to many of the more cocky martial arts students.

When learning a martial art I believe it is also necessary to learn the philosophy and ideology of the great thinkers from the culture. In my training I have found that the quotes and thoughts of Mr. Bruce Lee and O’Sensei to be very helpful. Without knowing the internal ideas and beliefs of a certain martial art you can never master it. Bruce Lee also had a quote that I believe is relevant: “I hope Martial Artists are more interested in the roots of martial arts and not the decorative branches, flowers and leaves.” This quote changes everything I saw martial arts to be. I always thought that the flashy martial arts were the most interesting and efficient. When I read this quote for the first time I saw Lee’s true genius and realized the true dedication it takes to master a martial art.

Many martial arts teach direct forms of fighting and emphasize the necessity of being stronger than your opponent. Whereas in Aikido we are taught to use the other persons strength and energy against them, thereby putting less strain on ourselves. Again I look at a quote from Lee as he tells a student to be like water, “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless-like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put water in a tea pot, it becomes a teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”  This quote to me has been very influential to me in regards to my training.

All the things I have learned and all my enlightenment I credit to my teachers and Sensei. So thank you Sensei Dee Seabolt, Jerry Akel, John Miller, as well as my fellow students for helping me, Ryan, Maggie, Kevin, as well as my brother PJ. So thank you all for everything you have done.

“Failure is the key to success; Each mistake teaches us something.” O-Sensei

This is my favorite quote from O-Sensei for a variety of reasons.  One of the main reasons is that it embodies my personal philosophy.  This is not just limited to Aikido, but to life in general.  In life, as with Aikido, failure is inevitable.  Look back on your own life.  How long did it take you to learn to walk, to speak, or to learn your profession?   Can anyone honestly say that they accomplished these tasks the first time?  I thought not.  The reality is that failure is unavoidable, and is sure to be your truest companion through life.

Most people are disappointed by failure because they expect perfection.  This is faulty reasoning when going to an Aikido class, though.  Perfection is a sign of mastery, and if one can truly master a thing (be it Aikido or anything else) there is nothing left to learn.  The impressive thing about Aikido is that it does not have a glass ceiling.  There is no upper limit.  Even O-Sensei trained when he was recognized as the master of his art.  Even he, at his highest level of skill, saw fit to improve upon what he had built, presumably because he was not satisfied on some level.  We should expect failure, because perfection is impossible.

Since we cannot avoid failure, we should embrace it fully, in Aikido and in life.  Personally, I find it to be the best teacher: No organization can compare to the school of hard knocks.  For me, the hard things are best remembered, while that which is easily earned is just as easily forgotten.  Life is hard, Aikido is hard, so you should expect to fail.  It makes life more interesting!