It is a fact that with mediocracy you can achieve very much in todays life.
Old Greek philosophers already pointed that out when they were mourning about the decadence in their professions.
So this situation is not new. It seems it is human instinct.
It is also a fact that in the spiritual way the human race did NOT grow for the last 2500 years. Only the technical improvement in feeding our egoistic needs grew. We still want money, fame and power.
We still want the better car then the neighbour, we still want more money than the colleague at work.
And one day we all will go to our boss and tell him everything we think about him and his way of leading, because we always know better.
And OF COURSE this is also happening in martial art. A field in which most of the practitioners feed their need for spare time, for sporting action for enjoying being better, faster more powerful then someone else.
What had been the Gladiators is today Boxing, MMA and Wrestling.
Everybody at home is better than the combatants and knows more.
Therefore it is a fact that with intrigue, falseness and enough will to lie you can achieve very very much in todays life. Everyday stories about Bankers, who betrayed are found in the news. Politicians who use their power for their own good. And even the shopping owner two streets away is a cutthroat because he wants 2 cents more for the milk.
After more than 2 decades in martial arts there are only two kinds of bad persons, I found out.
The first one (I consider them worse) are these, who always push something in front of them not to be touched and to get a specific aura of being humble.
“I am only learning for 20 years now, I am still a beginner…” something like that is said.
“I do not know we need to ask the master …” to show their subjugation.
These persons NEVER do something wrong.
It is the school, which demands to be like that. It is the master, who demands to be like that.
But never them. And then if gets perfidious. If the student does something wrong this “teacher” raises the finger puts pressure on the student and says that a rule of the school was broken and he, the teacher, has to act even if he doesn’t want to.
So a foggy picture of something big, high above is painted, which the student can never achieve and the teacher uses for his position and stand.
But there is NOTHING. There is NOBODY.
Challenge the teacher. Go out there and ask for proper education.
Teacher, who always stress the “reiho” need it themselves the most.
Before all it shows that they do not take ANY responsibility while you as a student have to take ALL responsibility.
Clearly not the acting of a real master.
The other kind is the “monarch”. Building a small group of people around him, even telling it should be like secret organisation. Only them he will tell all his knowledge. The others are just money income. Then stories are told and always with the aura of mystery. It is like you know something nobody else knows.
The promise is very convincing. If you pass you will have knowledge of secrets!!!
Who would not fall for that?
But there is NOTHING. There are no SECRETS. Because this “master” will never tell you the end. Because this would mean to free yourself of his spell.
To let you go.
So you will never achieve the finish.
Once I drove with my master to see the Fuji-san. We were in the car and discussing about Budo. I asked him. “Sensei, how do you handle all that ignorance and loss of objection in martial art, when people debase yourself?”
He immediately answered: “ Walter, this is your problem. Solve it. And please let me alone with that”.
He did not tell me what to think.
He did not tell me whom to follow.
He did not offer me HIS point of view so that I follow his instructions and again loose myself.
He simply told me one thing.
DO IT YOURSELF!!!
A real master is someone, who goes along with you. Who forces you.
To bring you to yourself.
Who helps you to transform from a SAY-ER to a DO-ER.
So that YOU finally take responsibility for YOURSELF.
It is that simple.
