By Michael Limner
When in East Asia I was exposed to Asian martial arts, fascinated by Muy Thai while on R&R in Bangkok. My father was a sport maven and I had spent many nights sitting on the floor in front of our black and white television set watching American style boxing. Prepubescent, my eldest brother, who claimed to be a golden gloves boxer, tried to teach me boxing techniques. I didn’t like being hit in the face, even with a padded glove. But this Thai fighting with feet, knees, and elbows was a totally different concept to pugilism as I had learned in early youth. My playground school chums would have dubbed it “dirty fighting” and I was enthralled by the concept. Several years after my return home I made the decision to engage in the study of these dirty fighting techniques. I was in the early throes of alcoholism and had no filter between brain and mouth when drunk. I grew tired of getting hit in the face in working men’s bars.
After examining the forms of martial arts available to me I settled on a grappling art. For one reason because every fight I had ever been in had resulted in less fist-to-cuffs and more a struggle to the ground. So joint locks and throws made more sense to me than banging body parts against a hardened opponent. Another reason for choosing grappling was the instructor, or Sensei. He was a small Vietnamese man who could effortlessly throw big burley logger types to the ground. I still had not gotten over my post war bigotry but this man impressed me so much I decided to look past his race and begin to train under him at two different universities. I continued this pursuit for almost twenty years and for a brief stint even taught a class in a shared dojo.
There are various reason why I discontinued the practice, physicality of old age being the most prominent, but I have maintained a relationship with my original Sensei and we have become good friends. Not long ago he told me that he loves me, this man whom I initially despised because of his race.
During the years long pursuit of the above-mentioned martial art I attended many private dojos, training camps, and seminars and picked up along the way several other Asian disciplines, i.e., yoga, chi gong, and tai chi, which have helped to maintain me into old age. A prominent component of all of these arts has been the encouragement of meditation. I call it a discipline because it is not something one just sits down to do. As with any physical activity it requires many hours of practice with layers upon layers comprehension. The physical activity of martial practice combined with meditation enlightened me upon one crucial point: aggression is ultimately futile. Other elements of sagacity have sprung from this realization, for one, anger is a direct reaction to fear. When I am angry, I am wrong. And trying to force my will in any situation will ultimately result in a negative outcome. Acceptance and tolerance produces the best results for me. During meditation, when I would stumble upon these truths, they would seem so self-evident I would have the suspicion that everyone but me already knew these things. Why was I coming to that perspicuity only now?
For most of my early life the use of force and punitive measures were taught as acceptable, and usually even preferable methods for dealing with the problems of people. Looking back on my life I now realize that such actions gained me nothing in the long run. My family did not love me because they feared me. People did not truly respect me out of fear. I regret that I didn’t learned these things before raising my children in the punitive way I had been raised. Seeking balance within the middle path on the mat when translated by meditation made me realize the wisdom in the passage, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” I don’t plan to practice meekness, I will defend myself. But I have also learned to conduct myself in ways that I, so far, have not been required to defend myself. I try not to make myself a target.
When I was at university in a Psychology 101 class, I learned about the experiments on rewards and punishments. Findings being that negative reinforcement might gain immediate desired results but did not have lasting effects. Whereas positive reinforcement required more patience and practice but the results produced were more permanent.
Through the years I have had several dogs and to my present chagrin I tried to train them with negative reinforcement, the way I had been trained. Pavlov said that it takes five dogs to train a person to train the sixth. With this last dog I remembered those university reward/punishment experiments and decided that, since I was retired, I had the time to try a positive reinforcement experiment with the new little guy. He is a nice dog with good breeding so he was easy to housebreak and train. He is really easy to live with so maybe in this case it is more nature than nurture. But the main thing he taught me is that Love is a most powerful force. Everything in the Universe seeks perseverance through the pursuit of what it loves. Not to be confused with desire. I can’t claim that I have practiced love and tolerance faithfully with him. Sometimes I might be rougher than need be in the bath after he has found some shit to rub in. With the negative result that he avoids water as only good for drinking.
Throughout millennia sages have advised humans to stop fighting each other and love one another. Within recorded history I can think of a few, such as Lao Tzu, Sidhartha Gautama, Jesus of Nazareth, Mohandas Ghandi, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., and John Winston Lennon. We hold these people in the highest esteem and often canonize them as religious icons but don’t really listen to what they are telling us as we continue to perfect war technology. Everyone claims to want world peace but fear of “the other” prevents that outcome. True, there are sociopaths and psychopaths who gain power and perpetuate aggression in the world, and there always will be those personality types on the fringes of the temperament spectrum. Diversity of type is what drives evolution to make that a necessary evil. But why do we keep giving them power?
Attributed to Tolstoy is the saying that everyone wants to change the world but no one wants to change themself. I have read similar quotes that go back much further than him but it is still true today. Social change comes from a grassroots movement. You and I are the ones capable of changing social conditions. It doesn’t come through organizations. Religion isn’t the answer. Most of the world conflicts have been justified with the excuse of religion. Along with the god’s need for your gold and silver. Finance isn’t the answer because wars are fought over greed most often using religion as the justification. Governments are controlled by avarice as is industry. Charitable organizations are corrupted. All of these institutions promote tribalism.
If humankind continues on the path of Eisenhour’s concept of the military industrial complex it is inevitable that humans will eventually annihilate themselves. Space exploration seemed at first like a good alternative to war for advancement of technology and global cooperation but now government powers are developing space weapons.
I am not a sage nor a genius but I believe I understand what the wisemen through the ages have been trying to tell us. That the only chance our species has for survival and evolutionary advancement is to stop quarreling and love one another. Love is the only answer. But everyone already knows this.
