Maintaining One Point
“I practiced the method of maintaining one point, one center, when there is commotion around you.” — from a student of Aikido
A Dudeist Perspective
Each day can bring many storms. There are many ways to interact with them. Old master Dude-Li used to call these storms “funnel clouds.” It was the whole idea that life’s storms rise both from within ourselves and also externally. Either way, you’re in a struggle.
A Dudeist Fable=Teller
One day, Retlaw Kram, a self-described descendent of Dude-Li, decided to grab the tornado by the tail. He was super inspired by the teachings of the old masters, and even into updated versions of teachings like the Port Huron Declaration:
“To be idealistic is to be considered apocalyptic, deluded.”
“The apathy here is, first subjective — the felt powerlessness of ordinary people, the resignation before the enormity of events.”
Retlaw grabs his pen and tablet
Now the thing is, Retlaw was mostly a loner, not much of a co-mingler. And seeing how messed up things were, he started thinking about things like tornados. And he would write about those kinds of things. Even if no one else cared.
He was a bit quirky, which was not to say he was dumb. But it did mean that some of the things he’d write would make you go, “Huh?”
He’d write about things like…
Conditions in the here & now
“A single condition alone can be difficult to contend with. But when one or more conditions are simultaneously occurring, it becomes very hard to sort through what to attend to first, because it just becomes a big, muddy mess of a whirlpool. It’s like trying to reach into a spinning tornado and pulling out that one single piece of debris, as though that ‘one less thing’ will somehow stop the storm, or still the violence or disruptions.”
Or he might scribble…
“And here — right here — is where it can become, in a sense, impossible to manage. Because we start chasing down so many conditions, one after another after another. And then back to the first, repeating, repeating.”
These types of writings are things the Dudeists seem to somehow ‘get’. You can tell a Dudeist that ‘life’s a circus act, and nobody gets it,” and they’ll buy you an oak soda.
Life’s a circus act, and nobody gets that
It’s like that performer in the circus who gets all the plates spinning at once: there reaches a point where things start crashing and shattering.
But setting Dude-Li and Retlaw aside, the game cannot be won using a ‘chase the condition’ strategy. We can’t reach into the storms of confusion and pull out a customized solution for every problem that life’s tornado tosses on us. Not only because it’s endless chasing, but because the landscape of conditions are forever shape-shifting. Life and its challenges are a continuous pattern of zigging and zagging, of changing, of things taking turns moving in and out, twisting this way and that. The tornado gobbles up new debris as fast as it lays down a trail of destruction in its wake. There seem to be no patterns in the chaos of life’s everyday challenges.
And it gets worse. Because not only do the conditions constantly come and go, with all their various needs and attendant matrixes, but they are each demanding their own fully customized, individually crafted solution. Right now.
This is what we all encounter. The reality that we experience when the adversities are upon us is often a reality we don’t want to acknowledge. The world is out of control, and yet we insist in the belief that we can, somehow, be in control.
Control can exist. But it is far less about managing the chaos and far more about managing ourselves and also about learning how to balance ourselves within the unknown.
Dude-Jitsu for everyday life
People and situations that are out of control present unique opportunities, in part because they are striving for a sense of control, they are searching for better balance and ultimately for harmony — whether they call it harmony or use a similar term like '‘being chill”. Problems are in the same search for solutions that any of us hoping to grasp.
When we aren’t getting balance and harmony in our life, we go on a mission to find it. Unfortunately, at the same time we are trying to find relief from stress and tension, it can keep piling on. Obviously, we can characterize these situations as assaults. For a martial artist, an attack can actually put us at an advantage. How? Well, one way of looking at it is that an attack exposes our adversary’s position and intent. When someone physically grabs us by the wrist, the martial artist looks at it as a gift, because we now know where one of the attacker’s hands is located. It’s a bit neutralized because it’s busy holding on to our wrist.
These changes in perspective can place a martial artist at an advantage. There is a theme being woven here. Because it becomes our responsibility to realize what the attacker is actually seeking what we are all seeking, and it’s our job to help them achieve what they are seeking.
If you meet a deceiver, move him with sincerity; if you meet a bully imbue him with harmony. If you meet a perverse or self-seeking person, encourage him with moral duty and integrity. There is nothing under Heaven I cannot knead or mold. — from the Master of the Three Ways, Hung Ying-Ming.
The idea being that life’s attacks are manageable. So, you gotta understand the end game, and become someone who can help point out the proper direction. Become like a compass with a needle point north toward ‘better balance’. You are not the only person who wants better balance or a better life… your problems and the things that are attacking or disrupting you want the same thing.
“A person who first sees a small man trained in aikido with mind and body coordinated throwing someone twice his size, or comfortably dealing with four or five other men probably considers it all very strange because he is thinking only in terms of the laws of the body and seeing it only with the body’s eyes. Were he to realize that the mind controls the body and view the case from the standpoint of the laws of the spirit, he would see that it is in no way marvelous.” — -Koichi Tohei, founder of Aikido
With martial arts training, it becomes much easier to deal with a single attack and even with simultaneous attacks of multiple adversities. But what is it within the training that allows us to focus on multiple attacks, yet meet them all with a common denominator? Because if we try to meet each individual problem in life with its own singular, customized solution, it won’t take long to become overwhelmed. The logistics of this approach can quickly exhaust us and is clearly impractical.
Taoism, Dudeism and Dude-Jitsu
This is what is sometimes called the One Point. In this case the One Point is representing that it’s easier to focus on fundamental root solutions that can be applied to anything as compared to trying to solve everything differently, indivdually.
“The originator of Taoism, Lao Tzu, basically said, “mellow out, man.” Although he said this in ancient Chinese so something may have been lost in the translation.”
“Down through the ages, this “rebel shrug” has fortified many successful creeds — Buddhism, Christianity, Sufism, John Lennonism and Fo’-Shizzle-my-Nizzlism. The idea is this: Life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it. So don’t do anything about it. Just take it easy, man.” — from Dudeism website
I agree with the essence of what Dudeism is conveying here. But, speaking as a martial artist — and in particular as a guy focused on applying martial arts in everyday life- there is a bit more to it.
In this instance, Dudeism is laying out the basic concept. And it’s doing that by giving Taoism a modern-day spin. Dude-Jitsu supplements this, by putting a modern-day spin on martial arts, by modestly opening up that world in a way we can use in everyday life situations.