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It was the very early 1980s. I had been practicing judo for some time and had fought in my share of tournaments. I won some and lost some. I can’t remember the exact time but, at some point, I began to feel that my martial arts training was missing something. In judo, one learns throws, trips, ground fighting, joint locking and choking and strangulation methods. It lacks punching, kicking, weapons, multiple attacker strategies, etc. It also had some very strict rules regarding allowed techniques – which I think, was the source of my issue. I wrestled with the idea of a martial art where punching and kicking were not allowed. To judo’s defense, it was never intended by its founder to be a practical and effective self defense method. Nevertheless, I decided that I needed something broader, more comprehensive.

I was young and tough and I wanted to study a bad-ass martial art. But, which one? I knew almost nothing about other martial arts. So, I set out on a journey of exploration. Over the next few years, I visited martial arts schools and instructors in the Northeast United States and eastern Canada. Usually, I would train at a place for just a few weeks (though sometimes it was a few months and with one school, it was just one day). I was trying to get a sense for what they taught, what the advanced students looked like, how the instructor behaved, and, of course, the effectiveness of what they were doing. Over those years, I came across a wide variety of schools and teachers and learned some things in the process. But, mostly, I had not found what I was looking for. I had not found a teacher who I thought was possessed of exceptional skills. And there was something else missing. I couldn’t put my finger on it and it would be years before I figured it out. Yes, I was looking for the most fearsome martial art, but none of the teachers I came across seemed powerful or inspiring. How could such men be teaching the ultimate martial art? They were ordinary men teaching what they had been taught by their teacher before them. After a few years of discovering what Stephen Hayes would later term “partial arts”, I was rather disappointed. I had set out on this quest, and I had failed. It felt odd because I remembered starting out on this path and wondering how I might choose between all the fantastic places I was bound to discover. Surely I had missed something to have visited so many schools to come away unimpressed. I was on the verge of giving up and decided I would revisit a kung fu school in Canada to begin training there.

Just a week before my planned return, I received an anonymous letter in the mail. It was a flyer of sorts describing a ninja training camp being run by a guy I’d never heard of – Stephen Hayes. I debated whether I should bother. I mean, really, a ninja training camp? I had a strong suspicion I would be scraping the very bottom of the martial arts barrel, but if I didn’t look into it, I might spend the rest of my life wondering what was underneath that one stone left unturned.

So, I went. And I met Stephen Hayes. He was approachable, confident, charismatic, inspiring. He was showing things I’d never even thought of. I was happy to discover just how much I didn’t know. From that moment on, I began my training in Ninjutsu, later transformed by Mr. Hayes into To-Shin Do.

Extremes may be nice places to visit, but they are rarely good places to live in. The Buddha was thinking along these lines when he proposed “The Middle Way”. Briefly, the “middle way” is a practice of non-extremism. The middle way supported a path toward wisdom, morality and mental cultivation that excluded the extremes of austerity and self indulgence. We may talk more about that another time, but for now, let’s apply this thought to our martial arts practice.

At first blush, the words “martial” and “art” may appear to exist in a subtle state of mutual exclusivity. “Martial” tends to be associated with terms like war, combat, fighting, violence, aggression, etc. and while there are exceptions, the connotations generally lean to the negative. “Art”, on the other hand, usually brings thoughts of painting, sculpture, music, dance, creativity, and is generally thought to be a positive thing. When the two are paired together, something rare and beautiful can be created.

In training, I think beginners need to focus their efforts more on the martial side of the equation. They need to pay attention to details, fundamentals of movement, basics. They need structure and repetition to learn about timing, distancing and angling. As they become more experienced, they begin to exercise more creativity. Eventually their experience allows them to become artistic. This is true of many areas of endeavor. A cook may start out learning from others and following recipes (kata), but eventually they come to create new dishes on their own. Budding musicians often play songs they know and follow sheet music (kata), but may grow to write their own songs or just play appropriately with any music that is around them. In martial arts, advanced practitioners (3rd dan and above) need to start creating for themselves. Though, obviously, their creative skill comes from the years of experience that they are able to interpret in new ways.

As beginners, we must be careful to do our best with the basics, with the kata that teach us certain skills. And, we must be careful about trying to become too creative too soon. If we do this in cooking, no harm done – unless you have to actually eat the spaghetti and marshmallow sandwich. In self protection, being too creative too early may have more disastrous consequences.

As advanced practitioners, we each have to be aware of a scale and the extremes that exist on either end. One end I will call the martial end. We focus only on kata and repetition. There is a danger that our training may become rote, mechanical and imitative. We might learn to “perform” the kata very well but may lack appreciation and insight on how to translate the lesson into solutions for real-life conflicts. We may not even understand what lesson the kata is trying to teach. On the other end of the scale is the pure artist. At this extreme, our movement may be expressive and creative, but we may lack the technical, mechanical skill born from structure and repetition. Striving for creativity – to do it “our way” – we may forget the important foundation taught by ancient kata. We sacrifice centuries of experience distilled into lessons.

Living in either extreme, places a limitation on our experience and our potential to fully develop in the art we practice. In my own training, I sometimes remind myself of the “middle way”, that these extremes may be useful places to experience but unsatisfactory places to live in.

It is 1988 and I am in Japan with Mr. Hayes. We have already seen and done much, enough for a later tale or two. The sun is warm on my face and the day is one of those that just seems to breathe life into me. We are somewhere in ancient Japan, I don’t know where. There is a small museum, an outdoor training area and an obstacle course. The small buildings scattered about create the feel of a hidden ninja village. I suck at the obstacle course, but there are two Japanese men in ninja garb that seem quite skilled at traversing it.

I am enjoying a reflective moment when I my attention is drawn to the steps of a small building where Mr. Hayes is standing with a mischevious smile. He raises his eyebrows, opens the door and disappears into the building. I have no idea what is happening but I sense an adventure, and though I am not quite sure if I am invited, I jump in to follow him. I am immediately swallowed by absolute darkness and my first instinct is to feel for a light switch in a building that has no electricity. Sigh… As I consider the merit of that action, I hear Mr. Hayes tell me to stay close and keep up! I’m thinking, “What?!…It’s pitch dark in here! Are we going somewhere?” I feel him move off in a forward direction, and even though I am completely blind, I take off after him because I figure he must know where he’s going, right? After a couple steps, I run into a wall. No Mr. Hayes. I am not picking up on this quickly. My guide is gone but I hear, “be quiet” off to my left and attempt to make my way toward it. Wary of running into another wall, I arrive just in time to feel a slight breeze from Mr. Hayes as he moves through an opening. I just manage to slip in behind him as the door slides down from above, nearly catching me in the movement. I find out later that the door is opened by lifting it from a small notch near the floor. How Mr. Hayes found it, he isn’t telling. It is about now that I realize I am in some kind of carnival-type ninja house: a maze. I know it seems like I catch on slowly, but in my own defense, only about 7 seconds have passed since entering this nightmare. It occurs to me that if I lose Mr. Hayes, I might very well be lost in here for the rest of my life – part of a bad Stephen King novel. My concern is real enough that I decide to actually keep my hands on him at all times. It is still utterly black inside.

The whole experience has a dizzying effect. The ancient ninja would sometimes build secret hiding places and escape routes into their homes in case of invasion. I am experiencing first-hand how formidable that can be. Even with my hands on him at all times, I am having considerable difficulty keeping up with my teacher. At one place, we need to lay flat on the floor and roll through a hinged board at the bottom of the wall. The doors are all rigged in some odd way. Passageways are trapped. Move too fast and your head or shin may crack into some obstacle. And yet, Mr. Hayes is racing through this with reckless abandon. I wish to note that, after his initial admonishments about keeping up and being quiet, he has offered no direction or help. No, “Hey, John, watch out for this.” No, “I am turning right here and if you go left you will die.” None of that. Perhaps he felt that having my hands on him the whole time was enough assistance. I don’t know.

At long last, I follow him through an invisible door into blinding, but most welcome, sunlight. He grins wickedly at me and goes off to do something else. I decide not to follow.

I wonder sometimes how much I miss. What goes unnoticed? Everyone sees the world in their own unique way and yet we all seem to believe that we are seeing it correctly. I make countless decisions every day, some are about what I am going to do or where I am going to go, but others are judgments. “This is right and that is wrong.” “That person is successful and that one is not.” How easily I wield this power to state the true nature of things. As I apply such a label to a person, thing or event, I might even congratulate myself for being more aware and perceptive than the average person.

Now all of this is based on the past. I have knowledge and memory (sometimes). It is this knowledge from the past that tells me not to put my hand into an open flame or walk in front of a moving bus. So, certainly, we need this information to survive on a day-to-day basis. Without it I would not know where I work or how to drive or that someone was getting ready to punch me. So I probably do not want to get rid of information that tells me how the world operates. I’m not sure I could if I tried.
I wonder to myself if I might find a way to be less attached to some of that information, some of those judgments. After all, if I get too attached to the punch I know is coming, I might get tackled. I remind myself that whenever I decide that something is one way, I am usually prevented from seeing it in any other way. How often do I miss opportunities to experience something as it really is, or for what potential it might have, because I have placed a label on it? Am I sometimes making judgments about things that do not serve me?

I was driving on a very busy urban street, getting ready to turn right at a light when the vehicle in front of me stopped suddenly to avoid a pedestrian. As our light turned red, the other driver completed his turn but my car was left in the middle of the crosswalk, a vehicle behind me preventing me from backing up. No big deal. A few moments later, a gentleman who was crossing the street in front of me was obviously quite upset with me because MY car was in the middle of HIS crosswalk. All of his language, vocal and body, spoke of his incredulity and disappointment in my so rudely and deliberately stop my car in the crosswalk. His frustration stayed manifest even as he completed his crossing, still eyeing me in a manner meant to assure me I would surely be condemned to eternal damnation for my inconsiderate behavior. Oddly enough, this did not concern or upset me. But, I suddenly realized that, with just a very brief snapshot, this man had arrived at conclusions he was absolutely sure of. He knew he was right. And the whole thing struck me in a way that was epiphanic. What if I can convince myself that I do not always need to come to conclusions – that I can leave some things alone without limiting them by trying to define them.

I sometimes say things that are misunderstood. Perhaps all of us, at one time or another, have paid someone a compliment only to have the intended recipient take offense. We may have done what we thought was a good deed only to have it misinterpreted or criticized. And I can remember a few good ideas I’ve had that were readily shot down by others.

I travelled to Ohio many years ago to inform my teacher, Stephen Hayes, that that I was quitting my career so I could start a school and teach martial arts full time. He looked at me with what I took to be hesitant surprise, but the look on his face quickly turned to interest. I could see the wheels turning as he weighed the situation and then lowered his voice in that conspiratorial tone he sometimes adopts. He began to tell me of an audacious and extraordinary idea to establish his own martial art. This would be unlike any other art. Drawing from his training in the combat methods of Japan’s legendary ninja warriors and Yamabushi mountain ascetic traditions, his thought was to marry powerful techniques for personal protection and dynamic living with modern teaching methods. The results would be offered to the world so that these timeless skills would be available to all people.

At the time, Mr. Hayes had a sizable number of students throughout the United States and around the world. I remember Mr. Hayes thinking how wonderful it would be to have all these existing students training in this new art. These were skilled martial artists who would make an excellent foundation for the growth of To-Shin Do, as he called it. To-Shin Do would provide even more comprehensive training than its ninjutsu predecessor and would be more relevant in dealing with modern conflicts, fight tactics and technology.

Yet, the great idea that was To-Shin Do was to be shot down by enemies, and even friends. To Anshu’s disbelief, many friends and students misunderstood the idea of To-Shin Do and thought it to be a watered down version of ninjutsu. They tried to discourage him from moving in this new direction. I remember his frustration when he explained that To-Shin Do was not watered down at all, but beefed up and made stronger, organized in a sensible way that would make learning safer and more meaningful. All were invited to join him on this quest.

And, I remember Mr. Hayes’ surprise and disappointment when nearly all of his old students left him. It could not have been easy to see so many walk away. Thus it was that, with only a few students remaining, Mr. Hayes resolutely embarked on his journey to bring To-Shin Do into the world. And it is because of that decision, the realization of that dream, that we train and learn and grow in what has become something significant and life-changing. Perhaps someday, I will share the reasons why I was one of the few who chose to stay.