Niseishi III

The Kimochi:

So, if explanation is not enough, what is?

No rational person would perform Niseishi attempting to “think” about the complexities I have described. The form exists not for speech but for action. The kata is action; the action leads to feeling; the kata matures. The important issue is our own start, continuity, pause, turn, return to starting point and flow. This is developed by contrast of tension and dynamic release, impulse and pause, stability and frailty tied together, not separated, but tied together in unity. The whole is greater than its parts.

Each successful Niseishi leads towards greater NOW! The interim between Niseishi offers opportunity for the karate-ka to interact with his environment. When the lesson is well learned there is a reorganization of previous experiences to a new, and perhaps intuitive, understanding of the NOW! The martial artist renews his interaction with the environment bringing forward the impulses of the kata as experienced. As the power of the kata wanes through time since last practiced the karate-ka is drawn back to its performance. He alternates between the kata and his life-experience with varying intervals between and among doing each, aiding each and experiencing each.

There is no such thing as permanence in the above-described process. Kata, even those of enduring themes such as Kosokun, are alive only as they express in the immediacy of NOW! That which is not of the NOW! is not of the esthetic. We cannot appreciate the kata as a true artwork by reflection to our past performance. We may remember the associated pleasant or unpleasant feelings of a particular performance but it is only in the immediacy of the performance that the kata has power to transform. That is because the only way to enter the vastness of our experience is through the NOW! We cannot enter the past nor the future. We can enter the past or future only through the NOW!

The alliteration between performance and life-experience creates the electrostatic ki that may be tapped to transform us. In the case of Niseishi this alliteration is between the performance of all that constitutes the kata (its dynamic tension and release, forward motion and reversal, subtle repetition and challenge) and the living of the martial path of NOW! in daily life, whatever your chosen life consists. By alternation of kata and its sincere return we become empowered to deal directly with life as agents of our own choosing.

As our duration as practicing martial artists lengthens our life-experiences change under our own influence. We take the helm in stormy weather, light breezes or doldrums, but the important thing is that we take the helm and not drift idly upon the sea of indifference.

By the time the martial artist has spent several decades in the alliteration of various kata and their sincere return his vital force (ki) has expanded far beyond the limits of his youth. In addition, his life-experiences, driven by the power of helming of his own ship, have developed to degrees far beyond mediocrity and in some cases to zeniths rarely reached in one lifetime. Niseishi is one of his tools, NOW!

There is no tomorrow. NOW! ends here. Seize this instant.

Delay postpones life. NOW!