Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The Curious Case of the Kiai Master

A Textbook Example of Delusion.

There are various mystical martial arts that use the idea of chi as a fighting method. Masters of such martial arts claim to be able to knock opponents unconscious with a gentle touch, or to physically hit or throw them from a distance without even touching them. You can visit such a dojo and observe that the techniques seem to be very effective - it seems like the martial artist actually has jedi-like powers.

Here’s a video of a publicised incident. A kiai master challenged doubters by offering a monetary reward to anyone who could beat him in a match. The video starts with the kiai master demonstrating his abilities on his students at his dojo - the students are unable to touch him, even attacking all at once! Then the match is shown, in which the MMA fighter quickly (but apologetically) knocks the kiai master down with ease. It’s a case study of delusion.

Same event filmed from another angle:

Here are some observations:

1. The kiai master was genuine in his belief that he was an unbeatable fighter. He was so certain that he put his money, health, and reputation publicly on the line. That is the genuine faith of a sure man.
2. The kiai master’s students were genuine in their belief that their master was a powerful fighter. Any one of them could have just kicked him in the gut to prove a point, to defeat their teacher in a fair match. Instead, they found themselves thrown to the mat without being touched.

There is some very interesting psychology going on here. It’s a fascinating exercise to put yourself into the shoes of those in the story. This is a textbook, real life case of the emperor’s new clothes - a mass delusion. Let’s go back to the dojo, before the kiai master was humiliated by defeat.


*****
Imagine you are the kiai master. You carry yourself with charisma and confidence. In a fight in your dojo, you spin your arms and your opponents tumble to the mat! You are unstoppable: you have seemingly magical abilities, and the evidence to prove it!
 
*****
Now imagine yourself as a student. You observe match after match where the kiai master defeats those around him without touching them! Finally, it is your turn to fight him, and you find yourself rolling on the mat just like everyone else. This kiai master is amazing!
 
*****
Finally, imagine yourself as a fresh onlooker. Are you convinced of these jedi-like powers? Can you see the bigger picture of what’s happening here? Is the emperor wearing clothes?

 

Take a minute and think about this situation. What would you say to the kiai master? What would you say to the students? What would you expect their replies to be? Remember that they have never seen the kiai master be defeated, and they can show you the videos of his magical abilities. How could you settle the difference of opinion? How could you dissent from the opinion of so many students? What arrogance, to suggest they are all deluded!

Suppose the kiai master invited you join his dojo and learn magical powers, for a reasonable fee? How would you respond?

As an aside, I’d like to mention an even more interesting aspect of the story. You would think that after the master’s humiliating defeat, the students would have left. But no, this didn’t happen. The students stayed on, found all manner of excuses for why the master was defeated, and continued to study the magical kiai powers. Their faith didn't waver, despite contrary evidence.

Now for the final reflection: think about what you’d say to the kiai students regarding their delusion. If they said the same kind of thing to you regarding one of your beliefs, could you give a better response than they can? I encourage you to seriously ponder this. Chances are, you and I both have some beliefs that aren’t true.

In other words: how do you know that some belief of yours is not a delusion like the kiai students’ delusion?

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Update: Sam Harris wrote an article about this Kiai Master.

Sometimes There Is No Right Way

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche 

I was raised in a home where a very common phrase was, “There’s a right way and a wrong way.”

The right way was the way my parents wanted things done. There were a great many rules surrounding the right way for nearly everything, in an attempt to ensure that we got it right, and, when the rules weren’t enough to enforce the rightness of our behavior, there were punishments, harsh words, and sometimes very public humiliation.

I’ve spent most of my adult life learning to deal with the fallout of this type of ingrained thinking, once important for emotional survival and physical safety, but no longer useful.

I work, now, to examine the precepts I live by, and whether they are helping me toward my goal of living a peaceful and conscious life. But there can still be some pretty huge blind spots in my view of things—places where I, myself, still expect those around me to conform to my concept of what is right. 

Three years ago, when I began to practice the base principles of radical unschooling, I fell headlong into one of these traps. It caused a great deal of pain, and nearly cost me my oldest and dearest friend.

We altered the way in which we interacted with our children from an authoritarian style to a partnership model. And I decided I would be a missionary for every other family who showed a glimmer of dissension (as all families, even mine, do, sometimes).

I had found a piece that was missing from the puzzle of my own life, and I was awed by the rapid and wonderful changes I saw within my family once I placed it.

I hadn’t yet learned that zeal and epiphanies in our lives can also be pitfalls; that not everyone will benefit from what benefits us. I was certain my way was perfect and even necessary—for everyone.

It can be easy to believe, when we find the answer to our life’s dilemmas, that they will solve everyone else’s problems, too—that we have found the one and only “right way.”

We may come from a place of positive intent, but we are no less invading another’s life or suggesting that they might not find their way, without us. We do not trust them to find their own answers, and that awareness can sting with unintended fierceness.

I believe now that these deeply rooted judgmental places may be within all of us who grew up judged, and dependent on the verdict of that judgment for safety or survival. 

What once helped us to survive the harsher places in our own childhoods can become a heavy and cumbersome burden, once we are grown.

It can hinder our relationships and our ability to create or maintain close connections, because, in insisting that we know what is right, we are also saying that the other is wrong.

I’ve never believed the phrase  “the ends justify the means.”

It seems so unfeeling of the harm, perhaps irreparable, that can be done to other beings, and to our relationships with those beings. And yet, I inflicted just this type of behavior on my dear friend, as though her life, and her ideas of right, must echo my own, else she would be forever wrong in my eyes.

I realize, now, that I was being invasive; I was thrusting myself and my brand-new “right way” upon another who had not asked for my judgment.

I didn’t stop to think, at the time, that my goals left no room for her to learn and grow at her own pace, in her own way, and for her own reasons.

I didn’t consider that my insistence upon my own version of the right way might bring her more hurt thanhealing; nor that my right way, which works such magic in our lives, might be absolutely wrong for her and her family—and that even if it was right, only they could judge that.

Now, I’ve learned (I hope, for the last time), that I can’t make others believe or live as I do; that I might cause irreparable harm to relationships when I react to their choices as though I had the “one true path.”

My friend and I needed to step away from each other’s lives in order to heal the damage I had done with my insistence and certainty about the right way and the wrong way. This freed her to find her own way, like mine in some aspects, and very unlike in others, but not ever mine to judge.

I have come to understand that she would not have had this certainty without making the journey she was called to make, with the obstacles and vistas she encountered along the way.

She always had the strength to make it; she was making it, in her own fashion, even while I was so forcefully urging her toward my right path. The true problem was not with her, but with my inability to see that.

Each of us makes decisions based on personality, beliefs, values, circumstances, ability, and many other factors that are diverse and variable.

None of us can see clearly enough into the life of another to see all the hows and whys of their living.

Any time I find myself thinking that I can, it has become a warning beacon alerting me to ingrained andunwanted attitudes.

Maybe the true value of these moments is in giving us yet another chance to ferret out those ingrained, black-and-white patterns so that we can see each other as-is, and to give others the space to determine for themselves their course in those nebulous areas that are neither right or wrong. 

Each time I remember to do this, I find that my own life opens up with possibilities I might have considered wrong, and so dismissed without even noticing them. My mind opens also to the reality that there are as many right ways as there are people and circumstances.

Letting go of judgments about right and wrong helps my relationship with my friend and others with whom I do not always agree; and it helps me to keep my awareness framed in possibilities rather than limitations.

So, these days, whether I agree with your way or not, I acknowledge that it is your way, and not mine.  

I will tend to making the choices and choosing the path that leads my way; you may have yours, and, perhaps, we will meet at some point along the journey, greet each other, and share the way for a while.

When our paths diverge again, I will bid you well for the portions of the journey we cannot share.

Photo by Damian Gadal

The Fourteen Questions to Which Buddha Remained Silent

The Mahayana Version

• eternal,
• not eternal, since they undergo gross impermanence at thetime of their destruction,
• as both, in the sense that some beings and their environments, like the Creator Brahma and his heaven, are eternal; while all else, such as his creations, are not eternal and end at the time of their destruction,
• neither, since it is impossible to  know? 

• finite,
• infinite,
• both finite and infinite, in the sense that limited beings(sentient beings) are infinite in number, but the universe is finite in size,
• neither, since it is impossible to know? 

• continue to exist after death,
• not continue after death,
• both, in the sense that the body does not continue, but the life-force (srog) does,
• neither? 

• the same entity,
• totally separate and different entities? 

The Theravada Version

• the universe is eternal,
• the universe is not eternal,
• the universe is finite,
• the universe is infinite,
• after death, a Buddha continues to exist,
• after death, a Buddha does not continue to exist,
• after death, a Buddha both continues to exist and not to exist,
• after death, a Buddha neither continues to exist or not to exist,
• the body and the “self” are the same entity,
• the body and the “self” are totally separate and different entities.