Backstreet Bokator

Out in the backstreets

Bokator techniques flowing

Bandages Applied

Nothing like learning some martial arts in the backstreets of Siam Reap, Cambodia. In a very humid, sweltering 36 degrees Celsius (about 97 degrees f) in a make shift gym part of the instructors house, pictures from championships hanging on the wall, I start to warm up running around the gym...

The Art of Bokator was said to be created around 2000 years ago and was the combat system of the Angkor soldiers (BokatorCambodia.com). If you walk around the Wats (temples) in Siam Reap, ancient stone artwork shows a civilization that celebrated sport fighting and wrestling. Back to training...

Mork Samrith, a fighter and instructor has been participating in tournaments and demonstrations of Bokator and Kun Khmer fighting for more than a decade. He is only 26, but pretty sure he could kick my ass. I start sweating profusely as we advance from stances through pad drills (pic below) and then move on to counter techniques.. (Ignore how pale white I am, lol)

Part way into training my toe starts bleeding, we stop momentarily to clean and bandage the wound, then continue. As training comes to a close, I feel exhausted but good from the mix of training and heat and even though I destroyed a few liters of waters. I always find it very appealing to try out different arts especially if I get the chance to practice in the country of origin. There is always something new to learn either from the art itself or the teacher! 

Get out and train, bam!

-Dwight

If you happen to be Siam Reap and want a unique experience with some basic Bokator, checkout this link to schedule with Mork.

Sources:
1. http://www.bokatorcambodia.com/grandmaster.html

Martial Arts Resource: Bushido - The Soul of Japan - Sources of Bushido

Bushido: Soul of Japan

Sources of Bushido

by Inazo Nitobe

Foreword by Dwight

     This is the second chapter of Inazo Nitobe's Bushido Soul of Japan. Nitobe goes into detail into some of the religious and philosophical practices and principles that Bushido possibly stemmed from. What I found intriguing, was the notion that knowledge is only useful when it is becomes part of learner and actively used. Otherwise a person is just a machine that spits out information. I am paraphrasing this of course, but the point is that unless you incorporate knowledge into your character, your behavior, your beliefs or your philosophy, there is no point to just having knowledge. It is useless and as Bruce Lee would say "reject what is useless". 

Listen to the corresponding cast here: Podcast #60.

Sources of Bushido

     In Japan there were several sources of Bushido, of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil master the utmost of his art, told him, "Beyond this my instruction must give way to Zen teaching." "Zen" is the Japanese equivalent for the Dhyâna, which "represents human effort to reach through meditation zones of thought beyond the range of verbal expression." Its method is contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can, of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect, and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself above mundane things and awakes, "to a new Heaven and a new Earth."

     What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant character of the samurai. Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of "original sin." On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum from which divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary
forms the essential part of its furnishing. 

     The presence of this article, is easy to explain: it typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic injunction, "Know Thyself." But self-knowledge does not imply, either in the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter veiled his head, for his was reflection. 

     Essentially like the Roman conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain—it is the sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a Rechtsstaat, or even the Patron of a Culturstaat—he is the bodily representative of Heaven on earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. If what M. Boutmy says is true of English royalty—that it "is not only the image of authority, but the author and symbol of national unity," as I believe it to be, doubly and trebly may this be affirmed of royalty in Japan.

     The tenets of Shintoism cover the two predominating features of the emotional life of our race—Patriotism and Loyalty. Arthur May Knapp very truly says: "In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation itself." A similar confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith. I said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect on account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of national instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a systematic philosophy or a rational theology. This religion—or, is it not more correct to say, the race emotions which this religion expressed?—thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and love of country. These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for Shintoism, unlike the Mediaeval Christian Church, prescribed to its votaries scarcely any credenda, furnishing them at the same time with agenda of a straightforward and simple type.

     As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the most prolific source of Bushido. His enunciation of the five moral relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed), father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had recognized before his writings were introduced from China. The calm, benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling class. His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment in the heart of the samurai.

     The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old. A mere acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in no high esteem. A common proverb ridicules one who has only an intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant of Analects. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was considered a machine. Intellect itself was considered subordinate to ethical emotion. Man and the universe were conceived to be alike spiritual and ethical. Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley, that the cosmic process was unmoral.

     Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, "To know and to act are one and the same."

     I beg leave for a moment's digression while I am on this subject, inasmuch as some of the noblest types of bushi were strongly influenced by the teachings of this sage. Western readers will easily recognize in his writings many parallels to the New Testament. Making allowance for the terms peculiar to either teaching, the passage, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you," conveys a thought that may be found on almost any page of Wan Yang Ming. A Japanese disciple of his says—"The lord of heaven and earth, of all living beings, dwelling in the heart of man, becomes his mind (Kokoro); hence a mind is a living thing, and is ever luminous:" and again, "The spiritual light of our essential being is pure, and is not affected by the will of man. Spontaneously springing up in our mind, it shows what is right and wrong: it is then called conscience; it is even the light that proceedeth from the god of heaven." How very much do these words sound like some passages from Isaac Pennington or other philosophic mystics! I am inclined to think that the Japanese mind, as expressed in the simple tenets of the Shinto religion, was particularly open to the reception of Yang Ming's precepts. 

     He carried his doctrine of the infallibility of conscience to extreme transcendentalism, attributing to it the faculty to perceive, not only the distinction between right and wrong, but also the nature of psychical facts and physical phenomena. He went as far as, if not farther than, Berkeley and Fichte, in Idealism, denying the existence of things outside of human ken. If his system had all the logical errors charged to Solipsism, it had all the efficacy of strong conviction and its moral import in developing individuality of character and equanimity of temper cannot be gainsaid.

     Thus, whatever the sources, the essential principles which Bushido imbibed from them and assimilated to itself, were few and simple. Few and simple as these were, they were sufficient to furnish a safe conduct of life even through the unsafest days of the most unsettled period of our nation's history. The wholesome, unsophisticated nature of our warrior ancestors derived ample food for their spirit from a sheaf of commonplace and fragmentary teachings, gleaned as it were on the highways and byways of ancient thought, and, stimulated by the demands of the age, formed from these gleanings anew and unique type of manhood. An acute French savant, M. de la Mazelière, thus sums up his impressions of the sixteenth century:—"Toward the middle of the sixteenth century, all is confusion in Japan, in the government, in society, in the church. But the civil wars, the manners returning to barbarism, the necessity for each to execute justice for himself,—these formed men comparable to those Italians of the sixteenth century, in whom Taine praises 'the vigorous initiative, the habit of sudden resolutions and desperate undertakings, the grand capacity to do and to suffer.'

     In Japan as in Italy 'the rude manners of the Middle Ages made of man a superb animal, wholly militant and wholly resistant.' And this is why the sixteenth century displays in the highest degree the principal quality of the Japanese race, that great diversity which one finds there between minds (esprits) as well as between temperaments. While in India and even in China men seem to differ chiefly in degree of energy or intelligence, in Japan they differ by originality of character as well. Now, individuality is the sign of superior races and of civilizations already developed. If we make use of an expression dear to Nietzsche, we might say that in Asia, to speak of humanity is to speak of its plains; in Japan as in Europe, one represents it above all by its mountains." To the pervading characteristics of the men of whom M. de la Mazelière writes, let us now address ourselves.

Source:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12096/12096-h/12096-h.htm

"Funky" Ben Askren Enters the Twitterverse

Even though Twitter has been around a while, it still amazes me how anybody and everybody can get access to almost anyone.  This morning “Funky” Ben Askren let the Twitterverse interview him. Here are some of the questions and answers I captured specifically relevant to help martial enthusiasts in their journey…well at least some of the questions.

Enter Twitterverse:

Random softball questions

Person of the twitterverse: How many pushups can you do?

Funky Askren: No idea

Person of the twitterverse: Favorite martial art besides wrestling?

Funky Askren: Muay thai

Person of the twitterverse: Plans after fighting?

Funky Askren: Retire and coach at Wisconsin

MMA Promotions

Person of the twitterverse: Why didn’t you sign with the UFC?

Funky Askren: No opportunity.

Person of the twitterverse: If you had opportunity would you?

Funky Askren: Depends on terms but possible.

Person of the twitterverse: Regret not going to UFC?

Funky Askren: Not for a second

Person of the twitterverse: Why did Bellator cut you?

Funky Askren: They didn’t my contract expired and I left

Person of the twitterverse: Do you prefer One FC ruleset over the Unified Rules?

Funky Askren: OneFC ruleset is the best ruleset known to man

MMA Advice

Person of the twitterverse: Advice for Amateur fighter?

Funky Askren: Work hard and learn as much as you can.

Person of the twitterverse: Advice for young wrestling athletes?

Funky Askren: Be in it for the long haul.

Person of the twitterverse: Advice for Up and coming fighter already contacted by UFC?

 

Funky Askren: Be patient.

Ok guys gotta go, thanks for all the questions. It was actually kind of overwhelming, lol.

Exit Twitterverse.

 

It is great that Ben had some good advice for up and coming fighters, essentially patience, hard work and lifetime learning. Just as these random people in the Twitter Universe sought information and advice, you should also not be afraid to reach out to individuals to help you in your own journey.

Root for “Funky” Ben Askren next week at OneFC Valor of Champions!

Bam!

-Dwight

 

Need a little Ultimate Fighting sweetness in my life

"Yeah show me good loving,

make it alright,

need a little sweetness in my life"

-Adam Levine (Maroon 5)

 

 

The UFC is giving a full dose of sweetness this weekend as Felice "lil Bulldog" Herrig is going against Paige "12 Gauge" Van Zant. This should be a very intriguing matchup, especially since Dana White and the UFC are touting Van Zant as the next big female MMA star. Regardless, it should be a good fight. The only baseline fight they have is with Tecia Torres, whom they both lost to in the same fashion.

 

After the sweet Herrig and VanZant fight, the main card fight between Lyoto Machida and Luke Rockhold will occur. I will admit it, I will be rooting for Machida. I really enjoy fighters who have taken a traditional martial art (karate) and applied it to the MMA scene, think of what George St. Pierre did. Thus creating "unorthodox" style. Which is funny that people say that, because mixed martial arts are not supposed to have a "normal" style.

 

As I am traveling, I will be enjoying some delicious beverages and following the fights. Who do you think will win?

 

Bam!

 

-Dwight

Haiku: Stasis

A warrior's path

Dabbles around confusion

Page floats in the wind

Briefly Balintawak

"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning"
- Benjamin Franklin

If you didn't know, Balintawak is one of the forms of Arnis or Eskrima to come from the Philippines. Balintawak was one of four systems to get established out of the Cebu region in the 1920s. (Wiley, Secrets of Cabales Serrada Escrima, page 6) Obviously some form or another these fighting arts existed before 1920s, but the fighting arts were collected and codified into these systems and reintroduced into the Philippine society.

Flash forward to today, the various forms of eskrima and arnis are becoming popularized here in the States, through well known martial artists like Guro Dan Inosanto and Grand Master Bobby Taboada. I recently had a great experience and chance to record Sifu Azeem and his son Shahid demo this very powerful art. (Check it out) I love that I have the ability today to learn more and more about these niche martial arts. Thank you internet.

Having the ability to find niche areas allows for continuous learning and growth. Continuous growth is paramount to anything in life and in the martial arts. It is very tough to learn everything, but that shouldn't stop you from trying and expanding your own martial arts journey.

-Dwight

Haiku - The cycle

Perils and setbacks
Always sit on your shoulder
Sun rises anew

Will anyone give Ann Osman food?

"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today"

- Robert Mckee

Ann "Athena" Osman is considered one of the most popular mixed martial artists out of Malaysia. She currently fights with One Fighting Championship. Recently, a great short documentary about Osman recently came out on the Aljazeera, called "Malaysia's Woman Warrior". I don't know about you, but I love listening to stories about how people initially found martial arts and then subsequently incorporated the arts into their life. Just as Ronda Rousey is inspiring many women here in the States, Osman is having a profound impact in Malaysia as well.

The documentary gives a brief glimpse into her life, her training and the people around her. At one point during the story the producer talks about her diet prior to a fight, I am pretty sure I was thinking I wanted to send Osman food. Like an entire chicken. Luckily, she did eat lots of food....eventually.

It is a great story and I recommend, you the reader to watch the program and see what might help you in your own story. One item I personally picked up on, was her mental state and how she specified that she needs to have "control" to feel in the right state of mind. I am sure that not only dealing with all the training, but also with all the media can be an endurance trip itself.

To conclude, viewing resources like these always gets me motivated to participate in Martial Arts and hopefully it inspires many of you as well. How will your story unfold?

-Dwight