You will see karate students who are learning tai chi, for instance,
coming from a long
background in karate. Unable to see the new art through anything but the
filter of their karate experience, they come up with a weird hybrid. They
have not learned how to see beyond their past experience and open up to a
new one.
(Dave Lowry)
Traditions
On the surface Dave Lowry seems to write against everything our school
represents.
He supports tradition, lineage, nostalgia and stories of martial prowess.
Lowry does not seem to favour being masterless and finding your own way.
Yet, beyond this, there are many shared themes and interests.
Over the years we have developed a tremendous respect for what Dave Lowry has to
say.
Writing
Dave Lowry has written a number of books concerning Japanese martial arts
and culture.
His narrative is wonderfully insightful, earnest, and sometimes humorous.
He sees to the heart of things and expresses his material in an extremely
thoughtful way.
There is a no-nonsense quality to his writing. His words are direct and honest.
There is no bravado or machismo.
Lowry is modest, quiet and reserved.
He comes across as being the consummate martial artist.
If Lowry teaches as he writes, you might expect him to be a very gifted
instructor.
Read some Lowry
We highly recommend Dave Lowry's marvellous books: Brush and
Sword, Traditions and Moving Towards Stillness.
A sample of quotes:
The beginner’s
enthusiasm is such that he cannot imagine what blocks could lie ahead to halt
his progress. If some decisive challenge to his continuing on does occur at this
early stage, he will likely abandon his practice altogether.
(Dave Lowry)
Ideally, some
of his training will take place in a dojo, a "place for following the way"
with a smooth, raised wooden floor and an absence of decoration or other
distractions.
This preference for seclusion and privacy in the engagement of a serious and
meaningful activity is, like the budoka's preference for a simple and
unadorned training weapon and uniform, a sign of his style and commitment.
(Dave Lowry)
And
so he sets off on a path to mysterious destinations. He does so in spite of
observations by others that such a way is naïve, outmoded or idealistic. He goes
because he knows others have gone before, because the unchanging direction of
the way attracts and calls to him.
He goes because he is compelled. He sets out on a journey of a lifetime because
he senses that this way is the one to lead him to a place very much worth the
going.
(Dave Lowry)
If an instructor really feels that a youngster not yet into puberty is worthy of
a black belt ranking in an art, what does that say about the sophistication and
profundity of the art? What would you think of a college that awarded degrees to
kids learning their multiplication tables?
The only people who were ever impressed by a black belt were the absurdly
uninformed general public.
(Dave Lowry)
The true boduka appreciates a quiet, well-worn simplicity and has no need to
attract attention to himself.
(Dave Lowry)
Too early in the morning? Get up and train. Cold and wet outside? Go train.
Weary of the whole journey and longing for a moment to stop and rest? Train.
Continue on in the spirit of perseverance.
(Dave Lowry)
When
you get a black belt ranking it doesn't mean you've gotten a foot in the door.
It means you have learned how to find the doorknob.
(Dave Lowry)
My own thinking is that a sensei is very much like another kind of person who
is responsible for important matters. A person who, like the sensei seems to be
from another age, a person of rare and unique gifts. The sensei, it seems to me,
is very much like a vintner.
A vintner is the person who produces wine. He is the one who is responsible for
it, from the planting of the grape vines, all the way until the raw wine is
poured into casks to age. The vintner is the talented individual who can look at
a particular hillside or a handful of soil and can tell you which kinds of
grapes will grow best there, what kind of yield you can expect. He knows when
the grapes need to be pruned. He makes vital decisions throughout the growing
season, to fertilize, to spray for bugs. He must decide when to pick them in the
fall, to wait for a few more days to let them fully ripen or to pick now and
beat out the rain that can adversely affect the whole harvest.
The vintner is responsible for the blend of grapes that go into fermentation
tanks. He must add the sugars if they're needed, to begin the fermentation
process. In short, he is the guy responsible for the wine from the time the
grape vines are planted or bud out, until the moment the wine is on its own, so
to speak, when it has been put in casks and must now age and develop according
to the qualities inherent in it.
Doesn't this sound very much like the sensei's task? He is the person
responsible for a student, from the time that student enters the training hall
until the crucial period of the training process has been completed. The sensei
is a person, then, in my estimation, who can take a person of raw and unknown
potential and turn out a complete and worthwhile product. He can oversee the
process from beginning to end.
(Dave Lowry)
Upon reaching what is perceived as an ideal goal, the artist discovers
something entirely different. The artist is suddenly confronted with the fact
that what was thought of as perfection of technique was merely the introduction
to it.
An entirely new vista has opened. The artist must be prepared to turn his gaze
from the heights that have so recently been gained, and prepare for the ascent
of the peak suddenly found beyond them.
(Dave Lowry)
The tao is both singular and
universal. It is open to all with the resolve and inclination to walk it. Those
who do, however, take a variety of disciplines in approaching it, for the tao
extrapolates from the specific to the general.
(Dave Lowry)
In the
traditional Japanese farmhouse, light and ventilation were provided typically by
removing the clay plaster from a section of a walls interior and exterior,
leaving a hole and the exposed bamboo latticework lathing.
This kind of rustic window, a renji-mado (lattice window), was incorporated into
the architecture of the tea ceremony, and many tea huts feature renji-mado. The
light from such a window is beautifully filigreed by the grid of latticework,
leaving a play of shadow. It is a kind of illumination defined as much by the
pattern of shadows as it is by the presence of light.
(Dave Lowry)
The martial way requires moral stamina along with visceral and emotional
courage. It demands a social conscience as well as physical endurance. To be
sure, each of these qualities will be tested on the journey. They may, as well,
be purified and fortified in the process. But they must be present in the
individual from the onset if he expects to journey very far.
(Dave Lowry)
The
attainment of the tao is a process. It is doing a thing not for the sake of
doing it; it is doing a thing because the doing releases us from certain
constraints of the limited self: narcissism, self-centredness, preoccupation
with the fears and worries and doubts that diminish us in daily life.
The tao draws us into the domain of the potential self: self-realisation,
self-cultivation, and self-perfection.
(Dave Lowry)
Page created 11 November 2002