“The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in an act of uniting with something.”
– Koun Yamada
Jiu-Jitsu, and combat athletics in general, demand from the user a certain level of concentration. You can’t wrestle, you can’t roll and do well, if you’re lost in the neurotic thoughts of the chattering mind. Worry and desire, self-conscious ponderings about the social environment around you, financial stress, that all fades away during a hard roll; and that is precisely why so many people find the act of rolling in Jiu-Jitsu (sparring with your partner in manner that is neither patterned or contrived), so enjoyable. In that sense, Jiu-Jitsu is kind of a short cut to a more clear and present awareness. Its performance requires that of you, and that requirement is a beautiful gift.
Jiu-Jitsu isn’t the only thing that accomplishes this. Golf legend Arnold Palmer, phrased it this way:
“You’re involved in an action and vaguely aware of it, but your focus is not on the commotion but on the opportunity ahead. I’d liken it to a sense of reverie – not a dreamlike state but the somehow insulated state that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He’s aware of where he is and what he’s doing, but his mind is on the playing of his instrument with an internal sense of rightness – it is not merely mechanical, it is not only spiritual; it is something of both, on a different plane and a more remote one.”
Surfing, snow boarding, skiing, rock climbing, bike riding, running, or any other physical activity that requires a certain level of intensified focus, can take its players to these states of consciousness. But the combat arts do come with a few distinct advantages that these other activities don’t bring. First, you’re dealing with something extremely primal within us, hand-to-hand combat. Something our ancestors had to engage in, generation upon generation, just to survive. Because of that the ego is laid bare in a way that’s much different from say, running. With running you may be alone. With Jiu-Jitsu you’re in competition with another human being who is trying to dominate you physically. The name of the game is to literally force the other person to submit. To make them give up. And that act of giving up involves a very practical reality that can’t be easily scrubbed away, a physical act.
You must tap out.
Tapping on your partner means you’re forced to concede to your opponent in a way that is anything but ambiguous. It’s one thing to concede to yourself, during a run, to tell yourself that you can go no further or faster. It is an entirely other thing to have to concede to another human being who you were just engaged in a physical battle with. And now, publicly admit, they’ve beaten you. Most Jiu-Jitsu players have to do this multiple times a practice, and thousands of times over the years. In fact, it’s a required part of the improvement process. You can’t get good without putting yourself through it. That makes it different – different in a primal, visceral, important way. Different in a way that makes it perfect for our objectives, perfect in a way other things, while also requiring high levels of concentration, simply can’t match.
I’ve watched many men over the years begin Jiu-Jitsu, experience rolling for the first time, and quit immediately. Often times the larger the macho persona, the faster they flee the mat. This is especially true in SBG, because we have world-class female black belts. Having to tap out to another man is something a lot of men can’t handle. Being forced to tap out to a woman is something more than a lot of men can’t handle.
The humility required to attain a real level of demonstratable skill in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu isn’t essential in a fantasy based martial art. In Aikido, you only pretend to be thrown against your will. The techniques taught, like most traditional martial arts, only work when both parties pretend. Its an act of make believe. It becomes a shared delusion. And like most delusions, it provides plenty of dark places for the ego to hide. Those closets and corners where the ego digs in are buried well within the mind. And not noticing that self-delusion entails a lack of mindfulness. In fact, the more skilled the fantasy-based practitioner becomes at pretending what they do works, the less mindful they become.
It’s too charitable to say Martial Arts training can enhance mindfulness. It’s more accurate to say combat sports like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, due to their true and sincere nature, necessitate mindfulness while they’re being engaged in. While fantasy based traditional martial arts very often have the opposite affect, retarding the growth of that same, present and clear awareness. The very act of placing something in a pattern means you can learn to respond faster, while focusing less. The very act of dealing with a competitive opponent who is coming at you in a way that is anything but choreographed, means that in order to to respond to the pressure you’ll need to focus more. It’s not that both are good but different, rather, its that one method of training, dead patterns, makes it easier to remove mindfulness from the movement – while the other, alive training, makes it harder to be anything but mindful.
Jiu-Jitsu isn’t the only combat sport that accomplishes this. You can get it from boxing, MMA, Muay Thai, or any other ‘real’, meaning competitive, meaning sport, Martial Art. But those also tend to come with a price. A price the body pays, and perhaps more dangerously, a price the brain pays. And while Jiu-Jitsu too, like any sport or exercise, can take a physical toll – it doesn’t come with a price tag labeled “brain damage”.
Learning to focus in your BJJ class, and being forced to focus when you roll, you’ll still find neurotic thoughts popping up when you’re under pressure. You’re trapped on bottom, you’re having trouble breathing, your opponent starts to drag a forearm across your throat; you struggle to even move an arm underneath him, to block it. The voice within you tells you to quit. You don’t. You ignore that voice. You defend your neck. You survive. Eventually your opponent moves, just a little, just enough. You find the space and moment to escape. You’re back to guard. You can breath. Your opponent is tired. You sweep. You hold. You submit. You’ve won.
Those moments will happen. Over the years, they will happen a lot. Likewise, you’ll have moments where you’ll lose the battle. You’ll be bested. That’s necessary. But what may get missed, if you’re not careful, is just how often you’ve overcome that little voice in your head in the process. That’s a huge part of the practice. That’s a huge part of the benefit to what we do. And as long as you don’t give up unless you have to, because you’ve tried and failed, as long as you don’t stop and walk off the mat before your opponent has imposed the win, or you’ve overcome the position – these lessons in mindfulness, in non-attachment to the negative sub-vocalization that echoes within our skulls, are inevitable. And that’s beautiful.
That’s the pressure of Jiu-Jitsu, and of combat sports in general, that is innate in their practice, and difficult to replicate with other activities. Whether you take up BJJ or not, and if you’re serious about self-defense and serious about developing that healthy relationship to violence, I hope you do – you need something demanding, something physical, something that makes you sometimes want to give up, something like BJJ in your life.
“Try not to localize the mind anywhere, but let it fill up the whole body, let it flow throughout the totality of your being. When this happens you use your hands where they are needed, you use the legs or the eyes where they are needed, and no time or energy will go to waste.” – Takuan (advice to a samurai warrior)
