stillness

The latest craze in martial arts is MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), where everyone learns a little bit of everything. It goes well with the other latest craze, Ultimate Fighter. Learn just enough of every thing and always looking to the next best thing to come along in hopes that that thing will have the "secret". A little bit of everything but nothing really in depth or advanced. The rules of the sport don't require a need for anything more than basics.

I was teaching class today. And it struck me, how vast and varied a journey can be standing still. In the 12 years I have been training, I had the feeling that although the style has evolved a great deal from when I started and that I had thought where it had been going was pushing further and further out, I suddenly felt like I was at the bottom of a long and tall cavern, and that I knew that I had not gotten there by watching the earth move and shape around me. It was a profound feeling of depth.

That for all the lectures I've heard about being deep and going deep having deep knowledge, it was the first time I had felt this depth around me, the first time I could even feel how much farther this could go. And really truly feeling the weight of the layers of knowledge. And how I truly knew nothing. And I can't tell you how exhilirating that nothing was.

I remember when I had gone scuba diving to about 40 feet. There was still a good distance still below me and I almost felt like I was flying, but then I looked up saw the reef tower over me towards the surface and schools of tiny fishes teeming around me. And how a few moments before, I had sat on the boat riding on the surface of the water and wondering if I would see anything at all down there, because there seemed so little on the surface. And in the water looking up, realizing in this one spot how much life there was to see and looking down how much more life there was to uncover.

The journey begins again...