---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There's no one right way to do it..." You know how to finish that. There's no one right way to do a technique, but lots of wrong ways. This can be liberating and frustrating at the same time. On the one hand, you're free to play with the movement and not be pinned down to one particular manifestation. On the other hand, it's hard to tell whether you're executing the movement properly, without it becoming confused with some other movement.
This is one of the "Big Questions" philosophy addresses: the One and the Many. We crave unity and absolutes, but we are instead presented with a vast multiplicity of things that are lumped under one label (e.g., hundreds of species of trees all called "tree"). The two extremes on the continuum of answers to this question are Absolutism and Relativism. And, as with most things, truth resides somewhere in the middle. Which means there's no one omote gyaku, but it's not whatever you want, either.
The liberating aspect to plurality is that I don't have to always do ganseki nage like the traditional form. It's adjustable for size, position, etc. It's not always on the same scale - it can be big or small - and it's not always attacking the same point. It's pretty awesome really, that just one technique can have so many different facets.
But, if it were straightforward, that would be way too boring, and this would no longer be an art form.
Maybe the mental image of facets is a good one for what I'm trying to get at. A multifaceted diamond can have an incredible amount of sides to it, each of them casting different reflections depending on the light. But even for all the variability, the thing itself is still a diamond. The trick is to not let yourself be blinded by the light reflecting off the facets. There is one thing that reflects the light in many ways - if you study how the light is reflected, you'll be able to discern what's a reflection and what might be the diamond itself.
There's a million different directions that analogy could go. (Can you ever see the diamond itself without the distracting reflections? Can you only see it as a composite of all the facets? Can you ever know how many facets there are, turn it around in enough light settings to truly know the reflections? etc.) But, since this topic has clearly - in my mind - come back around to kaname, I guess the argument would be that the diamond/technique itself is knowable. At this point, I'd say it's knowable only after you have a thorough understanding of the facets. That way you can find the commonalities leftover from the differences.
It's a fun little thought experiment, though, using the diamond as an analogy; you may see it pop up again in future posts. For now, I think I've made my convoluted point as convolutedly clear as I can. Until next time.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Note: Everything anyone says should be taken with a grain of salt, especially me; I'm still learning, and I could be completely wrong in my interpretation of something. If you think that's the case, please say something. And if you think something's just bull, you can call me out on that, too.
I think this is a concept we all struggle with from time to time (or always). Although I initially didn't' have any more to say than that, I did think of one thing to add. If we did manage to "know" all of the directions we could go at one time, it would defeat the purpose at times. After all, I think Hatsumi Sensei himself has said at times that if you don't know where you're going, how can your opponent know where you are going? This makes things even more confusing to me. We struggle to see all the angles, when it seems we really shouldn't be looking for them in the first place... just a thought. :D
ReplyDeleteI agree to an extent, and have an additional perspective to suggest. Knowing all or most of the directions one thing can go would be distracting and a hindrance only insofar as you're focused on drawing from them and choosing one. Basically, only insofar as you're thinking.
DeleteI keep hearing instructors say "Don't think." But you can't move efficiently thoughtlessly unless you've thoughtfully trained efficient movements, right? Once you have a fundamental understanding of how things work, you can adapt to just about any situation; I think that's how we'd be able to use any weapon we pick up, like Soke can. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I've got a Karate Kid mentality. If you train good movements, eventually you don't have to think about them at all and you'll just do them. But you've still got to study and train movements to reach that point.
I agree. At first, you have to think about the movements, because they're new. After a while, you don't have to think as much; they become ingrained in the body. That's when we don't have to think about it, our body knows what to do without our brains telling it. I think the bottom line is we have to get to the point where our bodies naturally know all of the ins and outs so our minds can focus on other things.
ReplyDelete