A Hurricane on the Loose

https://www.insidekungfu.live/articles/a-hurrican-on-the-loose

(article by Robert Fuhr insidekungfu.live 8-8-21)

Reprinted with permission from Ed Parker: On the Shoulders of a Giant, by Robert Fuhr. The book is available on Amazon. 

What always struck me about Ed Parker was the unbelievable contradiction of his existence. And this could take place in a fraction of a second. He goes from relaxed to the mat in a state that could have been described as complete collapse, then his upper body becomes erect, his posture becomes straight, and his shoulders are pulled back to the shoulder blades. It's as if he swallowed a stick. Then, however, when you take a closer look at the change, you see it was not a stick but a flexible steel rod in his back. Nothing seemed stiff, but everything rather tense. 

No question that the man was space filler, a natural authority, but there was something else that always opened up when he demonstrated a technique. 
In a fraction of a second, his friendly nature, his witty way of dealing with people became completely different. So perfect that one could have spoken of a second personality. But while Dr. Jekyll needed at least his elixir to turn into Mr. Hyde, the Master didn't need the help of any potion. He was a hurricane that broke loose so fast that the eyes could hardly follow, much less guess what was happening. It wasn't the individual hits that poured down on you like the rays from a shower. It wasn't even the severity of the hits. It was the feeling that your nervous system would collapse. 

A few 10ths of a second after the barrage, it was still. He was again the radiant, friendly, older gentleman. Always the entertainer. I always called it his demon that had escaped, albeit at his cry. Everything was deliberate, calculated, and precise in an incredible moment of violence, of apparent chaos, whose control seemed so impossible to me. I was just waiting for the moment to ask him. I would certainly do it at dinner. 

It was late in the evening when I began to wonder: Did I succeed or did he succeed again?

"What’s going on, Robby? You're so quiet; you asked 20 questions at most.” I smiled embarrassedly. “Sir, it’s not that I don’t want to ask the question; it’s just that I don’t know how to do it.” 

“Go right ahead, like you always do!” he said, laughing. ”Well, Mr. Parker, there’s something I can hardly explain. When I was a boy, I was irascible, aggressive, and angry. In those moments, I was beside myself. The anger was never really unfounded; it was always caused from the outside, never really from me. I have rather only reacted to my environment, certainly also overreacted. I could never really control the whole thing. It was more of a spontaneous outbreak of violence.”

He gave me a look of disbelief. “You? When you are always so controlled? Well, young men are like that, I was one of them, too. What made you so controlled?”

”Sir, I don’t really want to talk about myself, with all due respect.” He gave me a reassuring look. “I want to talk about you, because then we might find your question. What do you mean?”

I nodded and told him that Kenpo had disciplined me. The fear of having seen what could happen to you as a violent person once you have seen Kenpo in action is certainly responsible for this. 

”So, what was the question, Robby?”

“How can you control that: here and now, the nice man you are, then the beast you unleash on the mat? I had asked the question of all he questions. Now the answer of all answers had to come. He leaned back into a tasteless wicker chair with the colorful plastic cords, which would have looked better in a 1970s backyard barbecue, and said rather casually, “Oh, that’s what you mean!”

I was disappointed. I just asked an earth-shattering question and this is the reaction I got. I had no idea what was yet to come, but it changed my Kenpo forever. 

“I don’t make the technique, I don’t execute it, not its movements, not the choreography, but I think it, feel it, breathe it, am its spirit. I’m the idea for this moment! I am the technique!”

I was speechless when he explained it and even more speechless when I actually understood it. I see myself on video, but that’s not the truth; rather, it’s the truth of the camera. I am always a bit dissatisfied with myself, even if the camera tells me something different. Again I suspect an irreparable mistake of my character. The only thing that gives me real insight is my students’ eyes when I look at them for a technique during a thoughtless moment on their part. Then sometimes, I have the feeling that I understood what the Master taught me. The moment of technique is free of vanity, free of ego. You’re only with yourself, with the technology. I call it being free. When we left the bistro that day, the Master whispered in my ear, “The Japanese have a nice saying: ‘You don’t have to make the tiger aggressive, you just have to let him off the chain!’ ”

Kenpo and Crabs

Ed Parker and I stood in front of a group of Kenpoists who had traveled from many parts of the Germany. Physically they seemed to be in good shape, but their training consisted more of questions and discussions and less of concentration and sweat. The whole group was technically bad, which didn’t really amaze me. What I found much worse was the lack of will to fight. Even if they could execute a technique, I had the feeling that they could not enforce it on the mat, especially not in an emergency on the street. 

I walked around in the gym and tried to correct their movements. They recorded everything very intelligently—apparently. I greeted one twosome and went to the next couple. Again and again, until I had spoken with every seminar attendee. Eventually, I returned to the first set of students I had corrected, but they were still making the same mistakes. What could be the reason? 

I began to notice the noise coming from so many students in the seminar room. I missed it when I was teaching, but now I was becoming sensitive to the sounds. Surely people discussed, surely they were nervous because, with everything I tried to do, the Master was still in the room with this inimitable, almost physically perceptible aura. 

After all, this was also a test to determine my ability as a teacher. When my despair was greatest because I could transmit little of what I wanted to teach, I looked at the Master and he smile at me. No instructions, no intervention, just his smug smile. Feeling a “sense of inferiority”, I can't even remotely describe my feelings at this moment. Showing mercy he waved to me. “You think it’s up to you?” 

“Yes, sir,” I replied, certain that he would give me an absolution for my teaching assignment. But he did the exact opposite. “Yes, Robby, you’re right, part of it is at least your fault, part of it is…!” Shock! 

“What am I doing wrong, sir?” He pretended to think, then said, “You don’t listen to what people say. Now you just walk through the room, hear what they say, think, don’t comment and don’t try to make arguments. Will you take your fighter on the right path?”
 

Caught again. From today’s point of view, I cannot deny a certain fanaticism. At that time he saw how I thought and gave me some words of advice. “Is your way always the right one; is the way of the Kenpo always the right one?”

“Well, sir, I don’t know, but it’s my duty to do the best I can, isn’t it?” He nodded, “Sometimes it’s best just to listen.” I trotted away, disillusioned and a little grumpy. What I heard I could hardly believe: they discussed the techniques without having understood the idea behind them, without physically executing the technique. One asked what would happen if the attacker hit with the left instead of the right. They hadn’t even mastered the right punch of the defense. Particularly interesting was that the first negative argument was always followed by a second one with even more doubts. The first thing to do was to top the other, then one and one more, until there was nothing left of the technology, nothing left of the idea. Kenpo was intellectualized to zero. Every single question was meaningful, without exception, but not at that time, not before understanding the starting point. The negative loop of this discussion inevitably led down for the students, down for their knowledge. Now something else struck me: They were all much worse at Kenpo than the far less-intellectual “street dogs” of my group, who first trained with a lot of sweat. Only then did they ask questions. I thought of Johann Sebastian Bach, who once said that 90 percent of his inspiration was perspiration. I would never have taken those intellectuals to the streets in an emergency situation. I would have been confident in every confrontation with my first set of students. Hard, but hearty. The heart is always in the right place. I had the feeling that if I had told the “intellectuals” “Hand on your heart”; they would have had to search first.

I thought I understood. So I went to the Master and tried to translate what I had heard. The Master raised his hand to stop me: “Enough, enough, I know what they said!”

I didn’t understand. “Sir, did you learn German so quickly?”

“Certainly not, Robby, but I’ve heard it in many languages. They pull each other down, preventing knowledge. The worst are those who misrepresent what they think they have understood. They quickly invent new systems without knowing that Kenpo thought to the end…!”

I brazenly stopped the Master: “…without knowing that Kenpo could be the system of systems once you understood the basis.”

He smiled and looked me in the eye. No other response necessary. When I turned my back and was about to leave, he stopped me. The lesson wasn’t over, I was sure of that now. ”Hey, Robby, do you know how to catch crabs in Hawaii?”

”Sir, I don't even know how to do that in Germany!” 

He laughed loudly and held his cheeks with both hands. A tear ran down his right cheek, which he wiped with the back of his hand. 

“Then I guess I’d better tell you. We get a bucket to throw the crab into. The special thing is, we never throw a crab in alone.” I really didn’t know what he was getting at and I looked at him in surprise. “You think Hawaii is so rich in crabs that you always catch a lot?” he asked. He laughed again and wiped the tears out of both eyes. “No, Robby, no. The reason is a crab always finds his way out of a bucket, always. But if you throw a second crab in the bucket, she’ll pull the other crab down again and again.”

I couldn’t believe what I heard. I immediately understood what he meant and for the first time I understood my father’s sentence: “Never join the great army of the dissatisfied. Never go that way or you’re lost. I would have faced every confrontation.” 

Ed Parker would probably have said, “Never be like a crab!” I looked at the Master and asked, “Are we still talking about Kenpo?”

“Do we ever?” he shot back.

Today, the students are amazed at what they consider my “charming” barracks court tone. Some are certainly angry. They represent who they are outside the training hall. They are entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, family fathers, or whatever. Whenever I have to raise my voice because the group is too loud, I shout, “Run!” and hope that most will understand that it is for their own good. They are sacrificing the most precious thing they have to learn something, to learn Kenpo, which will stay with them for a lifetime. If they only knew it was all because of one crab or two! I laugh as I write these lines. Oh, yeah, I remember something else: Does intelligence, in the wrong place, make cowards out of us, maybe even fools? I work every day and will probably work on it until the day I die.