On martial artists obsessed with being “Sensei”

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  Martial artists who visit other dojos, or seminars; but seem to be more concerned with establishing their own status and credibility as teachers / “experts” within the room, than with learning from the host sensei

• Dojos suffering from bitter internal politics, which all too often stem from rivalry between instructors, and/or between students and their own teachers.
• Alongside sincere instructors, YouTube and Facebook are also full of people with wit apparently limited skills or knowledge, labelling themselves as Sensei / Master and so on; and teaching and broadcasting their brand of martial arts to the world.

Graham says:

I’m curious about people who seem so locked into being “Sensei”? I love to forget I’m a teacher, and absorb others’ teaching when I get a chance; and I’m surprised when others don’t seem to feel the same way, Do you have any thoughts on what makes some people be like this . . . ?

He’s absolutely not criticising all martial arts teachers, or their motivation for teaching. Of course there are many positive reasons to be a martial arts teacher, which I’ll also cover towards the end of this article.

But his curiosity seems to be about people who seem to assume the role of teacher in a more negative way – that bit more greedily, obsessively and less critically – and who seem to tie their being and identity up with that role.

So in answer to Graham’s question, here are seven possible factors that might drive such a teacher:

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1. Attachment to ego (as invested in the role and status of “teacher”)

Some people love to lead and have power. There’s nothing wrong with this in itself, and it could easily lead a martial arts practitioner to become a great teacher. But if this drive becomes excessive, it can cause problems.

For example, we’ve all encountered the new student who’s more interested in teaching everyone else what he or she already knows, than actually learning what the instructor is teaching. Jackie Bradbury amusingly calls this student the Full Cup Guy after the famous Zen story

A Japanese master received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

The master served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” the master said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

Here’s Jackie’s portrait – you may well recognise this person ;-):

The new guy says, “Here, here’s how we do it”, and proceeds to show a completely different technique, unrelated to what you are training. You want to do it the way your instructor has coached you to do it, but your partner insists that this way – the way he already knows – is the better way.

On a related note, the New Testament tells of a rich man who asks for guidance on how to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to sell all he owns, and give the proceeds to the poor. The man goes away sadly, as he can’t bear to do this. Jesus says:

How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

The rich man of this story could be seen as a martial artist heavily loaded up with black belts and “Sensei” status, whose ego is too fragile to put it all aside, and tolerate showing up as an open-hearted beginner again in someone else’s dojo.

 

2. The myth that teaching others surpasses all other forms of learning

Everyone knows the saying: the best way to learn is to teach; even a high quality publication such as Time magazine confidently asserts (with no evidence) that:

For thousands of years, people have known that the best way to understand a concept is to explain it to someone else.

And of course there’s a lot of truth in this idea. But as critical thinkers, we should be wary of black and white statements claiming that anything is the “best” or “only” way to do something.

Perhaps it’s truer to say that teaching can be just one of many great ways to learn.

Thomas DeMichele argues that we need to experience four types of learning to progress:

1. The traditional role of the student: we learn from being taught.
2. Peer learning: we learn from working with peers.
3. Teaching others; we learn from teaching.
4. Self-directed learning: we learn from personal experience, exploration, and reflection.

He explains that taking on all four of these different roles offers different angles on the subject matter. Overall, this gives us a deep, rich 360° understanding, which one role alone could never give us.

Exploring each of the different roles also helps us to realise the weaknesses and pitfalls of the other three roles.

But the idea that teaching is the “highest” form of learning is very deeply rooted in our culture, and some people may not be able to see beyond it.

3. An overestimation of the self-development benefits of the role of teacher

The idea that teaching is the highest form of learning is often assumed to go beyond “mere” physical technique. Here are two lists of reasons from yoga blogs to explain why you “should” become a yoga teacher:

• To deepen your physical practice
• To learn new skills
• To find your yoga family
• To challenge yourself mentally and physically
• To explore your spirituality

– wanderlust.com

• Self discipline – the teacher’s ethic requires you to practice on a daily basi
• Forming a healthier relationship between your body and mind
• Moving deeper into being present in that particular moment
• Feeling passionate about and committed to your practice
• Creating mental stability and growth

– beyogi.com

It all sounds great. But none of these effects are actually dependent on being a teacher at all. They are just benefits of sincerely studying an embodied practice such as martial arts or yoga. However, the idea of “being a teacher” as conferring special benefits and elite status is seductive, and very popular.

4. A failure to understand or appreciate the deep value of being a devoted student

We’ve seen above that many people see “teacher” as the ultimate role to aspire to in their art. But a lesser-known truth is that the role of student can be an equally high (if not higher) calling.

Christopher Jamison writes:

The story is told of four monks […] The first fasted a great deal; the second was poor; the third had acquired great charity, and [the fourth] had lived for twenty-two years in obedience to an old man.

Abba Pambo said to them, “I tell you, the virtue of this last one is the greatest. Each of the others has obtained the virtue he wished to acquire, but the last one, restraining his own will, does the will of another.”

– Finding Sanctuary, page 72

Being under the consistent care and tutelage of good martial arts teacher(s) can be life-changing. Robert Greene describes this dynamic beautifully:

Life is short, and your time for learning and creativity is limited. Without any guidance, you can waste valuable years trying to gain knowledge and practice from various sources.

Instead, you must follow the example set by Masters throughout the ages and find the proper mentor. The mentor-protégé relationship is the most efficient and productive form of learning. The right mentors know where to focus your attention and challenge you. Their knowledge and experience become yours. They provide immediate and realistic feedback on your work, so you can improve more rapidly.

Through an intense person-to-person interaction, you absorb a way of thinking that contains great power and can be adapted to your individual spirit. Choose the mentor who best fits your needs and connects to your Life’s Task.

– Mastery, page 93

However, we live in an individualistic culture, where many people are determined that “no one tells me what to do”. The value and mystery of apprenticeship (or we may even say discipleship, with its connotations of discipline, scholarship and spirituality) may therefore be a severely undervalued art.

5. The isolation and fragmentation in modern Western society, which makes us needy for attention

It’s well known that levels of social isolation and loneliness are rampant these days. How did we get here? George Monbiot suggests several answers:

There are plenty of […] reasons for this distress, but it seems to me that the underlying cause is everywhere the same: human beings, the ultrasocial mammals, whose brains are wired to respond to other people, are being peeled apart.

Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology. Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism.

Olivia Remus argues that the prevalence of loneliness is traceable to the “modern epidemic” of narcissism. Causes of this include the modern preoccupation with the “self” and inner feelings; a decline in social norms; and a weakening of the role of the family and local community.

Relevant to Graham’s bafflement at unskilled teachers who mindlessly broadcast themselves on social media, Remus writes:

The rise in technology and the development of hugely popular social networking sites […] further changed the way we […] communicate. Today, there are nearly 936m active Facebook users each day worldwide. Internet addiction is a new area of study in mental health and recent cross-sectional research shows that addiction to Facebook is strongly linked to narcissistic behaviour and low self-esteem.

All of these factors leave many people painfully lonely, isolated, and starved of appreciation and attention. Becoming a martial arts “teacher” – even if just to a faceless and nameless social media audience, or strangers at a seminar taught by someone else – may be a way for some to feel connected, and assuage this pain.

6. The role of social media in lowering the entry barriers to becoming a “teacher”

The Internet is full of amazing resources – but it’s also full of garbage, and the task of sifting through it all to find the gems can be overwhelming. Andrew Keen describes Web 2.0 as

an infinitely fragmented culture in which we are hopelessly lost as to how to focus our attention and spend our limited time

and

an online sea of user-generated nonsense that couldn’t be published or distributed through any professional source.

– The Cult of the Amateur, pages 60 and 138

Jaron Lanier laments the fact that the vast majority of Internet content is no more than childish fragments and/or mash-ups. This is very visible in the martial arts social media world; which is full of “inspirational” quotes, snippets of famous real or movie fights, training selfies, clips of spectacular kicks and board breaks, “top ten” lists and so on – which can make the truly good content really hard to find.

Keen argues that we’ve succumbed to the “Cult of the Amateur”. In previous ages, we looked up to genuine experts, who had spent years or decades perfecting their art. Now, anyone can bypass this process and set themselves up as a martial arts “expert” online – without ever having their actual martial ability tested.

This easy access to broadcasting oneself is therefore another potential factor encouraging people to “teach” martial arts nowadays, who might not have become teachers in an age before the Internet.

7. Teaching martial arts as a way to feel life has meaning

Czech novelist Milan Kundera expresses perplexity at the huge number of people desperate to share all the mundane details of their lives with others. He suggests that this afflicts people with empty lives, who are aching to find meaning in the void.

Kundera illustrates this through his favourite character Tamina, who has a nightmare of a group of ostriches pushing up against a wire fence, all desperately trying to speak to her:

They are not at all interested in her. Each one of them came to tell her about itself. Each one to tell her how it had eaten, how it had slept, how it had run up to the fence and seen her behind it.

[…] That when it was young it rode a bike and that today it had gobbled up a sack of grass. They are standing in front of Tamina and talking to her all at once […] because there is nothing more important than what they want to tell her.

– The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, page 145

There are parallels here, to Graham’s wonder that so many people seem to want to teach, even if they don’t necessarily appear to have that much to teach.

Kundera argues that when three conditions are present in a society, the desire to broadcast oneself through writing becomes an epidemic:

• An elevated level of general well-being, which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities
• A high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals
• The absence of dramatic social changes in the nation’s internal life. (From this point of view, it seems to me symptomatic that in France, where practically nothing happens, the percentage of writers is twenty-one times higher than in Israel).

-Ibid., page 127

This is a cold and even unkind assessment, but in truth, all three conditions are widely present in our own society. (In case you’re wondering; yes I’m well aware of the irony of a blogger citing this idea.) It’s conceivable that for some people, martial arts teaching may be a variant of this desperate need to feel that one has something of value to say and share with the world.

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Servant leadership

So these are seven arguably less healthy reasons why people might be driven to cling to the role of martial arts teacher.

These might be opposed to the “healthier” motivation of sincerely serving your art; your past or present teacher(s); and/or your community.

The highest form of leadership is often said to be servant leadership. Robert Greenleaf coined this phrase in his classic 1970 essay: “The Servant as Leader”:

It’s hard to fault a genuinely talented martial arts teacher whose primary drive for running classes is the altruistic and sincere desire to serve their art and/or own Sensei and/or students.

Neal Dunnigan writes:

It could be a sense of gratitude and loyalty to past teachers. It could also be a sense of contributing something of value to the local community. It might even be a sense of cultural preservation based on pure love of a particular martial arts style.

– Pointing at the Moon, page 73

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Reconciliation of opposites

The idea of servant leadership starts to flip the conventional idea of “leading” on its head. This reminds us that the desire to reconcile yin/yang (in/yo) opposite poles is at the heart of the martial arts journey for many of us

We study arts such as Gōjū (hard-soft) Karate 剛柔空手; Aikido 合気道 (the Way of universal harmony); the relationship between uke 受け and tori 取り and so on.

This means that the idea of becoming eternally “stuck” in any one role – including that of teacher – has no place. This is the phenomenon that Graham is challenging – the inability to cast off the mantle of teacher at will; and freely expose the vulnerable beginner underneath.

Equally, becoming stuck in the role of eternal student forever, and never sharing received knowledge with others, may not be the right path either.

But becoming highly skilled in both roles – having the ability to switch between being a great teacher and a great student, and even move beyond them both – is something definitely worth aspiring to.

What could such a flexible and versatile individual look like . . . ?

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Nietzsche’s three metamorphoses of the soul

In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche proposes that the soul must pass through three stages of development (“The Three Metamorphoses”).

In the first stage, the soul becomes a camel, and asks:

What burden is heaviest […] that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.
[…] Is it this – to feed on the acorns and husks of knowledge and for the truth’s sake to starve one’s soul?
[…] Or is it this – to enter foul waters, if these be the waters of truth, and not to repulse the chilly frogs and hot toads therein?
[…] Or is it this […] to stretch out the hand to the phantom that seeketh to make us afraid?
All these heaviest of burdens the burden-bearing spirit taketh upon itself; as the camel that hasteth laden to the desert.

This stage could be compared to the role of a devoted martial arts student, who embraces hard work, pain and discipline, and the dark journey within.

But at some point, the Camel needs to break free of only following external rules and discipline. At this point, it metamorphoses into a Lion, which seeketh to seize freedom as his prey and to be lord in his own desert.

This might be compared to a martial arts practitioner who desires to become a teacher in his or her own right.

But if we only have the Camel and the Lion, we have nothing more than a simple binary, where one role gives way (and is seen as inferior) to the other.

So for Nietzsche there must be a third transformation – this time into the integrative role of the Child. The Child is:

innocence and oblivion, a new beginning, a play, a self-rolling wheel, a primal motion, an holy yea-saying.

Rather than only submitting to the will of others like the Camel – or only fighting against it like the Lion – the Child’s spirit wills its own will […] he that was lost to the world gains his own world.

It’s often hard to be certain exactly what Nietzsche means by a concept; but the camel / lion / child transformational journey may represent something we are all striving towards in the martial arts, even if most of us will never reach it.

One aspect of this might be a passionate embrace of BOTH submitting/learning, and leading/teaching; and an easy fluidity in moving between these roles – and beyond them to the state of Child.

Graham is an extraordinarily talented individual, and I think this flexible and fluid mode of being is intuitive to him; which is why he perhaps feels puzzled or frustrated with these who don’t “get it”. But it isn’t obvious or easy for everyone; and it isn’t normally a quick or accessible process to get there.

It may be especially unattainable to those who genuinely believe that the transition from student to teacher is a straightforward, one-way, linear journey, which all should aspire to follow. 

In any case, Graham has asked for some reflections on what might drive some martial artists to close themselves to further learning; and single-mindedly pursue and cling to the role of teacher. I hope that these ideas and suggestions about what may be going on in the hearts and minds of some of these individuals may be helpful to others besides him . . . !

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DUNNIGAN, Neal. (2014). Pointing at the Moon: Teaching Martial Arts to Change Lives. Global Thinking Books. 

KEEN, Andrew. (2007). The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube and the rest of today’s user-generated media are killing our culture and our economy. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

GREENE, Robert. (2012). Mastery. Profile Books.

JAMISON, Abbot Christopher. (2006). Finding Sanctuary: Monastic Steps for Everyday Life. Phoenix.

KUNDERA, Milan. (1996). The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Translated by Aaron Asher. Faber and Faber. 

LANIER, Jaron. (2010). You Are Not A Gadget. Penguin.

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich W. (1896). Thus Spake Zarathustra. Translated by Alexander Tille. Heron Books.