This Is Training
If this is training, what are you training for?
The form is a means to an end. Anything can become the form if an extraordinary awareness is brought to a practice, because it is not the form you are training to perfect, but training to be what you practice.
Be conscious of what you already practice is the first step. Without judgement, consider your habitual responses to different situations; what behaviours you practice, what attitudes you practice. If as much consistency was placed into any other type of behaviour, wouldn’t it naturally become that?
For example, if you notice that you practice giving up, being impatient or needing to control just through the attitudes and behaviours you practice every day, bringing awareness to a more beneficial attitude in exactly the same way could change this perspective.
Find a form that challenges this perspective. If you give up, find a form that demands resilience, if you are impatient, patience, if controlling, abandoning to group impulse.
The form is a means to practice what you need to transform. Its purpose is to be an instrument, not the goal itself, which is why the focus of training is practicing what the form is for, more than the exercises themselves.
If this is training, what are you training for?
Presence. Stillness. Awareness. Connection.
Strong goals, but what are they for?
Performance.
In the moment of presentation? Being observed? That time which we prepare for?
Any performance. The performance of presence, stillness, awareness, connection isn’t limited to the observable or staged performance, the final ‘product’. The presence is what is sought and practiced in training as well, and in the performance of anything really, because why wouldn’t you put the same effort into making life performative, heightened, the most it can be? The performance of anything, on stage as in training, as in life, is your practice. You reap what you sow, and not just when you are consciously trying or being observed, when there is consequence for the ego.
This explains why you keep training.
To remind yourself that you train for now. To continually develop and blend in the ideas and experiences you have every day. If you have the discipline to do this in any particular area, then you have the ability to take that discipline into every aspect of your life, from how you wake in the morning, to your attitude toward laundry, to your quest for spiritual enlightenment. If not, you at least have the awareness to accept that it is your choice to do so.
At first you train for crisis. You train so that you can be ready to respond with consideration and awareness in any moment. You train so that we don’t lapse into unconsciousness when panic takes over. Once we understand this, we train for consciousness in all moments, not just when in panic, but it’s easier neighbour, complacency.
Complacency doesn’t manifest as future dreaming, but mostly as escaping from being completely present, which is a state we rarely enter as it is energetically taxing. Being present means we do not train for the future, but for now.
This is the brilliant strategy of one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Inspector Jacques Clouseau, who asked his assistant Cato to attack him “at every chance and without warning” to keep him alert and skilled in combat. While this results in hilarious moments in the Pink Panther, it is based on the reality of what bushido teachers used to do with their students.
While completing their chores, students would know at any time, their teacher may surprise them with a blow to the head with a piece of bamboo. The student is expected to defend themselves with whatever they have at hand. After being attacked in their sleep, in the bathroom and when they are exhausted by or engaged in their labour, the student becomes paranoid, expecting the master to leap out at any moment and strike them. They expect the master to leap from a darkened doorway and are therefore surprised when they are struck from behind. The student is constantly on edge until they realise the lesson. You cannot live in this heightened state of expectation as it actually interferes with your awareness. You cannot always be prepared for an unexpected attack. You have to simply let go and accept; perhaps I will be attacked, perhaps I won’t. What they have done is eliminated their concern without eliminating their care. They have found the point between Buddhism and Stoicism and realised it is what it is, not what I would prefer. It is at that point that the student realises they are not learning a form to ‘put on’, but that the form is revealing who they really are. They become ready to learn because they understand that the training is not about finding power to exert, but about finding peace within.
Consider a larger perspective. The world is a large place with many people trying to exist, decisions of other people that impact the world, your country, your society, and you. You have no control over these things, but what is solely dependent on you? What is within your power amongst all of these influences which are not? What is your responsibility?
As previously mentioned, being present is difficult and at some point, you are going to feel like you are suffering in some manner. How does one still manage to perform regardless of this happening?
It doesn’t matter whether the performance is artistic or martial or mundane and pedestrian. The important thing is what goes on in your mind and body while you are navigating this life. Yes, there is pain, difficulty, frustration, but what are you still capable of within this situation? Giving up is one choice, but it isn’t the only choice, so what is it that you are able to do and have some control over?
Once you realise this, you realise that you can cope with pain, stress, and everything else associated with growth if you accept responsibility for your attitude towards it. It doesn’t stop it hurting or being difficult, but you realise you don’t have to take it personally. But that’s just dealing with it in the moment.
The training goes further than that, because if it didn’t have further application to life, then there would be no relevance to it at all. The amazing thing is not just that moment of performance, the bright, spectacular moment where your skill is acknowledged and people are stunned by your ability. The amazing thing is the hours and hours of difficulty that you deliberately entered into, every day, again and again, with the attitude of aware practice. Constantly engaging with the understanding of both what to expect and the responsibility of your attitude toward it.
Accepting that we are all responsible for our attitude toward our training means that we also have to allow other people to have their opinions, but it also means that you don’t have to listen to other people as well.
This is the insight that comes with a commitment to training that is not just an affectation, but a mindful practice towards mastery.
