Why I Practice

The question should really be 'Why do I continue to practice?', given that I have been doing Shorinji Kempo for twenty years, and have been teaching for ten.

I started in November 1979 at the age of twenty-six, the era of late night Kung Fu films and Bruce Lee a recent memory. At the time I was still into joining elite organisations, and having passed up the military had joined Mensa a couple of years previously. It was through a 'martial arts meeting' that I discovered Shorinji Kempo in a newly formed Dojo run by my teacher Sensei Jee. I was immediately hooked on its elegance and its mixture of the physical and intellectual. The fact that the world organisation appeared vast and powerful certainly did it no harm in my eyes. Also at that meeting was a woman, Tina Gilligan, who later went to Japan and studied at the Headquarters for several years, but that's another story...

Like most new interests of mine, I was quite dedicated in my study. I would train four or five times a week and progressed rapidly by todays standards. However, I was never good enough. Usually I work intensely at something until I have mastered it and then lose interest and drop it, so, in the early days this was why I continued. When I was a Kyu grade the First Dan black belts looked good. When I got there it was Second and Third that looked good and First seemed pretty mediocre. I have now got to the stage, twenty years later, that I realise I am never going to be the best, but now the target has moved on.

From a physical point of view I have been increasing in speed and power up to this point (age forty five). I'm better now than I have ever been, something I would not have expected. So, the physical focus has become the retention of my ability for as long as possible as I grow older. Here we have the first 'Essence of Shorinji Kempo': ' Good health'.

The spiritual aspects of martial arts are quite often mentioned, but glossed over when it comes to specifics. So, let me explain what I have discovered that is of value to me.

First and foremost is simply the discipline of continual training. Turning up week after week, year after year whether I want to or not. I have come to the stage where I don't really care where I train, or the conditions, or the weather, or any other factor that many people take into account. In general, only family and business comes before training, and then only if I cannot arrange for it to be otherwise. I take a perverse kind of pride in how miserable it is in a cold church hall in Winter, or how hot it is in an underventilated church hall in summer. I have built over the years an indifference to my environment. This naturally has a downside in that such conditions are seldom relished by the students, especially beginners.

Additionally, there is a challenge to the training that I take very seriously. Always at some point in the lesson I will push myself close to my current physical limit, whether that is technical perfection, power, speed or stamina. Sometimes I get a senior student to take Kihon and take a position at the back. I aim to move faster than any student, Kiai louder etc. Occasionally, I see how high I can push my heartrate. I think my recent maximum was around the 210 bpm, which (I read) is quite dangerous for someone my age, although it feels no worse than it did twenty years ago. My view is that if I drop dead during training - well - it's a good way to die.

I noticed early on that, once my physical ability had levelled off, my weakness of mind and character became evident as the limiting factor in training. For example, 'in real life' I solve a problem and then lose interest in it. This was manifested in Randoori as a failure to 'finish' the technique by completing the attack against my partner. I would see the opening and, in my mind, perform the action while in reality I held back.

So, I use my physical state to measure the state of my mind.

I also discovered something very interesting concerning the link between mind and body. It is that whilst the body measures the state of the mind, one can use the body to condition the mind. In the above example, by practicing 'finishing' a technique I found that outside of the dojo I also tended to finsh things far more often. Of course, this is an aspect of the philosophy 'Ken Zen Ichinyo', but it's one thing to learn it intellectually, and another to experience it and live it. The value of such specific training, rather than pure meditation, is that there is no time available to fool oneself. Under stress and speed and fear, masks fall, and true strengths and weaknesses become apparent both to oneself and others.

I have used Shorinji Kempo to cultivate physical strength and test my spirit. I have used it in conjunction with other spiritual practices of an unusually harsh nature. If you have a look at my links page (personal rather than Shorinji Kempo) you may get a clue as to what I am referring to. If not I have no intention of spelling it out! In my mind Shorinji Kempo has been a superb spiritual tool.

I began teaching in Northampton about ten years ago, and immediately realised a new facet of training. Basically, teaching is very different from practicing. One obvious difference is that when practicing you can easily 'fudge' a technique, and it still looks OK to the untrained eye. However, one cannot cover ones ignorance if a student asks a specific question about where exactly the foot should go etc. Another difference, one representative of a whole new class of knowledge and technique, is simply that I have to speak to groups of people.

Now, this may not appear to be of major importance. Indeed, until I actually had to do it, and mastered the basics of speaking in public I tended to undervalue the skill, partly because I had always been very nervous and self-conscious. In the first year of training if Sensei Jee said to me that I would have to lead Dokun during the next class, it would ruin my whole week. Ten years later I spoke before a crowd of some six hundred, and enjoyed the experience. The difference is a measure of teaching as a Dan grade and specifically teaching a class. It's value outside the dojo is immense, and I cannot overstate its value. On a purely monetary basis, I have estimated that it has been earned me maybe £50000 more than I would have otherwise received, simply through getting engineering contracts. In the wider scheme of things, if one wishes to make a difference in the world one has to be able to speak. In fact, it can change one's whole demeanor. A few years back I went along to a Tai Chi class to see the teachers, and arrived early. Milling around looking lost were some prospective new students who immediately walked up to me and assumed I was the teacher. Seems I finally had 'Sensei' stamped on my forehead.

So, another reason I continue to practice is to try and give back something of what I have taken from the Art.

For the past six months (up to May 99) I had been seriously contemplating resigning from being a Branch Master, having had reservations about the direction my Shorinji Kempo 'career' had taken. As a result this communicated itself to my students, the majority of whom dropped out of training. Only the fact that I do have some longtime students and friends who continue, and the lack of an alternative Branch they could train at, pursuaded me to continue albeit with a reduced training schedule of once per week.

I have always been somewhat surprised by the degree to which my energy and enthusiasm communicated itself to the world. Not merely to the students, but people would walk in off the street to see what was going on when my energy levels were high. The conclusion I have drawn from this is that having the Branch depend on my power is wrong. I take my mind off the training and the Branch collapses like a pricked bubble. I have been building in the students (one or two quite senior) a dependency rather than a self-reliance - the antithesis of the whole reason for the existence of Shorinji Kempo. So while I have been cultivating my own strength I have neglected something fundamental - I have overlooked what is really required to run a successful Branch by assuming (wrongly) that most of the students are like me.

This is what I intend to 'experiment' with over the coming year - being a different kind of Branch Master. For example, I intend to add the 'frills' to the dojo that appeals to many people. This website being one of them. I won't teach the bare Art, but adorn it with commercialism. I will be far more ruthless about not going out of my way to help lazy students eg late fees=no training; missing classes without telling me=kicked out. In short, I intend to practice variations of the 'ruthless-populist' aproach on a modest scale. Currently I have eight students, and I shall aim to quadruple that in the coming year.

Part of my disillusionment stems from my early (and unrealistic) impressions of the dynamism of the organisation of Shorinji Kempo both in Britain and Worldwide. I have written thousands of words of constructive criticism and made dozens of suggestions as to how to improve things. The only tangible response to date being either a total apathy or gross antipathy. Responses that fell between these extremes were of the kind 'Somebody had to say it, it's just a pity it had to be you'.

So, a final reason as to why I do Shorinji Kempo.

I conclude that it is pointless merely making suggestions and criticising. I need to implement and test those ideas that I feel would improve the quality (and quantity) of Shorinji Kempo, and from that point of view Northampton is the laboratory. I may fail, but there cannot be any success without making the attempt, and success always brings its own recognition.