I walked through the wide metal doors and into the dojo in Tokyo, which was actually a junior high school gymnasium. Of the maybe 10 people out on the wooden floor in their karate gis, one stood out clearly from all the rest. It wasn’t either of the young girls who fought a lively sparring match. It wasn’t the black belt teacher who paced around refereeing the contest. It wasn’t any of the slim, strong teenagers who stood around the perimeter waiting for their turn to fight. It was a man who stood still, close by but with his back turned to me. He was tall and thin, his hair buzzed short. His feet were planted evenly just more than shoulder width apart. Loose fists hung easily by his thighs. His posture was straight, but not rigid or forced. Something about the way he stood was commanding. Without him moving, you could tell this guy was a serious karate badass. When he finally turned and I saw the Japanese flag on his gi, a sign that he had been a member of the Japan national team, I knew my judgment was correct.
I saw and trained with a lot of skilled martial artists while I was in Japan, but of all the great performances I saw, something about Fujimoto Sensei’s stance stuck with me. So I decided to try a new practice: Forget about moving like a master, I just want to see if I can stand like one. Nowadays when I’m standing waiting for anything – the next karate drill, the next available teller at the bank – I try to assume Fujimoto’s posture, not just imitating how it looks from the outside but trying to internalize the sense of ease, stability and readiness it radiates. Already I’ve learned so much.
On a purely physical level, when I adopt the Fujimoto stance I find my hips rolling slightly forward. This flattens my back, makes my center more solid and brings my weight more forward onto the balls of my feet, where it belongs if I want to move with speed, balance and ease. My shoulders relax and my chest is neither stuck out nor caved in. And when I adjust to this stable and energizing stance, I see clearly how old habits have unbalanced my body. I feel tension in my calves and hip flexors, chronically shortened by habitually weak posture. And I also see clearly how I can correct these problems, which will allow me to improve my balance, fluidity and flexibility in general.
These physical lessons are fascinating and valuable but through this stance training I’m learning something deeper and more beautiful. In martial arts training, we all begin with learning the basics of stances and how to hold our bodies. Over time we add more and more techniques of increasing complexity. But the more I travel down this path I realize that it’s not the gross body movements that make for real skill in movement. It’s the subtle things that are crucial factors, things invisible to all but the most trained eye, like just where on your foot you are keeping your weight, or to what degree your hips are tucked in. In these cases millimeters make all the difference, and when you dive in deep into your art you find yourself paying more attention to the most basic things – exactly how you stand, step, breathe. The process becomes elemental, more one of careful whittling away than of adding.
This becomes clear when you see that in my style of karate the highest level tests, for 8th degree black belt, consist of only a few basic techniques, techniques that you learn in your first year of training. Quality rules over quantity, and the ultimate point of training is not to learn a thousand ways to hurt someone, but to refine your own awareness and movement down to the finest levels, to achieve purity and perfection in the most simple techniques. In one sense you cycle back and end up where you began, only now the techniques unfold naturally, spontaneously, flawlessly and without thought.
Something similar happens with Buddhist meditation, at least the way I practice. At the beginning we have a method, following the breath for example. We sit and apply the method, but it takes effort and we find as we sit we notice so many other things – pain from sitting, noises in the environment, memories and thoughts passing through our minds. As we continue practicing, we develop the physical ability to sit still and comfortable, internally we achieve a level of concentration or mental quiet, we may have powerful visions or supra-normal sensations. In other words, we are expanding the inventory of our skill. With dedicated practice, subtle and profound states of consciousness can follow. But eventually it comes back to the basics. The truest sign of real cultivation is not in the proliferation of spiritual acrobatics, but in the finest, most natural development of the simplest technique. We only sit and observe various experiences as they arise, if they arise. But now it happens completely naturally, without judgment or identification. There is no “I”, only the practice.
Pablo Picasso is said to have remarked, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” I think the cycling back to the beginning holds true in the deep pursuit of any art. The trick is, you have to take the whole journey in order to truly know the beginning. For me, this phase of the long journey started not with a single step, but with standing still.