March 24, 2012
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Overflowing Cup
There’s an old taoist story that goes something like this…
The pupil watches as the master pours tea into his cup, and it starts spilling over.
The pupil is surprised, but just watches at first. Eventually, he mans up, and says… “Uh… master? The cup is overflowing. You can’t pour any more tea in there.”
And the master, wizen as he is, (by definition really, otherwise we wouldn’t call him “master,”) just smiles, and says, “Duh, that’s my point.”
Okay, so I’m paraphrasing. The basic idea comes from a collection of notes from Bruce Lee’s writings, in one of the old classics, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Like many of Lee’s writings, it is applicable to martial arts, but has wider connotations in other things as well.
Last wednesday, I was up to a couple of teaching functions at the university. The first was the baduk club, and the second was the martial arts club. Wednesday is my day off school, so it’s my weekly opportunity to kinda slow the pace of school and work life down a bit, and just do some extra curricular stuff that I enjoy.
I’m not a professional in either of the activities, but I do enough enough basics about either subject to help beginners and total newbies into the activities. At my level, I’m one of the strongest baduk players in the club, and in the martial arts club, I’m one of the strongest and most experienced fighters. Despite that my actual fighting ability in both activities isn’t the strongest in the club though, I can say without being shy that I’ve been complimented as being an excellent facilitator in both subjects. A lot of that probably comes from the fact that I’m also a student, learning with them– it’s just that I open up things up in such a way that people can usually learn from my experiences.
One of the most difficult things when it comes to teaching is trying to teach people who know just enough to think they know how they want to learn.
I mean, the most difficult situation to teach in is one where the receiver just isn’t interested in learning– you’d assume that people who join a club are itnerested in things, you’d think there’d be no problem. Still… I don’t know.
I think that if I had to describe the learning, there’s a factor aside from interest– there’s humility. Sure, there’s other things, like flexibility of the brain and all that, but there are some things that we can probably overcome more consciously than others. Pride is a big one I think.
When I first started playing Baduk, [CM] would play games with me every now and then. But most of my battle experience came from playing online– a lot of times, I’d play a game and simply get slaughtered, but because of the way the handicap system in baduk works, gradually I started getting better and better, because the handicap game found me matches within an appropriate zone of difficulty.
The handicap system in baduk is pretty cool. The fact that the rankings are loosely based means that you can figure out how to match two players of comparable strength with a handicap that makes the game challenging for both players. So, for example, say a higher ranking player plays a lower ranking player– the difference of their ranks translates to a set amount of ‘head start’ stones that the weaker player gets as an initial advantage. The math behind it is just beautiful, because the resultant match is challenging for both players.
What happens is that the weaker palyer, with a head start, has the chance to play a stronger opponent, who will usually display feats of superior fighting and finesse. In a way, a weaker player is forced to fight from a castle with strong pillars against a clever barbarian army that knows no fear. It’s seige deffense. It gives the weaker player a chance to overlook what’s going on and set the deffensive pace.
The stronger player, in contrast, is forced to be bold and, in some cases, crazy, to catch up against the weaker player’s head start– conservative play seldom works when there is a huge handicap, so it becomes necessary to be creative. The stronger player tries to goad the weaker player into one-on one fights. He wants to send commandos over the enemy walls by catapaults. Crazy shit, yes, but if the handicap is properly set, it makes for some exciting games where you clearly see the clash of priorities– the weaker player just needs to hold on to what he’s got (since he starts off with more) until the end of the game, wheras the stronger opponent needs to be opportunistic in trying to crowbar even the slightest weawkness right open in order to catch up before the time runs out.
A properly adjusted handicap game is a great way to learn, I think. A weaker player thus learns one of the foundations of the game– chosing the urgent battles, fortification before fighting, etc.
However, a lot of players at the club refuse handicap games. One of the players, for example, [Croutons], is currently ranked as a 19kyu player. He’s been playing for over a year now… so that’s a bit strange. He’s played me twice in the last week, and between the two of us, there’s enough difference in our playing levels that he should get at least a 9-stone handicap. That kinda means he gets at least a 9 move head start on me before I’m allowed to play my first move.
But he refuses the handicap.
If you have to translate this to a more understandable situation, think of it like … oh, I don’t know. Like in a boxing match– you don’t mix heavyweights with lightweights, not even in a friendly sparring match, without significant protective equipment. Otherwise? Otherwise, the weight advantage will just crush the lightweight.
Yes, I know, and I think it is important, that people challenge themselves– but there’s an efficiency point to this kind of thing. You can’t run before you crawl. The idea of a small child finishing a marathon is as ludicrous as someone trying to learn judo by challenging a judo master to a serious encounter– yes, you will learn something, but it has more to do with your weakness than anything else. The fact is, you haven’t even yet developped the capacity to learn properly. You can have pride, you can have willpower, but real life isn’t like Naruto and there are situations in the real world where you will not be rewarded for stubbornness, and you will be so totally and utterly crushed that won’t learn anything during your demise.
Croutons isn’t the only player at the club who behaves like this– there are at least 3 other beginners that refuse handicap games, because of some sorta stigma associated with accepting learning handicaps.
On the other hand, there’s a different problem at the martial arts club. There’s this guy, I don’t know his name… lets call him [KarateBiff]. It’s kinda unfortuante, because I know a lot of folks who do karate who are upstanding citizens and who show correct and appropriate spirit– but this guy gives karate a bad name.
He’s a big guy– fairly strong, but a bit overweight. From the looks of it, he’s probably been doing karate for a year or two, because he has some basic sense of punching form. However, I know he’s not that great, because his footwork is terrible (and it’s probably closely linked to his lack of fitness). The thing is, people at the martial arts club are, by majority, a bunch of beginners. A lot of bad things can happen when you let beginners spar with beginners, because they just don’t know how regulate their techniques properly.
KarateBiff’s basic sparring tactic was to endure one hit while charging to get in a deep cross. This might be kinda useful in certain scenarios, but in a friendly point-fighting sparring situation, charging in to land a one-hit kill type punch and ignoring any damage you take on the way in is a bullshit attitude. Especially if you’re donig your one-hit kill punch as a serious, hard punch, and not a ‘tagging’ point scoring punch. That’s what KarateBiff was doing.
The reason why it’s a bullshit move is that when you’re friendly sparring, you’re not trying to hurt people. But if you do nothing but repeatedly charge with intention to deal damage? Well, simple sparring will escalate. If you’re fighting with full contact rules in mind, and the opponent is thinking sparring, it just doesn’t work. Disabling a serious charge means intercepting with superior force, say… with a stiff jab to the face or something. But if the situation is friendly sparring, by definition, your opponent can’t do that, can he?
I guess what I’m getting at is that KarateBiff was sparring with another karate practitioner, also a beginner, but KarateBiff was clearly only concerend with nailing the other guy in the stomach as hard as possible. The other guy was physically athletic, so he was holdign up okay, but it was clear that KarateBiff was the more agressive of the two and was really pushing the rules of friendly sparring.
I asked them if they wanted to borrow gloves (I had two pairs with me) but KarateBiff, who at that point was bleeding from a lip, refused them, saying rather arrogantly “Who needs gloves?”
Well, apparently, you do, asshole. I guess he thought he had something to proove by being really hardcore or something. I didn’t see it happen, but I think that logically, the other guy was having trouble getting KarateBiff to stop charging because Biff wasn’t acknowledging light contact interceptions– so the result was that the interceptions must’ve gotten strong and stronger until they drew blood. I always find it annoying when people think it’s ‘overreacting’ to wear a mouthguard, but it’s all fun and games until someone chips some teeth, I say. I made it clear to both fighters that their conduct wasn’t safe. KarateBiff scoffed at the idea, but the opponent seemed to beleive me enough to slow down the fight and eventually just end, probably because he was feeling the hostile pressure.
The thing is, KarateBiff is a big guy. He’s got your stereotypical overweight bully / bouncer build, and I think he gets away with sloppy fighting because he’s got natural strength. In the grand scheme of things, both as a karateka narrowly and as a martial artist in general, he’s a beginner who is too singleminded about prooving his damage dealing abilities. He was getting away with it because his opponent is also a beginner, but if it were me, I would have dismantled him pretty easily. Of course, there’s a question of would I want to be in that position in the first place, but that’s another story.
So, what I’m getting at is that KarateBiff is on the opposite side of the spectrum from Croutons. Croutons isn’t going to learn efficiently because he is overchallenging himself– he’s not admitting that there is a skill difference , and as a result, he’s basically bashing his heads on brick walls, as if to proove that determination and persistence wins everything. On the other hand, KarateBiff isn’t challenging himself enough– he’s relying on natural physique for his fighting, instead of technique, which begs the question: what’s the point of learning martial arts then? Listening to him argue with his opponent about who scored the better hits was just exhasperating to listen to.
The two have a similar problem– they both have a method of proceeding, and they won’t open their minds up to anything else. But they’re both beginners. I can say that without being arrogant. They are beginners, and they’ll stay that way unless their attitudes change.
I’m not saying any of this because I enjoy forcefeeding people, or that I need to teach. I’m not paid to coach. This is strictly volunteer work.
But their heads are already full of what they want to know… what more do they need?
