Bringing meaning back to Martial Arts
A book series written by Miodrag Zarić
“The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It’s about what you are made of, not the circumstances.”
Like we find the real taste of water only where it is a precious rarity, and that is in a desert, it sometimes seems to me that my life in martial arts was a life of a Bedouin. Knowledge always came to me in small doses, in drops. Because of that, I sometimes feel that I have never left that desert; I never could and maybe never wanted to. That endless thirst was bending my spine; it taught me what it means to be humble and modest, like a beginner who prays for knowledge what I’ve always been. Besides that, long journey through the desert, I didn’t have the intention to speak of water in this book. That’s a knowledge for which I was always so thirsty because I was drinking it very rarely.
“The human soul is like water, it comes from the sky and goes to the sky and then comes back from there quickly, changing its residence all the time on that journey.”
This book is about countless drops on a string, which travels from the past through a pipe of time. Each drop is an entity for itself, a unique world and individual story, each created by something more significant than the Universe. They are seemingly lost in the water, but they still carry their original message and potential individually, which helps the water to slide and flow through that pipe. It is not important which drop will we look at first, and reflect and recognize ourselves in it, as long as we understand that they all have the same origin of principals and carry the same message of the ancient tradition.
To me, every drop was precious, so I was infinitely happy when I would find it or get it. And when that would happen, my heart would shudder full of gratitude; it would dance joyfully because each drop meant life for me so many times. In every comfort and abundance of everything, where nothing is complicated, where there is nothing to work hard or fight for.
On the pages and in the chapters of this book, you will get to know the idea of how martial arts can be thought, understood, felt, and why it is all those.
Sometimes people do not want to hear the truth because they do not want their pleasant illusions to be destroyed.
The need for this, or this kind of book, is just as great as the need for bitter natural medicine, or strong soap.
Their purpose isn’t strawberry and raspberry flavours, or hyacinth and violet scents, but they need to get rid of all that has agglomerated, and what is useless and redundant. It has the power of cleansing our body, sharpening our senses, and freeing us from weak habits.
It is human nature to keep finding new paths and new ways, and that is how solutions are discovered in the process. From the point where we understand the nature of limitations, we are directed to find and create new possibilities that are recognizable for our mind and acceptable to our body.
That is the moment when knowledge receives the form of something acquired and accepted, and it stops being a copy of someone or something. That is the moment when the weak becomes strong, and the strong grow ready.
Maturing is a process that we call the expending of these limitations both in body and awareness with learning and practising skills, a deeper understanding of it. We then call that method for studying our art.
Success in itself means crossing a limit. To extend our abilities beyond the limitations, we need first to assume that we have one. Just by doing it, we are underestimating ourselves. All our gains can only be smaller than us. Taking pride in any benefits is belittling oneself. When we realize our unboundedness, then no action is an achievement.
Profound maturation (Busai) is a state of martial mind that has lost its limitations, “Eye in the back of the head”. This high level of understanding and skills are the real profound maturity that is not possible to achieve without the teaching of others.
When we are met with the genuine truth, it completely changes our life, which stops from this moment being, as we know it.
When we understand the pure nature of things, everything instantly changes. The life we lived before has stopped to exist it disappears. The essence of things has the power to change our lives entirely, and suddenly all the “important” things vanish. Vision is sharpened, and the lungs fill with some new fresh air, everything becomes crystal clear as if we abandon one and walk into a new life.
Life once again is resurfaced. The caterpillar becomes a butterfly, and the egg becomes a chicken; are we wondering where is our life on that path of changes now?
Many people see Karate as a way of fighting, while some think that it is a form of self-defence. However, there are still many who spend longer to think deeper about these questions and assumptions.
We will find the right answer when we ask the right question: does Karate training have its ultimate purpose to teach us how to be good enough to defend ourselves or to be prepared to overcome the fight and avoid the conflict?
When we teach our students self-defence, we teach them self-confidence and confidence in their own body, through discovering its real possibilities. We also show that they must always be free to choose between the possible options to accept the fight or not.
In situations when we sense danger, no time for thinking and planning, we react quickly and unusually vigorously, because under psychological pressure we unconsciously reach for the inner source and reservoir of courage and strength. By practising risk, we learn how to gather that energy with the willpower quickly, and to use it, not only for fighting but also in all other aspects of life.
Our goal is to control that energy in such a way that, following our conscience, it can be used when needed.
In martial arts, each body part could be used as a dangerous weapon. Nature of every weapon is the extension of the body per se so that it could become dangerous.
If we keep repeating: “I can’t” or “this is too hard,” we will never find our true potentials, and how close to the limit of our abilities they are. Very often, we have someone in front of us, who sees and believes more in our abilities than we do. Sometimes it is easier to trust someone else, than ourselves. “I don’t pray for a lighter burden, but for a stronger back” is the principle of the real traveller on the path of skills. An only strong will can answer such prayers.
In martial arts, the question is not how much the system has changed while it was adapted to our body, but how much we have improved through understanding the sense of its existence. We should know that when we separate ourselves from tradition, we expose ourselves to a danger of deviating from the actual goal of the art of martial arts.
Anyone who practices martial arts for a long time has confronted these dilemmas many times. Like on any journey, like Odysseus searching for Ithaca, we face many obstacles, temptations, deceptions, and traps, because the mind never rests during tireless testing. If we give in and lose our focus on the goal in front of us for a moment, we can get lost, once again in the reign of pride, which will break the guideposts of our teachers in front of us, calling them an illusion. That will be the end of our journey, whose purpose was to comprehend ourselves thoroughly.
There is no difference if we look at life from a spiritual level, it exists in any form, with all its characteristics, or there is no life. Life is, or it is not. Those who think a lot about death will die many times, some will maybe stop fearing it, but besides that, they will certainly never understand it in the end. Whenever there is a moment when you remember that you will inevitably die, it makes you free from desire and remorse, makes you alive now. No matter what, positive mood and attitude towards life increase self-confidence, with which faith that everything will be just fine also grows. Positivity attracts sound energy, which protects us from the negative influences of the environment.
In martial arts, correct training gradually develops courage in students, which it tests in many critical moments.
Courage doesn’t mean that we are becoming mellow and insensitive for the challenges to which we are exposed, but that we are determined to separate essential from the unimportant, ignore what limits us and slows us down in solving the problems that appear in front of us, on the path of accomplishing our progress.
Ignorance does not give a chance to people to grasp their actual potential in life. Ignorance further leads to fear and selfishness, which we can recognize in everyone and everything. If we realise that outside of ourselves, it is an essential step in dealing with what is inside of us.
Going through a long process of advancing in Traditional Karate-do, we necessarily face changes that bring to the surface problems, which affect our behaviour and which we weren’t aware of. Besides that, we also meet our weaknesses, which we have left and “forgotten” long ago. Karate-do has such power that problems we had are solved and overcome quickly so that our weaknesses become our new strengths. That invincible spiritual strength, created by practicing art, makes a shield around us, against possible immoral challenges and irresponsible behaviour, through the determination to endure all tests that life puts in front of us, as winners. By practicing martial arts, you become so strong that you don’t quit halfway or give up in front of the first serious obstacles. It means to hold out for as long as it takes to find our true nature, which will make us a person full of traits that we have always appreciated in others.
Human life becomes splendid and powerful only when it’s polished with love.
“Courage is not the strength to move you on. Courage is moving on when you have no strength.”
The Black book with its content is mostly technical-mental nature. It symbolizes and represents the techniques, modes and situations of their performance, their detailed studies, and more profound understanding. It represents only the first part of the journey, the conclusion of a cycle, which leads to the black belt. It must bring maturity, confidence, and readiness with itself, so we could be ready to realize and continue on the path, to which the other two books refer.
The Black Book is dedicated to practitioners who have firmly decided to fulfil their wish and attain their first black belt (Sho-Dan; 1st DAN), but also to those who already comprehend it.
This book can be a great and useful encouragement for making an important decision: how and from where to start a long journey towards achieving the real mastery of the art.
This book is 286 pages.
“People who think martial arts as wholly practical are the flip side of the coin. Looking at the martial arts this way implies that all ideals are useless and maybe even false. Saying that a martial art is only about “what works” means that why you fight or what you fight for is not that important – or at least these are questions that can’t be answered.”
—Keith Vargo
The Grey Book follows the Black Book. Grey is a warn off black or darkish white, and it is a colour that is always moving, a colour that is still somewhere in transit from black to white, or from white to black. It is a bridge, a link between two limits, two opposite sides, two goals that in itself connects and unites. In its essence, grey cannot exist without black and white together, and on the path between these two colours. That gives it peculiar dynamics and energy.
This book addresses the issues that arise when the technical level of knowledge is at such a level that those questions are possible.
The Grey book is intended for those who are preparing or have already attained their third black belt (San-Dan; 3rd DAN). That is a fundamental level of knowledge because it carries with it the correct title of a Sensei (Guide or Teacher).
This book is 286 pages.
“Just like a river, spiritual information is constantly flowing by. Sometimes sensitive people naturally reach out and touch these rivers of information.”
“White,” by “losing” colour, maybe leaves an impression of a light, weak, empty content. Many important and valuable things, at first glance, are overlooked and disregarded, only because of their appearance.
In this, White book, there is a lot of information, which can lead to the most profound, most valuable knowledge of the martial arts. All that knowledge was accumulated in the years of searching and recognizing it in training, with the help of those who have discovered it before me.
Book is intended primarily for those who attained the level of practical knowledge of the black belt 5th Dan, (Go-Dan), but also for all of those who have a mature need, thirst and desire to know more, and thus remove one mysterious veil after another from the art they are engaged in.
White book is an invitation for us to look deeper, “under the skin,” through practice, to see the light that we are carrying more natural, but also to recognize the one from which we came.
This book is 287 pages.
There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.
All three books relate to one another as a dynamic object and its image in the mirror. Therefore, mutually condition each other’s existence. We can recognize one in the other, two of them in the third one, and that can happen in any order. The first one spreads to the second one and enters the third one, while – at the same time – the third one is mapped on the second one and shines on the first one.
They are three different sounds, frequencies that we can hear, perceive only if we are tuned with it.
The very need for this kind of book right now is just an indicator of the time in which the martial arts are today.
The need to publish it was stimulated by the truth that this beauty is slowly sinking into greed, and egoism, that becomes the symbol of “value” of the time we live in. Unfortunately, the carriers of these intentions are the ones that lead and represent what martial arts “are.” They, guided by their interests and knowledge, deceive, impoverish, poison others and themselves by interpreting something that they only imagine they have and understand.
They bring down relations among students, and generally among people, to the lowest point, by explaining martial arts as street fights, which are not even that because – unfortunately – they yet have some rules.
On the other side, some are too busy following the rules and complicated the world of martial arts to the point where they, in the end, lose all of the freedom of artistic creativity and, with it, also the practical fighting value.
A book can never replace a good teacher, school or training, but if the student – and we are all students in some way – does not continue to study and learn beyond the regular practice, he has no chance for real progress in knowledge and skill. This book could be, with no offence to those who have already done it before, an ideal choice, as the first book on martial arts.
These books are not for reading with a coffee and cookies on the side, but it is an offer for a challenge and a base for the beginning of a tiring search and study. It is nothing else but a direction to the door where the answers are but also help on the way to it. You need to know when you find yourselves in front of it, and you must discover all alone the way to open it. These books reveal precisely the itchy spot where limitless pleasure hides, only if we scratch ourselves there.
The club symbol represents a Zen circle (Enso) written in red ink in which it is written Meikyo Kan with Japanese writing (Kanji) in black ink.
In the Zen tradition, the circle represents a void, constant change, harmony, enlightenment, togetherness in nature and Universe.
The red colour on the white background represents the unity of opposites: fire-snow, hot-cold, maturity-beginning, rebellion-surrender, war-peace, blood-innocence, Yin-Yang…
The circle in red ink also symbolizes health, respect, strength, heart, and Japan – as the land of the origin of the art, studied and practiced in the school.
The name Meikyo kan is written in the emptiness of the circle (Kara), and it represents a house that has only one purpose. That would be to preserve the mirror that will be cleaned and polished, up until it’s lost in the radiant emptiness, in which will be shown what dwells in it. That is a continuous, indestructible strength of universal life.
The pictures, signs (Kanji) that represent a name have deep and meaningful symbolism. The first sign (from the top down) represents the Sun and the Moon, day and night, and orbiting of the opposites that make the Universe (Yin-Yang).
The next symbol, the middle image, is a sign for a noble, valuable metal, from which mirrors were made in the past by prolonged polishing until they became sparkling clear (silver mirror).
The last symbol represents a structure, a house where food can be found (kept), for the body and the soul. That means that in it is that which supports the meaning of life.
So, when we know this symbolism of the written signs “Meikyo kan”, interpretation of its name could also be: “When the life inside itself recognizes a mirror in which the Universe desires to mirror itself”.
When in our body, we truly understand and experience the mystery of life, it becomes a splendid mirror, in which the Universe smiles at us (Yugen).
Japanese checkup: 黒 – (kuro), Black, 間 – (ma), between, 白 – (Shiro), white, 守 – (Mamoru, shu), Protect, 破 – (Yahu, ha), broken
All prices for the book are listed in AUD.
For orders in Australia, shipping is $15.
For orders outside of Australia, shipping is $25.
You can email me at miodrag.zaric@yahoo.com.au
Books will be delivered in 1-2 weeks from order date (depending on destination – Australia or overseas).
