Practicing karate is not like other activities. I’m not saying that it is superior or inferior to other pursuits, just that it is different, and not for everyone. It is not hot yoga, Pilates, aerobics, community soccer, or any other physical activity. It is not simply paying your fees, treating your instructor like an acquaintance, walking in to class, participating, and walking out again; at least for me its not, and never has been.
No, karate practice has always been something much more personal and deeper. It’s hard to put a finger on exactly what karate is, but if I was pressed for an answer it would be that karate is a physical representation of my beliefs and values – I’ll leave it to the reader to ponder what those may or may not be. Still that doesn’t quite capture what I think. Perhaps the world-famous Goju-ryu karate teacher Morio Higaonna said it best when he said (paraphrasing) that karate was like a cloud to him and that when he trained he was never able to really grasp but a fraction of it.
This is what I believe karate is in my view. So, if karate is not like any other pursuit, why do new students turn up to my class thinking that it is? They wander in and out of class, they joke at inappropriate times, they grumble and complain that the exercises are too hard and that they need to be modified for them, they call everyone (including the teacher) by their first names, and they get angry when the teacher scolds them. Of course we can argue that they are behaving perfectly normal and as expected. This of course is Canada, and we are a Western, democratic, egalitarian nation. Yes, that is true. But remember the dojo isn’t!
It isn’t Western, it isn’t democratic, and it isn’t egalitarian; shocking perhaps, but true. The dojo is literally the “place of the path” – the start of a road to learning the martial ways. Like any road that we traverse, it has laws that must be followed by everyone – speed limits (how quickly you learn), right of way (seniority), lane changes (what you learn), and the like. These “rules of the road” must be abided by everyone; no one is exempt as it would jeopardize the safety of drivers and the integrity of the road itself.
Perhaps these views are from the way my karate teachers instructed me, perhaps it’s the near decade I spent living and training in Japan, or maybe it is simply my personality. But a word of warning to new students, pay heed to the “rules of the road” – they are there for a reason – your safety and my art’s integrity!
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