Don’t let your knowledge become a millstone

Millstones look great at mills, but they hold you back if you wear them...

“The harder one works to acquire knowledge, the less willing one is to surrender it.”

They say that knowledge is power and it’s true. Knowledge tells you the correct way to do things so that you have martial superiority over others, and knowledge gives you credibility. But if you're a well-adjusted human being, that knowledge is only any good if it's shared with others and is open to revision.

However, in the martial arts world, more than any other, knowledge is never absolute. There is no definitive solution to a given situation, and there are no absolute truths. A glance at the thousands of martial arts schools out there, each with their own ideas, should be enough to assure you of that.

Yet all too often, I encounter instructors and students both within GKR and in the martial arts community in general, who act as though they hold the definitive answer to many situations. They’ll offer a bunkai, or a way to perform a technique, or a piece of combat psychology, and there’s absolutely no room in their world-view for alternatives. Worse still, they’ll act as though anyone who challenges their interpretation is an idiot for considering other perspectives. I see them all the time on the forums, and sadly, I’ve even encountered this attitude in a few masters of 5^th dan and above.

.	Isn't this how every sensei should be to the less knowledgeable?

In one particular forum, it’s reached such a ridiculous level, that none of the experienced dan grades (yudansha) are prepared to risk answering even the simplest questions from the ordinary students for fear of being verbally torn to shreds by the other senior graded forum members. Where’s the humbleness that martial artists are taught to strive after? Where’s the contribution to the martial community that’s supposed to characterise senior yudansha? Their knowledge is being used as a club to batter down those around them, when it should be extended as an outstretched hand to lift others to their level. But then maybe they feel threatened by the thought of others rising to their level?

I appreciate that what you know, or think you know may have cost you many hours of training, and maybe literally blood, sweat, and tears to acquire. Nevertheless, your knowledge is not like a precious stone, to be acquired and then fiercely protected against all-comers, rather it’s simply a single stepping stone that enables you to move to the next in an infinite chain of stones. Sometimes the stones may move in circles bringing you back to places you’ve visited before, sometimes their paths may weave and cross giving you different perspectives on the same piece of knowledge, and sometimes they move in straight lines towards useful destinations as your knowledge accumulates, but believe me, it’s a journey that you’ll never complete.

The longer I study and train, the more I see the truth in the saying, “Karate is an art that requires three life-times to master.” If you clutch each piece of knowledge so tightly that you can never release it, then your journey will be short and unsatisfying, leaving you with the sense that others achieve more on their path. However, if you are always prepared (even if it’s reluctantly sometimes) to accept new, even contradictory ideas, then you will be the richer martial artist for it.