The Martial Way of Life: Fatherhood, Violence, and the Masculine Psyche
In the last 3 years I have felt the need to develop my ability to respond to violence and disaster. Part of becoming a husband and now becoming a father has inspired a real desire to be more capable in emergency situations, so I joined the National Guard. Along with my experience in the Guard I recently began working as a martial arts instructor, and have found it to be extremely fulfilling. Though I am not yet a black belt in any particular style, I have a small background in Tae Kwon Do and have recently begun studying Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai, as well as experimenting with some Animal Style Wushu, Wing Chun, and Capoeira. These experiences along with joining the military have given me much to think about concerning my relationship to justice, violence, strategy, and other aspects of military and martial life.
Martial Arts and the Masculine Psyche
The Martial Arts represent a beautiful intersection of philosophy and ethics, and I believe the ritual and spiritual practice of the martial arts gives us an articulate representation of the Divine Masculine in the forms of the Apprentice, the Warrior, the Priest, and the Elder. As a newly minted father, I have become acutely aware of the balance that Men represent when it comes to their capacity for violence and the ability to create places of order and safety through that capacity. As a father you are the one who stands in the gap between the world and your family. Your ability to argue, debate, and stand firm in the face of potential violence, and to return that violence in kind for a righteous cause, represents a certain limit on the forces of the social and physical world. The outside world has no claim on a family unless the father fails to stand in the gap, to mediate between those things which attempt to influence and affect his family. This is fundamental to the male experience in fatherhood. In the past it was often strictly in a physical manner, but perhaps less so for some in the modern social landscape. To the modern man, it is almost certainly a spiritual and interpersonal mediation, though not often physical. But I believe it is a loss that burdens all fathers, and it is to our detriment as Men. Not only the mental and physical aspects, but the spiritual aspects of the martial arts, define the Masculine Psyche. As I investigated my own beliefs when it comes to fatherhood and masculinity, I found several principles at the core of the Martial Arts that have distinct parallels to the responsibilities incumbent on fathers and leaders, and these 4 archetypal relationships can be developed through the study of the martial arts, to the great benefit of boys and young men everywhere.
The Apprentice: Learning Emptiness and Fullness, from The Art of War
During an interview on the Pierre Burton Show in 1971, Bruce Lee said famously, “put water in a cup it becomes the cup, be like water, my friend.” What Lee means is evident in his design of Jeet Kun Do, his personal style of Martial Art. Flexibility was more important that Form.
Though Lee was referring to individual hand-to-hand combat, long before Lee did his interview Sun Tzu defined the large scale martial arts, leading teams as small as squads or as large as armies in battles, as equally shapeless in the Art of War:
“Military formation is like water — the form of the water is to avoid the high and seek the low, the form of a military force is to avoid the full and attack the empty; the flow of water is determined by the earth, the victory of a military force is determined by the opponent.” -The Art of War, Sun Tzu; Translation by Thomas Cleary. Pg. 112
The flexibility to which both Sun Tzu and Bruce Lee refer is speaking to something inherent to the Martial Arts: there is no one perfect system. There are efficient martial arts, aesthetic martial arts, brutal martial arts; there is style. Even in large scale warfare, there is no perfect system. There is only adaptability. Adaptability means flowing as water does to the point of least resistance to overwhelm and defeat the enemy.
This principle rings true at multiple levels, whether with large scale battle planning or in the ring of a UFC fight, but it also seems to be evident in the external world. If you were an entrepreneur, would you rather invest your time, money, and energy into a knock-off of a product designed by another corporation and mass produce them? Maybe. Or would you rather invest in a start-up that is clearly aiming to fill an already existing gap in the market? One investment is a wave crashing against a cliff face, the other is a rushing river through a canyon. This ability, to see emptiness and fullness, is the principle to understand all forms of advantage and disadvantage. If we, as fathers, are meant to lead our families to their benefit we must understand the principles of discerning advantage from disadvantage. The reality of “no one system” means we must be constantly learning, there is no room for stagnation. The lifelong learner succeeds where the dogmatic fails, to be an apprentice is to be open to one’s insufficiencies so as to improve them.
The Warrior: Mishima, the Necessity of Pain, and the Relationship between Mind and Body
At the intersection of the body and the mind, martial arts also bridges the gap between philosophy and self-analysis in ways no other discipline can. The Martial Arts are, in part, defined by their disciplinary requirements. The military is, of course, meant to be the paragon of discipline and the martial artist the individual embodiment of that discipline. For Yukio Mishima, Japanese author and novelist, the body had a language of its own. In much the way words are the language of the mind, Mishima defined the language of the body as the conditioning of the muscles. His means? Lifting weights and Martial Arts.
For Mishima, this conditioning was a spiritual as well as physical conditioning. As he developed his physicality he recognized a certain unity in his experience with his fellow man. The beauty in the written word in his literature and poetry, and equally the conditioning of his body into a beautiful thing, a strong and capable thing, a thing of maximized potential, he realized implied that beauty itself inhabited a deeper sort of reality.
This evidence of a deeper reality strengthened Mishima’s resolves as to the nature of mind and body. He rejected the dualism of western philosophy of mind and instead insisted on their spiritual connection to one another. Since we in the west have been so conditioned by our belief in the irreconcilable nature of mind and body, the axioms inherent in the martial arts have inspired much interest in the eastern traditions; spiritual, martial, or otherwise. It is in Mishima’s rejection of this dualism that we see the core of the martial spirit. The discipline of the mind through language and the discipline of the body through pain is the unification of body and spirit, material and immaterial. Dualism is a non-issue for the one who lives a life fully embodied, spiritually and physically.
“Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength, there was gradually born within me a tendency towards the positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened.” -Sun and Steel, Yukio Mishima. Pg. 36
Suffering appropriately is integral to growth and development, therefore how does one go about “cultivating the orchard of the body” to bolster the strength of mind and spirit and so to bolster the body through spiritual practice as well as physical.
These two principles at the core of the practice of Martial Arts, the unification of mind and body through discipline and pain as the prerequisite for growth, again extend their reaches far beyond the realm of unarmed combat. The means to mastery is only through trial and error, therefore be brave and take the risks necessary to grow. As a father, our children must learn to take calculated risk, to fail with grace, and to learn from their experiences. They must understand that itinerant to our success is our learning from failure. They must also learn to discipline themselves for the sake of their future. It is well documented that children who are able to delay gratification younger do better in predicted outcomes as they age. In both of these practices, the Martial Arts teach us to discipline ourselves. Not so strict as to lose our flexibility, but to do what is necessary for mastery.
The Priest: The Spiritual Elements of Physical Discipline
Fundamental to the Martial Arts for both the Artist and the Soldier/Warrior is the confrontation with Death. In this way, the Martial Artist is forced to grapple with a metaphysical reality, the perceived cessation of Being at the end of life, the snuffing out of consciousness that is the fate of all men. Part of the Illustrated Library of Sacred Imagination, Martial Arts: The Spiritual Dimension defines “the confrontation with death [as] perhaps the most important element of spirituality.” The author Peter Payne, Harvard educated psychologist and practitioner of multiple martial arts disciplines, describes the martial artists relationship to death further:
“In the martial arts, of course, death is a constant presence. The whole activity revolves around it. Attack, defense, and counter-attack are all performed as if a true life-or-death situation were involved..”
This ever-present reality causes a distinct transformation in the practitioner.
“..death reveals the ego. That part of us which grasps and holds on, which attempts to crystalize the flow of life and box it in to separate entities, is totally panicked by death. Fear is the basis of this holding and contracting, and death, or the fear of death, brings out this fear.. ..That fear, which is the lynch-pin holding the whole rigid structure in place, is revealed in the face of death, and can then be looked into and dealt with.”
It is by facing our mortality willingly that we gain a certain humility unique to the Martial Arts. The deadliest men in the military; SEALs, Green Berets, and members of Ranger Regiment, walk with a kind of calm and assurance that only comes with being a deadly individual. In all likelihood, you would not recognize them if you passed by in the street. Facing death brings a certain quiet fortitude to men.
As fathers, we can learn this quiet fortitude. It is not denial of emotion, or suppression. It is a resiliency that is the direct product of intentional practice. In my spiritual tradition, I read in the book of James to “Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you face trials and temptations, for these produce endurance”. This is the endurance that I am referring to. I am told often that it is some kind of oxymoron, to be a Christian and to accept the spiritual significance of training in arts of death and domination. The martial arts ethic that emerges from my spiritual practice is defined by a distinct desire to never require the skills I have developed. However, the outside world does not share that same desire. There are others who would do me, my family, or any innocent person harm on mere whim. Given this reality, I am obligated to do as I can to protect the innocent. If the time arises that I must be the one to act violently, may I act quickly and decisively and leave as little damage in my wake as possible. As a father and husband, I view this is a sacred responsibility indeed.
The Elder: Heritage, the Personal History of Styles and Practitioners
Martial Arts has a long-standing tradition of respected masters developing their style and founding subsequent schools dedicated to their style. The difference between Northern and Southern styles was well known in China during the turn of the 20th century, and in the Southern Chinese town of Foshan, the Wing Chun Master Ip Man began training his discipline as a child. He would eventually go on to train Bruce Lee in Hong Kong before Lee was famous for his acting and fighting.
Similarly, Helio Gracie, founder and Master of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, created a heritage through his sons and their abilities having trained their jiu jitsu from their father. Helio took lessons in Judo as a boy and developed Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to better adapt the techniques to his style. Helio was a smaller guy, which made the heavyweight throwing of judo difficult for him. He adapted Judo and Japanese Jiu Jitsu to better suit his style, and inadvertently founded a dynasty. After his son Royce swept 3 titles in the UFC using his fathers unique style of grappling, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu became one of the most effective and recognizable martial arts in the world.
The Heritage of respective schools and styles is perhaps one of the most iconic elements of Martial Arts as a discipline, especially the styles of greater Asia like Karate, Judo, the Animal Styles of Wushu, and Wing Chun. Whether its the great Helio Gracie, who founded Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, or Ip Man, Wing Chun Master, these styles have something in common: a deep heritage preserved by those who practice them in reverence toward their founders. The opportunity should not be missed by those of us privileged enough to attain to fatherhood, we have the distinct honor of establishing something our children can take as a heritage. Our purpose as Fathers should be to build something worth passing down to our children. Through the core spirit of Martial Arts, as practitioners of those arts, we have to opportunity to participate in and help establish a heritage that will outlast us.
The Spirit of Martial Arts and the Purpose of Fathers
The spirit of a martial artist is one who accepts challenge with courage and defeat with grace, pushes through pain in the faith that it will produce a positive result, trains for a purpose and is confident in their faith in their skill and training, and strives to participate in a legacy bigger themselves. These fundamentals map well on to fatherhood, and make for a solid road map for both boys and men to live a meaningful life. I have taken great joy in my martial arts journey and know that the principles I have developed through training these disciplines will benefit not only me but my family, my son, my students, and all those I come into contact with.
