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Hayashi Tomio is a contemporary Boddhisattva Warrior Monk,
keeper of the spiritual martial arts traditions, 8th Dan Karate Master and author of several books.
During his 47 years of karate practice, of which he spent 43 teaching martial arts as a full-time career, he slowly re-discovered an "art within the art:" that martial moves and practices were not merely intended to train the body and make the practitioner a better fighter. They were, indeed, also designed to train the mind and chi, the life force energy inherent in all things living. Martial arts have thus opened themselves as unexpected portals into the non-physical realms. Always fascinating, always compelling and "always within your grasp."
Visit his website at www.isshinkempo.com
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Hayashi Tomio is a contemporary Boddhisattva Warrior Monk,
keeper of the spiritual martial arts traditions, 8th Dan Karate Master and author of several books.
During his 47 years of karate practice, of which he spent 43 teaching martial arts as a full-time career, he slowly re-discovered an "art within the art:" that martial moves and practices were not merely intended to train the body and make the practitioner a better fighter. They were, indeed, also designed to train the mind and chi, the life force energy inherent in all things living. Martial arts have thus opened themselves as unexpected portals into the non-physical realms. Always fascinating, always compelling and "always within your grasp."
Visit his website at www.isshinkempo.com
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Episode Three: Hayashi Tomio
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Viktória: Hello and welcome back. This is Viktória Duda from Zenith Lifestyle bringing you the Multidimensional People Podcast, in which we are talking to people who have visited, who have taken glimpses of worlds beyond our physical, and who have also found a way to live in both worlds simultaneously, creatively and successfully. Today we have Chris Goedecke, with his Buddhist name Hayashi Tomio here. Welcome!
Hayashi: Hi, Viktória, how are you?
Viktória: I'm very well, thank you! Thanks so much for being here. In this podcast, you know, we had people from all walks of life, discovering multidimensionality through different things like an illness, or a journey, a journey into the wilderness, but you have taken a route that perhaps is surprising to some people that it would lead to spirituality - because you are a martial artist, aren't you?
Hayashi: Yes, I am. I devoted my entire life to studying martial arts.
Hayashi: Hi, Viktória, how are you?
Viktória: I'm very well, thank you! Thanks so much for being here. In this podcast, you know, we had people from all walks of life, discovering multidimensionality through different things like an illness, or a journey, a journey into the wilderness, but you have taken a route that perhaps is surprising to some people that it would lead to spirituality - because you are a martial artist, aren't you?
Hayashi: Yes, I am. I devoted my entire life to studying martial arts.
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Viktória: Yes, and how did it happen ... I read the story in one of your books called "Internal Karate," that you were doing martial arts and suddenly an entirely new dimension opened up to you. What happened?
Hayashi: Well, maybe a little time-line here for your audience. I started karate in 1968, when I was a 17 year old teenager. It was a very exciting time, because karate was not a household term in the Western culture. It was just beginning to seep in into movies and articles. So, like most teenagers I just thought it was cool. I wanted to try it out, and I enrolled in a school. Perhaps I should preface by saying that in my family, I was born as a Roman Catholic. I went to Roman Catholic elementary school, catholic high school, and I chose to go to a Jesuit run university. So, I had quite a lot of religious experience behind me, and I think that was a good foundation for spirituality. In my twenties, few years after I began martial arts, I decided that, for me, I needed to step away from my Catholicism, to see if in fact I had not just been indoctrinated, and to discover on my own whether I would be lead back to that. |
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I found that the martial arts were increasingly holding my attention, not just for the practical side of kicking and punching and blocking, but also for the philosophies that seemed to be behind the formation of those arts: Buddhism and Daoism. I was particularly intrigued by Lao-Tzu's Dao De Jing, which is still to this day one of my favourite books since I was a teenager. So, like most teenagers I saw martial arts as a very topical pursuit. It would get me in shape, it will build up my confidence as a man, and I was pretty confident as a physical person ... for your readers, I happen to be very tall and thin. My father was a very substantial looking man, so I got some confidence from being around his nature, but when I went into martial arts classes, I remember saying to myself distinctly: "Oh my God, I'm gonna be killed by these guys. They are so much bigger and thicker than me." So, I began to learn how to hold myself, handle myself, and deal with my fears of being hurt. As the youth went by and I earned my black belt - which is really considered one of the expert grades throughout the world, but in fact, if you've been in the martial arts for a long time, it's the new beginning. You're a true student of black belt, and now you can start to study.
Rather, an interesting experience: one day my teacher had to leave and he walked up to me and he said: "I would like you to take over the class. I got to be out of the state for an important meeting," and before I could say: "But, but, but..." I was teaching. He did this to me numerous times, and within a short period of time, I found myself teaching six days a week. When I graduated from college, I was asked if I wanted to run a second school that they were opening up and I did. And I say this, because I had a fascinating experience emerging and evolving as a young teacher. It was there that I think what I term an empirical spirituality, a practical spirituality began to emerge, in my observations of the students, as they came to class day after day, month after month, year after year ... there was something extraordinary about being an observer of people over a very long period of time. At first I just saw their stances or their punches, enough or not enough power, but then I began to notice that their moods created a different type of behaviour. If they were in a bad mood, they were not performing their art in the same way. This began to evolve into finer and finer observations, while I felt I was starting to see people's shadows, people's knots, people's energies flowing in and out of their bodies. That was a very gradual, unconscious experience that - because I was very interested in teaching - became more and more conscious over the decades. I've been doing karate for 47 years, and I've been teaching full-time, six days a week, for the last 43 years.
Now, there was another event that occurred. This was about 25 years ago. I was working with an older, senior martial artist, about ten years older than myself, and we were doing some very simplistic techniques. In martial arts we have different categories of technical practice: we can be working on kicks, working on blocks, punches, stance-work, breathing techniques, and we were working on something called escape techniques. These are the what-if scenarios: what if someone grabs your arm ... so you can't punch them, you have to learn a way to leverage out of it. So this individual had grabbed my wrist, and we've been going back and forth, exploring different wrist escape techniques, which are very-very common in many-many martial arts. At one point, my arm effortlessly escaped from his grip, and I looked at him and said: "You need to hold me a little bit tighter." He said: "I was holding you as tight as I possibly could." I said: "No, that can't possibly be." It felt like nothing. We work well together, and we went back into it. We couldn't replicate that effect for some time, but over period of weeks, we stumbled upon it again and again. This was an extraordinary experience for me, because I have come to see that in the traditional practices called kata or pattern sequences of movements, which many martial arts teach, whether it's a Chinese martial art, or a Korean martial art or a Japanese martial art, the patterns - a number of these patterns - are usually part of a traditional school. There is embedded within that a kind of art within an art: a hidden matrix of energy flow around the body. I call this, to those students who've been introduced to this for the first time, an empirical spirituality. We see what the ancients termed the spirit world, from a scientific perspective of the movement of chi. Chi is something that can be felt, although it is a very subtle feeling, and not only can it be felt, but it can be manipulated. Now, for people that are not familiar with that, it would go something like this: I could have an individual standing in front of me, and ask him or her to extend an arm out, and try to withstand a slow pressure to twist that arm down. Most people wouldn't be able to stop me from doing it. Even very strong people wouldn't be able to stop me from doing it. I could tell those people a few simple things that they could do, both mentally and physically, and that arm wouldn't be budged. It wouldn't matter if you were 15 years old, or 85 years old - we've done thousands and thousands of tests with people. When they see that, they can't believe it. In fact, it's so unbelievable, I don't think I had a single student I ever introduced it to, who doesn't raise an eyebrow up and says: "Wait a minute, you aren't twisting hard enough," and I say: "no, I'm twisting as hard as I was before." So, we have these intrinsic energy fields moving around the body, they are very much at our hand to control them, they can influence our physical strength, which has been my primary interest to understand those patterns, those hidden patterns, and how they affect personal strength and it has a very strong influence on one's health and meditative potentials. So, the chi study has been of primary focus for me over the past 20 years. It's one of the things that really lights me up, and I'm so blessed that I can tell people that my initial enthusiasm in 1968 is the same today in 2015. I love the whole experience of it.
Viktória: It sounds fascinating, yes. Would you say that ... the exercises you just described reminds me of kinesiology, where the principle is: if you say something negative or something that is untrue, while you push against a muscle, that muscle would be very weak and slack. If you say something positive, something true, than the muscle resistance will be much stronger, so you can actually test people's subconscious.
Hayashi: Yes, and we see that very-very clearly in practice. Any person, who's engaged in any type of activity, will bring to that activity their own personal paradigm, their collection of beliefs about who they are. In martial arts, at least in my martial arts, we call that one's platform. If the platform is inherently negative, if you don't feel confident, if you have doubt about your abilities, that will act on your energy body, and it will fulfil that in which you believe. If you believe, you are strong, you actually have increased strength, if you believe, you are weak, you have less strength, and the funny part is, if you are not sure, the person testing you will experience "not sure-ness". [Laughter.]
Viktória: Yes, it is really parallel actually to what we are doing in therapy, because I found that if somebody has a belief system that doesn't facilitate a certain thing then that thing will never happen - no matter how much they are working towards it. So, the first question that I always ask my clients, is: "What do you believe in? I don't mean officially, a religion, but how would you describe the world and your place in it." If that system is strong, the person can change a lot, if the system is weak, you have to change that system first, before you can make any other changes...
Hayashi: Yes, there was a noted martial art and Buddhist scholar in England, who made a very strong comment that if your martial art is not changing your paradigm, you are not doing your martial art properly. I think, that is an exceptionally insightful comment, because sometimes students will get stuck - stuck in the physical patterns, but it's not the physical patterns that are really sticking, it is their platform, what they believe about their own personal power, strength or future is what's sticking them, and to get to that and to work on that pattern. So, we can say that martial artists will practice an external, physical movement sequence of maybe 70 punches, kicks and blocks, along a specific shape on the ground, that's only the surface pattern. It's the pattern beneath that we want to really access, and merge that with the surface pattern. When that occurs, we say, one is in the spirit of the movements, or one has entered the movements. It's exciting to see that. I had a student once, a very educated man, successful in business, one of the youngest enrolees in Notre Dame University. I was watching him perform a kata, that had about 70 movements to it and during the kata I saw a change coming over his face. When he finished I told him: "You just seemed to have experienced an insight that altered the last half of your kata." And he said: "Yes, I just realised that there was nothing mystical about the practice of this form. I had held out in my mind that there was a mystical thing that was occurring, but when I realised there it was no different from any type of physical activity, I found my body relaxing more fully into the movement." I said: "I noticed that about you, and that's an excellent insight." Of course, the funny part about this is that every so many months we would have these insights about what karate was and each one was correct, like the blind men trying to describe an elephant, and each one is holding a different part of it. I would say to him: "Yes, you are right. That's what it is." For him, that was what he experienced, and he would continue to evolve his insights about it as he continued to immerse himself into the practice.
Viktória: Absolutely, yes. I also loved what you described in your book that if your take the chakra system, from the lower to the higher chakras, it is actually a system of evolution.
Hayashi: Yes, it is a fascinating system of evolution. Most people are familiar that when you advance your skills, you are rewarded a different coloured belt. It is my personal belief that the belts are very close to the chakra-colours. An ideal belt ranking system in the martial arts would be literally starting at the base chakra, the root chakra, the red chakra, a power centre for a lot of martial artist and begin with the red belt and move through the colours. If you are wearing a belt around your waist, you are actually getting a kind of inanimate object mantra, in a sense that belts radiate a frequency. That frequency is the colour frequency of the belt. So, when I look at students, I say: "Oh, he is in the yellow frequency. He is in the green frequency..."
Viktória: It's also fascinating that on different levels martial arts means something different, doesn't it? So, what caught my attention: if someone is doing it from a base chakra level, it might, you know, just be, fighting the neighbour, getting rid of the enemy, protecting the family - and it's very physical, it's a real fight. The higher you are getting the more it is about transcending conflict altogether. That's what I found fascinating about your approach, that it is not about fighting, it is about transcending fighting, transcending conflict, isn't it?
Hayashi: Yes, a question that I like to pose to new students of any age coming in to start martial arts for the first time, is who started martial arts. If we go back in time, can we find some original parents? This is an important question so that they can understand: there are many very different paths in martial arts, just like, as you are saying, if you start with the base chakra, you are interested only in some very pragmatic, even hostile, negative interactions with others. Now, the answer to the question is: we can go back in time, and find only three sources. There was the military, there was the monastic, and there were village masters or village family lineages. Now we know pretty clearly that the military was into killing as many people as fast as they could, to achieve whatever agenda. The monasteries of Asia were taking martial arts and going into a different paradigm. If the issue was conflict, the question for the monasteries was: "Was there, is there a way to transcend conflict? And if there is a way to transcend conflict, how can we do that, through martial practice?" It almost seems like an oxymoron, to find peace through fighting, but in fact, with the correct focus, one is looking to understand the nature of conflict. And this is how one arrives to the state of emptying oneself out of the unnecessary violence, aggression or anger. It's like untying the knots of self through the practice of the arts.
I like to give an analogy. It is a very broad stroke analogy, but in India we had the emergence of a kind of person referred to as a yogi. These yogis of India were looking at the body as a means of creating a radical change of consciousness. It probably didn't start that way, it probably just started with someone saying: "Hey, look, I can put my foot on the top of my head." Or: "I can swallow my tongue." But I think with that repetition of expanding the range of motion there came an observation: that one was also possible to alter consciousness, to expand consciousness. What they saw was a correlation between range of physical motion and range of consciousness. This becomes a very spiritual practice, when you are beginning to undertake something like that, not just to touch your toes. Now when these ideas reached China, the Chinese said - again, this is a broad stroke - we're not going to try and do it that way. We're going to do it differently. We're going to create patterns of movements, which are more natural for the human body, and by repeating those patterns of movements, very precise patterns of movements, we believe we can affect the same radical change in consciousness. We're going to create exercises that martial artists can practice. You and I have previously spoken about a world-wide, popular practice referred to as the pinans in most styles. These are simple movement patterns, following what would look like a giant letter "I" or "H" on the ground. You cover all point of that "I" and usually end up where you started. It was understood in the monasteries that these pinans (or what you would know as taikyokus) what the students know as basic routines, were designed in their entirety (usually taught as a set of five) to affect a radical change in consciousness, in a same way a mantra chanted repeatedly, would also alter one's consciousness. Chanting a universal mantra like "Om" vibrates through the body with very healthy consequences. Moving your physical body in specific patterns, would be no different than chanting "Om." Of course, why do you have it that way in one country, and another way in another country ... because we have all these cultural distinctions that just make us want to do those types of movements. I'm sure if we did some studies, we would find that some countries favour chanting versus flexibility exercises versus zen still meditation...
Viktória: It almost seems like what the kata does kinaesthetically, the mantra does in an audio way, and the mandala does visually.
Hayashi: Some of your listeners might not know, but we know conclusively that the history of martial arts began in India. There was an interesting intersection of the yogic path and the martial path. It has been said by high level martial artists, that good martial arts is good yoga. From yoga we can derive an interesting outline of basic types of spiritual disciplines, as there are different types of yoga - but this could be applied to any kind of spiritual disciplines. It was recognised that there were five different types of spiritual evolution that you could go through. One, was the study of your mind, to understand the mind. Two, was the study of cause and effect - and this is where martial artists focus their attention. We are looking at the cause and effect, when you're going to a karate class and you have an opponent, you have a partner playing the role of an opponent, there is an interesting psychodrama going on. How do you feel? Do you feel competent? Is your confidence being challenged? So, we would say martial arts is a yoga of studying cause and effect on a very basic level. Then we have the practising compassion parts. There is a way to evolve your spirituality by offering yourself to service of other people. We have the health yogas and we also have the health practices. If one can work to a level of purity of the physical body, that purification of the physical body will eventually organise and purify the mind, opening one's mind up to the spiritual dimensions of life. And lastly, of course, there would be the mantric or vibrational practices.
In the world today, there are, I think it's been estimated, about 6000 different styles of martial arts. If we were to do a survey of different types of spirituality or spiritual practices, we would probably found thousands and thousands. Spiritual practice can be very personal, it can be theistic, it can be conventional, institutionalised religion or it can be an alternative, new age practice. For me it was martial - I didn't anticipate it, I didn't know that was going to occur for me and now I think it's such an amazing dimension. It's very clear to me that we live both in the material world and the spiritual world, and perhaps the distinction I could make is: the material world is so critical to helping one understand the spiritual world. I mean, I use my lips to talk, I'm using my ears to listen, I'm using my body to walk over and get a book on spirituality. I find that the body is an amazing matrix to unravel the mysteries of your own life, your own nature, and certainly your spiritual nature. I'm kind of in a frenzy to keep going, I can't wait to get back into my patterns and working with those patterns, trying to understand them.
Viktória: It's interesting, because most people talk whether they have a soul, almost like the body has a soul. When it seems to be a lot more the other way around, that you are a soul that has a body at the moment that it's using to probably experience a certain type of psychodrama, like you're saying. In whole life we're put into situations that help us to grow and evolve.
Hayashi: I think that's so true. I had many students who have either unconscious knots, that they were unconsciously driven by to our karate school, or they have very conscious knots, and they don't know how to untie them, when they find their way to the dojo. The dojo is a Japanese word, it usually defines a space where one practices martial arts but it has a larger connotation: Jo was a Japanese term for a meditation hall, it's where monks would meditate on the way, the do or the dao. So, the dojo is a space that you set aside, a ritual place that you set aside, to work on your way, and try to unify your way with the way.
Viktória: Hmm, that's beautiful...
Hayashi: So, in some ways many of your listeners probably have their own dojos. They have a place where they go, maybe it's outside in nature, or they have a ritual place set aside in their home, or just a place they gravitate to, where they can find themselves, where they are able to open up and inter-commune with their own energies about life outside of conventional labels. For me, martial arts was originally designed for that in the monasteries, and I try to bring students in that direction. But I also have to say that there are many students today, who only come in with pragmatic agendas, and that's fine, I have no problem with it. They're bullied, and want some basic techniques to help them though it or they just like to feel more confident - I think these are step-stones. When people are ready, the spiritual doorways are always present to them. So, people will engage me in conversation that shows me that it is time to talk about something that is perhaps less familiar to them. I encourage them entry to look in a broader way at their martial arts. But I also respect the fact that some people don't want that, and I'm not going to force that upon them.
Viktória: That is an interesting question, I wonder, because today lot of the martial arts is very physical ... so, how did people react to your ever increasing discovery of the non-physical world? You even have become a Buddhist monk, haven't you?
Hayashi: Yes, I have.
Viktória: So, that must have been a huge step that people reacted to. What happened then?
Hayashi: People reacted less to that. That part of martial arts I introduce to more advanced student. Not that less advanced students are not capable - what's important for me is understanding who the student is, what my relationship with that student is, when they first enter. In the martial arts we say that the first few months is a courtship. They're courting to see whether this is what they would like, and I'm courting to see if this is what I would like, because I'm not going to teach students who want to go out and harm other people. And so we work together and we engage in conversation that fits their needs and this gives me the opportunity to see whether this student is ready to move into more serious practice. I feel that the spiritual side is something where student and teacher will have a mutual sense of when to enter that room. Although I do feel that our society right now is focused too much on the material, and it takes more work to establish the value of the spiritual practice. For me personally, my own experiences and my own ideas had moved very strongly into Asian philosophy, in particular Buddhist philosophy. When I was very young, I thought wrongly that Buddhism was a theistic, you know, God-oriented practice. I had no idea that the Buddha was a man, a teacher, who simply wanted to answer the question: "Why do we suffer?" I found that his question, if phrased slightly differently: "Why are we in conflict? Why do we have conflict?" was the very same thing I was studying in martial arts. I haven't been studying to beat people up, I was studying to make a life of more peacefulness and serenity around myself. That's what drew me to Buddhism - but what drew me to become a Buddhist monk was the fact that I had engaged with an organisation that was teaching personal evolution practices of a martial nature, to reach the stage of enlightenment. That so fascinated me that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to enter into that world, because that was the very world that I was rapidly approaching anyway in my own thinking. Buddhist teachings are in some ways, in terms of their structure, not that different from martial art styles. In Buddhism they would be referred to as sects. In martial arts, there would be different styles.
So, the Buddhist sect that I was invited into, is called Chen Yen Shingon Mikkyo Mi Ching - it's a mouthful - but basically is the True Word Sect, but it uses martial practice. That's really what compelled me to become a Buddhist, and it's a very private practice for me. To those, who have expressed interest, I'm more than happy to share part of that path with them. These sects, particularly the sect I'm in, are very specialised sects. These are not sects you will find tens of thousands of people studying. You are only going to find hundreds or even less people studying these sects. That will be like a special, familiar-style martial arts, you know, like a Chinese father who knew martial arts and passed it on only to his sons and daughters. So, you'll get some very unusual, very interesting practices. The practices that I do are considered esoteric, inner practices. They would not be obvious for someone watching me doing a kata, they would say: "Well, he's just going through his movements." But we use certain visualisations, and we have a certain agenda, but it wouldn't be like the agenda of a student for example saying: "I see that bully, who picked up on me last time. That's what I see when I see those punches and kicks, I see myself surviving that bully." So, there is definitely a graduation of mind and awareness, the way we are practicing, and that goes through a trajectory, from very practical to more nuanced, finer vibrations as you're moving through the forms. It's very exciting, you know, people say to me: "So, you practice internal martial arts, but this is an external art." I say: "Well, it's an external art, if you want to look at it as an external art."
You know, I spent probably years asking such simple questions that my students go: "Why would you even ask that questions?" For example: here's a question I bet very few people could actually answer: "In a form, a kata, why do you step with your left foot forward versus your right foot?" And people say: "Oh, because your opponent is that way, punch and step with your left foot." And I say: "Do you think stepping with your left foot is the same as stepping with your right foot?" They say: "No, I'm right handed, so my right side is stronger." What we find out is that the way energy moves around the body, the way chi moves around the body, has a very particular pattern and rhythm. We can see pretty clearly, when this katas were put together that this understanding was intact at the time of those katas creation. Some katas go back over a thousand years. I would say, from my study, that they are extraordinary compositions, not because I'm adding to them what wasn't there, because I'm discovering what was there. It's amazing to me that it is there.
I suppose, on one level of analogy it could be similar to the Maharishi coming to the United States, saying: "You know, you Westerners might benefit from meditation." You know, a lot of Westerners at the time went: "What? Sitting still, are you kidding me? That is a waste of time!" Sure enough, medical science has come along now, and quite concretely validated the enormous range of positive benefits from meditating. Likewise, when we look at yogic patterns and we look at martial patterns, these are pattern that have been time tested for hundreds, if not a thousand years or longer. There're just amazing, subtle qualities going on, same as or similar to meditation. So, in martial arts we say; when you are in the right head-space, and you are practising a movement pattern, you are practising a movement meditation, a moving meditation. You are moving energies in very particular patterns, to affect a shift in your mind, to expand your consciousness, to expand it to worlds that are greater than your physical self. So, as someone was saying to me: "What you are really saying is that everything is connected." And I said: "Yes, if you had a taco for lunch, it's probably going to affect your kata." If you are wearing a red, it's going to have a different affect than when you are wearing a white uniform. So, yes, everything is connected, and the martial arts, on one level, are calling us over, saying: "Look, all is connected. Pay attention!" Isn't that so much part of spiritual evolution for all of us: paying attention. You know, the question is, paying attention to what? What shall we pay attention to? And it's paying attention to everything. How do we see everything? We have to open our eyes. How do we open our eyes? I say: Welcome to the practices! These are the practices. And it's really exciting to see students to be able to see, and be able to feel and come back and validate these experiences for themselves. They become true students of the way without me having to say anything. They see it, and I think I can't do anything better than being a good consultant for opening people's minds up through the martial arts beyond the practical kick and punch - which has its value also:
In my early days, we had an elder man in the karate class. At that time, in 1968, there were not a lot of older students in those classes, mostly man, 17-35 years old. He took his first class. The next time we saw him, he said to us: "I was on a bus with my mother, and someone stole her purse. And the only thing I was taught: to spread my legs in this powerful stance and throw an punch. So, I jumped in my bus seat, stood in front of the man, throw the punch, he dropped the purse and ran off." So, we can't deny the importance of the immediately practical. For him, it worked beautifully. For those, who want keep climbing that mountain, we hope that there're many other types of experiences that spread out right through your whole life, right to the roots of who you are - so that you can say: "My life is rich with meaning. I feel vital. I feel positive, and I feel alive." When I can see somebody saying that or feeling that, I think: "They are learning authentic martial arts. That's what the martial arts were about in the monasteries."
Viktória: This is so fascinating, because it seems to me that you are saying things that everybody should hear. The martial arts community sounds, maybe from the outside, like such a specific group of people...
Hayashi: I'm sorry to say that there are a lot of martial arts that are very materially oriented, and perhaps there is an increase in those martial arts, because I feel there are less teachers who are able to clearly articulate what the other path has to offer. I also think it's because in our culture. What I've noticed ... again, for me, you know, I have taught through my 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s and it's given me an opportunity to see cultural changes, broad cultural changes, and how they're effecting martial arts. Also, my own evolution and what I teach compared to what I used to teach. We're in a culture now that's moving very rapidly through experiences. There was an article many months ago, here in the States, where psychologists were talking about what appeared to be a consciousness utilising the Nike clip: "Just do it!" Don't think about it, just do it. I thought that goes so against the grain of what I teach: Just do it! I see a lot of people coming into the martial arts very quickly, wanting to get a black belt, and exiting the martial arts, not knowing that there are any other dimensions offered to them. So, that's a sad part of what's happening in the arts. But on the same token there are - even though it's a minority - some very-very good dojos, martial art schools with instructors that are enlightened, that can bring you into these dimensions. I think the curious student should ask their teachers about it, so even if the teacher is not so confident with such material, the questions asked might propel them to look at it. Then we might see more schools adopting this type of philosophy.
Rather, an interesting experience: one day my teacher had to leave and he walked up to me and he said: "I would like you to take over the class. I got to be out of the state for an important meeting," and before I could say: "But, but, but..." I was teaching. He did this to me numerous times, and within a short period of time, I found myself teaching six days a week. When I graduated from college, I was asked if I wanted to run a second school that they were opening up and I did. And I say this, because I had a fascinating experience emerging and evolving as a young teacher. It was there that I think what I term an empirical spirituality, a practical spirituality began to emerge, in my observations of the students, as they came to class day after day, month after month, year after year ... there was something extraordinary about being an observer of people over a very long period of time. At first I just saw their stances or their punches, enough or not enough power, but then I began to notice that their moods created a different type of behaviour. If they were in a bad mood, they were not performing their art in the same way. This began to evolve into finer and finer observations, while I felt I was starting to see people's shadows, people's knots, people's energies flowing in and out of their bodies. That was a very gradual, unconscious experience that - because I was very interested in teaching - became more and more conscious over the decades. I've been doing karate for 47 years, and I've been teaching full-time, six days a week, for the last 43 years.
Now, there was another event that occurred. This was about 25 years ago. I was working with an older, senior martial artist, about ten years older than myself, and we were doing some very simplistic techniques. In martial arts we have different categories of technical practice: we can be working on kicks, working on blocks, punches, stance-work, breathing techniques, and we were working on something called escape techniques. These are the what-if scenarios: what if someone grabs your arm ... so you can't punch them, you have to learn a way to leverage out of it. So this individual had grabbed my wrist, and we've been going back and forth, exploring different wrist escape techniques, which are very-very common in many-many martial arts. At one point, my arm effortlessly escaped from his grip, and I looked at him and said: "You need to hold me a little bit tighter." He said: "I was holding you as tight as I possibly could." I said: "No, that can't possibly be." It felt like nothing. We work well together, and we went back into it. We couldn't replicate that effect for some time, but over period of weeks, we stumbled upon it again and again. This was an extraordinary experience for me, because I have come to see that in the traditional practices called kata or pattern sequences of movements, which many martial arts teach, whether it's a Chinese martial art, or a Korean martial art or a Japanese martial art, the patterns - a number of these patterns - are usually part of a traditional school. There is embedded within that a kind of art within an art: a hidden matrix of energy flow around the body. I call this, to those students who've been introduced to this for the first time, an empirical spirituality. We see what the ancients termed the spirit world, from a scientific perspective of the movement of chi. Chi is something that can be felt, although it is a very subtle feeling, and not only can it be felt, but it can be manipulated. Now, for people that are not familiar with that, it would go something like this: I could have an individual standing in front of me, and ask him or her to extend an arm out, and try to withstand a slow pressure to twist that arm down. Most people wouldn't be able to stop me from doing it. Even very strong people wouldn't be able to stop me from doing it. I could tell those people a few simple things that they could do, both mentally and physically, and that arm wouldn't be budged. It wouldn't matter if you were 15 years old, or 85 years old - we've done thousands and thousands of tests with people. When they see that, they can't believe it. In fact, it's so unbelievable, I don't think I had a single student I ever introduced it to, who doesn't raise an eyebrow up and says: "Wait a minute, you aren't twisting hard enough," and I say: "no, I'm twisting as hard as I was before." So, we have these intrinsic energy fields moving around the body, they are very much at our hand to control them, they can influence our physical strength, which has been my primary interest to understand those patterns, those hidden patterns, and how they affect personal strength and it has a very strong influence on one's health and meditative potentials. So, the chi study has been of primary focus for me over the past 20 years. It's one of the things that really lights me up, and I'm so blessed that I can tell people that my initial enthusiasm in 1968 is the same today in 2015. I love the whole experience of it.
Viktória: It sounds fascinating, yes. Would you say that ... the exercises you just described reminds me of kinesiology, where the principle is: if you say something negative or something that is untrue, while you push against a muscle, that muscle would be very weak and slack. If you say something positive, something true, than the muscle resistance will be much stronger, so you can actually test people's subconscious.
Hayashi: Yes, and we see that very-very clearly in practice. Any person, who's engaged in any type of activity, will bring to that activity their own personal paradigm, their collection of beliefs about who they are. In martial arts, at least in my martial arts, we call that one's platform. If the platform is inherently negative, if you don't feel confident, if you have doubt about your abilities, that will act on your energy body, and it will fulfil that in which you believe. If you believe, you are strong, you actually have increased strength, if you believe, you are weak, you have less strength, and the funny part is, if you are not sure, the person testing you will experience "not sure-ness". [Laughter.]
Viktória: Yes, it is really parallel actually to what we are doing in therapy, because I found that if somebody has a belief system that doesn't facilitate a certain thing then that thing will never happen - no matter how much they are working towards it. So, the first question that I always ask my clients, is: "What do you believe in? I don't mean officially, a religion, but how would you describe the world and your place in it." If that system is strong, the person can change a lot, if the system is weak, you have to change that system first, before you can make any other changes...
Hayashi: Yes, there was a noted martial art and Buddhist scholar in England, who made a very strong comment that if your martial art is not changing your paradigm, you are not doing your martial art properly. I think, that is an exceptionally insightful comment, because sometimes students will get stuck - stuck in the physical patterns, but it's not the physical patterns that are really sticking, it is their platform, what they believe about their own personal power, strength or future is what's sticking them, and to get to that and to work on that pattern. So, we can say that martial artists will practice an external, physical movement sequence of maybe 70 punches, kicks and blocks, along a specific shape on the ground, that's only the surface pattern. It's the pattern beneath that we want to really access, and merge that with the surface pattern. When that occurs, we say, one is in the spirit of the movements, or one has entered the movements. It's exciting to see that. I had a student once, a very educated man, successful in business, one of the youngest enrolees in Notre Dame University. I was watching him perform a kata, that had about 70 movements to it and during the kata I saw a change coming over his face. When he finished I told him: "You just seemed to have experienced an insight that altered the last half of your kata." And he said: "Yes, I just realised that there was nothing mystical about the practice of this form. I had held out in my mind that there was a mystical thing that was occurring, but when I realised there it was no different from any type of physical activity, I found my body relaxing more fully into the movement." I said: "I noticed that about you, and that's an excellent insight." Of course, the funny part about this is that every so many months we would have these insights about what karate was and each one was correct, like the blind men trying to describe an elephant, and each one is holding a different part of it. I would say to him: "Yes, you are right. That's what it is." For him, that was what he experienced, and he would continue to evolve his insights about it as he continued to immerse himself into the practice.
Viktória: Absolutely, yes. I also loved what you described in your book that if your take the chakra system, from the lower to the higher chakras, it is actually a system of evolution.
Hayashi: Yes, it is a fascinating system of evolution. Most people are familiar that when you advance your skills, you are rewarded a different coloured belt. It is my personal belief that the belts are very close to the chakra-colours. An ideal belt ranking system in the martial arts would be literally starting at the base chakra, the root chakra, the red chakra, a power centre for a lot of martial artist and begin with the red belt and move through the colours. If you are wearing a belt around your waist, you are actually getting a kind of inanimate object mantra, in a sense that belts radiate a frequency. That frequency is the colour frequency of the belt. So, when I look at students, I say: "Oh, he is in the yellow frequency. He is in the green frequency..."
Viktória: It's also fascinating that on different levels martial arts means something different, doesn't it? So, what caught my attention: if someone is doing it from a base chakra level, it might, you know, just be, fighting the neighbour, getting rid of the enemy, protecting the family - and it's very physical, it's a real fight. The higher you are getting the more it is about transcending conflict altogether. That's what I found fascinating about your approach, that it is not about fighting, it is about transcending fighting, transcending conflict, isn't it?
Hayashi: Yes, a question that I like to pose to new students of any age coming in to start martial arts for the first time, is who started martial arts. If we go back in time, can we find some original parents? This is an important question so that they can understand: there are many very different paths in martial arts, just like, as you are saying, if you start with the base chakra, you are interested only in some very pragmatic, even hostile, negative interactions with others. Now, the answer to the question is: we can go back in time, and find only three sources. There was the military, there was the monastic, and there were village masters or village family lineages. Now we know pretty clearly that the military was into killing as many people as fast as they could, to achieve whatever agenda. The monasteries of Asia were taking martial arts and going into a different paradigm. If the issue was conflict, the question for the monasteries was: "Was there, is there a way to transcend conflict? And if there is a way to transcend conflict, how can we do that, through martial practice?" It almost seems like an oxymoron, to find peace through fighting, but in fact, with the correct focus, one is looking to understand the nature of conflict. And this is how one arrives to the state of emptying oneself out of the unnecessary violence, aggression or anger. It's like untying the knots of self through the practice of the arts.
I like to give an analogy. It is a very broad stroke analogy, but in India we had the emergence of a kind of person referred to as a yogi. These yogis of India were looking at the body as a means of creating a radical change of consciousness. It probably didn't start that way, it probably just started with someone saying: "Hey, look, I can put my foot on the top of my head." Or: "I can swallow my tongue." But I think with that repetition of expanding the range of motion there came an observation: that one was also possible to alter consciousness, to expand consciousness. What they saw was a correlation between range of physical motion and range of consciousness. This becomes a very spiritual practice, when you are beginning to undertake something like that, not just to touch your toes. Now when these ideas reached China, the Chinese said - again, this is a broad stroke - we're not going to try and do it that way. We're going to do it differently. We're going to create patterns of movements, which are more natural for the human body, and by repeating those patterns of movements, very precise patterns of movements, we believe we can affect the same radical change in consciousness. We're going to create exercises that martial artists can practice. You and I have previously spoken about a world-wide, popular practice referred to as the pinans in most styles. These are simple movement patterns, following what would look like a giant letter "I" or "H" on the ground. You cover all point of that "I" and usually end up where you started. It was understood in the monasteries that these pinans (or what you would know as taikyokus) what the students know as basic routines, were designed in their entirety (usually taught as a set of five) to affect a radical change in consciousness, in a same way a mantra chanted repeatedly, would also alter one's consciousness. Chanting a universal mantra like "Om" vibrates through the body with very healthy consequences. Moving your physical body in specific patterns, would be no different than chanting "Om." Of course, why do you have it that way in one country, and another way in another country ... because we have all these cultural distinctions that just make us want to do those types of movements. I'm sure if we did some studies, we would find that some countries favour chanting versus flexibility exercises versus zen still meditation...
Viktória: It almost seems like what the kata does kinaesthetically, the mantra does in an audio way, and the mandala does visually.
Hayashi: Some of your listeners might not know, but we know conclusively that the history of martial arts began in India. There was an interesting intersection of the yogic path and the martial path. It has been said by high level martial artists, that good martial arts is good yoga. From yoga we can derive an interesting outline of basic types of spiritual disciplines, as there are different types of yoga - but this could be applied to any kind of spiritual disciplines. It was recognised that there were five different types of spiritual evolution that you could go through. One, was the study of your mind, to understand the mind. Two, was the study of cause and effect - and this is where martial artists focus their attention. We are looking at the cause and effect, when you're going to a karate class and you have an opponent, you have a partner playing the role of an opponent, there is an interesting psychodrama going on. How do you feel? Do you feel competent? Is your confidence being challenged? So, we would say martial arts is a yoga of studying cause and effect on a very basic level. Then we have the practising compassion parts. There is a way to evolve your spirituality by offering yourself to service of other people. We have the health yogas and we also have the health practices. If one can work to a level of purity of the physical body, that purification of the physical body will eventually organise and purify the mind, opening one's mind up to the spiritual dimensions of life. And lastly, of course, there would be the mantric or vibrational practices.
In the world today, there are, I think it's been estimated, about 6000 different styles of martial arts. If we were to do a survey of different types of spirituality or spiritual practices, we would probably found thousands and thousands. Spiritual practice can be very personal, it can be theistic, it can be conventional, institutionalised religion or it can be an alternative, new age practice. For me it was martial - I didn't anticipate it, I didn't know that was going to occur for me and now I think it's such an amazing dimension. It's very clear to me that we live both in the material world and the spiritual world, and perhaps the distinction I could make is: the material world is so critical to helping one understand the spiritual world. I mean, I use my lips to talk, I'm using my ears to listen, I'm using my body to walk over and get a book on spirituality. I find that the body is an amazing matrix to unravel the mysteries of your own life, your own nature, and certainly your spiritual nature. I'm kind of in a frenzy to keep going, I can't wait to get back into my patterns and working with those patterns, trying to understand them.
Viktória: It's interesting, because most people talk whether they have a soul, almost like the body has a soul. When it seems to be a lot more the other way around, that you are a soul that has a body at the moment that it's using to probably experience a certain type of psychodrama, like you're saying. In whole life we're put into situations that help us to grow and evolve.
Hayashi: I think that's so true. I had many students who have either unconscious knots, that they were unconsciously driven by to our karate school, or they have very conscious knots, and they don't know how to untie them, when they find their way to the dojo. The dojo is a Japanese word, it usually defines a space where one practices martial arts but it has a larger connotation: Jo was a Japanese term for a meditation hall, it's where monks would meditate on the way, the do or the dao. So, the dojo is a space that you set aside, a ritual place that you set aside, to work on your way, and try to unify your way with the way.
Viktória: Hmm, that's beautiful...
Hayashi: So, in some ways many of your listeners probably have their own dojos. They have a place where they go, maybe it's outside in nature, or they have a ritual place set aside in their home, or just a place they gravitate to, where they can find themselves, where they are able to open up and inter-commune with their own energies about life outside of conventional labels. For me, martial arts was originally designed for that in the monasteries, and I try to bring students in that direction. But I also have to say that there are many students today, who only come in with pragmatic agendas, and that's fine, I have no problem with it. They're bullied, and want some basic techniques to help them though it or they just like to feel more confident - I think these are step-stones. When people are ready, the spiritual doorways are always present to them. So, people will engage me in conversation that shows me that it is time to talk about something that is perhaps less familiar to them. I encourage them entry to look in a broader way at their martial arts. But I also respect the fact that some people don't want that, and I'm not going to force that upon them.
Viktória: That is an interesting question, I wonder, because today lot of the martial arts is very physical ... so, how did people react to your ever increasing discovery of the non-physical world? You even have become a Buddhist monk, haven't you?
Hayashi: Yes, I have.
Viktória: So, that must have been a huge step that people reacted to. What happened then?
Hayashi: People reacted less to that. That part of martial arts I introduce to more advanced student. Not that less advanced students are not capable - what's important for me is understanding who the student is, what my relationship with that student is, when they first enter. In the martial arts we say that the first few months is a courtship. They're courting to see whether this is what they would like, and I'm courting to see if this is what I would like, because I'm not going to teach students who want to go out and harm other people. And so we work together and we engage in conversation that fits their needs and this gives me the opportunity to see whether this student is ready to move into more serious practice. I feel that the spiritual side is something where student and teacher will have a mutual sense of when to enter that room. Although I do feel that our society right now is focused too much on the material, and it takes more work to establish the value of the spiritual practice. For me personally, my own experiences and my own ideas had moved very strongly into Asian philosophy, in particular Buddhist philosophy. When I was very young, I thought wrongly that Buddhism was a theistic, you know, God-oriented practice. I had no idea that the Buddha was a man, a teacher, who simply wanted to answer the question: "Why do we suffer?" I found that his question, if phrased slightly differently: "Why are we in conflict? Why do we have conflict?" was the very same thing I was studying in martial arts. I haven't been studying to beat people up, I was studying to make a life of more peacefulness and serenity around myself. That's what drew me to Buddhism - but what drew me to become a Buddhist monk was the fact that I had engaged with an organisation that was teaching personal evolution practices of a martial nature, to reach the stage of enlightenment. That so fascinated me that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to enter into that world, because that was the very world that I was rapidly approaching anyway in my own thinking. Buddhist teachings are in some ways, in terms of their structure, not that different from martial art styles. In Buddhism they would be referred to as sects. In martial arts, there would be different styles.
So, the Buddhist sect that I was invited into, is called Chen Yen Shingon Mikkyo Mi Ching - it's a mouthful - but basically is the True Word Sect, but it uses martial practice. That's really what compelled me to become a Buddhist, and it's a very private practice for me. To those, who have expressed interest, I'm more than happy to share part of that path with them. These sects, particularly the sect I'm in, are very specialised sects. These are not sects you will find tens of thousands of people studying. You are only going to find hundreds or even less people studying these sects. That will be like a special, familiar-style martial arts, you know, like a Chinese father who knew martial arts and passed it on only to his sons and daughters. So, you'll get some very unusual, very interesting practices. The practices that I do are considered esoteric, inner practices. They would not be obvious for someone watching me doing a kata, they would say: "Well, he's just going through his movements." But we use certain visualisations, and we have a certain agenda, but it wouldn't be like the agenda of a student for example saying: "I see that bully, who picked up on me last time. That's what I see when I see those punches and kicks, I see myself surviving that bully." So, there is definitely a graduation of mind and awareness, the way we are practicing, and that goes through a trajectory, from very practical to more nuanced, finer vibrations as you're moving through the forms. It's very exciting, you know, people say to me: "So, you practice internal martial arts, but this is an external art." I say: "Well, it's an external art, if you want to look at it as an external art."
You know, I spent probably years asking such simple questions that my students go: "Why would you even ask that questions?" For example: here's a question I bet very few people could actually answer: "In a form, a kata, why do you step with your left foot forward versus your right foot?" And people say: "Oh, because your opponent is that way, punch and step with your left foot." And I say: "Do you think stepping with your left foot is the same as stepping with your right foot?" They say: "No, I'm right handed, so my right side is stronger." What we find out is that the way energy moves around the body, the way chi moves around the body, has a very particular pattern and rhythm. We can see pretty clearly, when this katas were put together that this understanding was intact at the time of those katas creation. Some katas go back over a thousand years. I would say, from my study, that they are extraordinary compositions, not because I'm adding to them what wasn't there, because I'm discovering what was there. It's amazing to me that it is there.
I suppose, on one level of analogy it could be similar to the Maharishi coming to the United States, saying: "You know, you Westerners might benefit from meditation." You know, a lot of Westerners at the time went: "What? Sitting still, are you kidding me? That is a waste of time!" Sure enough, medical science has come along now, and quite concretely validated the enormous range of positive benefits from meditating. Likewise, when we look at yogic patterns and we look at martial patterns, these are pattern that have been time tested for hundreds, if not a thousand years or longer. There're just amazing, subtle qualities going on, same as or similar to meditation. So, in martial arts we say; when you are in the right head-space, and you are practising a movement pattern, you are practising a movement meditation, a moving meditation. You are moving energies in very particular patterns, to affect a shift in your mind, to expand your consciousness, to expand it to worlds that are greater than your physical self. So, as someone was saying to me: "What you are really saying is that everything is connected." And I said: "Yes, if you had a taco for lunch, it's probably going to affect your kata." If you are wearing a red, it's going to have a different affect than when you are wearing a white uniform. So, yes, everything is connected, and the martial arts, on one level, are calling us over, saying: "Look, all is connected. Pay attention!" Isn't that so much part of spiritual evolution for all of us: paying attention. You know, the question is, paying attention to what? What shall we pay attention to? And it's paying attention to everything. How do we see everything? We have to open our eyes. How do we open our eyes? I say: Welcome to the practices! These are the practices. And it's really exciting to see students to be able to see, and be able to feel and come back and validate these experiences for themselves. They become true students of the way without me having to say anything. They see it, and I think I can't do anything better than being a good consultant for opening people's minds up through the martial arts beyond the practical kick and punch - which has its value also:
In my early days, we had an elder man in the karate class. At that time, in 1968, there were not a lot of older students in those classes, mostly man, 17-35 years old. He took his first class. The next time we saw him, he said to us: "I was on a bus with my mother, and someone stole her purse. And the only thing I was taught: to spread my legs in this powerful stance and throw an punch. So, I jumped in my bus seat, stood in front of the man, throw the punch, he dropped the purse and ran off." So, we can't deny the importance of the immediately practical. For him, it worked beautifully. For those, who want keep climbing that mountain, we hope that there're many other types of experiences that spread out right through your whole life, right to the roots of who you are - so that you can say: "My life is rich with meaning. I feel vital. I feel positive, and I feel alive." When I can see somebody saying that or feeling that, I think: "They are learning authentic martial arts. That's what the martial arts were about in the monasteries."
Viktória: This is so fascinating, because it seems to me that you are saying things that everybody should hear. The martial arts community sounds, maybe from the outside, like such a specific group of people...
Hayashi: I'm sorry to say that there are a lot of martial arts that are very materially oriented, and perhaps there is an increase in those martial arts, because I feel there are less teachers who are able to clearly articulate what the other path has to offer. I also think it's because in our culture. What I've noticed ... again, for me, you know, I have taught through my 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s and it's given me an opportunity to see cultural changes, broad cultural changes, and how they're effecting martial arts. Also, my own evolution and what I teach compared to what I used to teach. We're in a culture now that's moving very rapidly through experiences. There was an article many months ago, here in the States, where psychologists were talking about what appeared to be a consciousness utilising the Nike clip: "Just do it!" Don't think about it, just do it. I thought that goes so against the grain of what I teach: Just do it! I see a lot of people coming into the martial arts very quickly, wanting to get a black belt, and exiting the martial arts, not knowing that there are any other dimensions offered to them. So, that's a sad part of what's happening in the arts. But on the same token there are - even though it's a minority - some very-very good dojos, martial art schools with instructors that are enlightened, that can bring you into these dimensions. I think the curious student should ask their teachers about it, so even if the teacher is not so confident with such material, the questions asked might propel them to look at it. Then we might see more schools adopting this type of philosophy.
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Viktória: Yes, and this is also fascinating. I want to thank you for being here tonight and tell us about all these things, and what I will also do: I will put some links of your books on the website, where we have the podcast as well, because I think they're worth reading even if someone is not a martial artist, especially your book about "The Soul Polisher's Apprentice," you called it, didn't you...
Hayashi: Yes. Viktória: ... that is a fascinating journey of soul evolution through how you were teaching your student and how it wasn't really about just kicking and punching, but going through all those psychological barriers, fighting your own inner dragons, finding your own way, which is beautiful and worth reading for everybody who is interested in self development, I would say. Hayashi: Yes, thank you, and that was a real fun challenge to get it out there and write a book, in which I was hoping to reveal the psycho-dramas of real people being involved in martial arts, bringing all life's struggles and seeing how they fared in that environment. Thank you for having me! |
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Viktória: Thank you so much for coming and hope to talk to you another time, as well.
Hayashi: Great! Thank you, Viktória.
Viktória: All the best in the meantime...
Hayashi: Great! Thank you, Viktória.
Viktória: All the best in the meantime...