Before you know how to master an art, you must know two things: what is an art, and what does it mean to master one?
For our purposes here, I will define an art as anything which takes practice to get good at. That means that there is an art to drawing and painting, yes, but also an art to riding a bicycle, an art to debating, and even an art to organising your day.
And yes, obviously, a martial art is an art by this definition.
What does it mean to “master” an art?
Does it mean being perfect at it? Can anyone ever be said to be “perfect” at anything? Probably not, at least for anything that would count as an art. After all, many arts are very subjective – beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. Your “perfect” and mine might look very different.
For me, art has a purpose. For some arts, the purpose might be to evoke feelings in people, while for others the purpose might be getting somewhere quickly (riding a bike), persuading someone of your view (debating), or getting things done without feeling overwhelmed (organising your day).
The purpose of martial arts is defence.
Physical self defence and defence of those you are with, and also the mental resilience to defend yourself against the trials of life.
So, to master an art, you need to be good enough at it to fulfil its purpose. Not just scrape by, but genuinely and under real-world conditions.
That means that (in my opinion) to master Shorinji Kempo you need to be good enough at it to use it to defend yourself in the real world.
Please note that I am not suggesting that you need to prove this by going out and getting into fights! How to make the leap from dojo training to real-world is a complex question worthy of an entire article to itself.
How to master an art
No matter what the art is, there are three main levels of knowledge. You must build up your skills through these levels, each one building on the one before. This takes advantage of mental “chunking” – it’s easier to remember one or two “chunks” of information than the many different bits that make up those chunks.
Here’s an example: try to remember these words: “a a cat cat day fine hat I one saw the was wearing”.
Hard, yes?
Now try this one: “one fine day I saw a cat, the cat was wearing a hat”.
Much easier.
You just “chunked” the words into a sentence. One sentence is easy to remember!
Gi – Techniques
Learn how to punch, how to move, how to defend. Put them together into little set pieces and practice until they are instinctive. If someone punches you in the head you should be able to move, block, and counter attack without thinking about each little component.
This is the foundation of everything – which is also why we practice basics in every class, no matter how senior we get.
Jutsu – Craft
Now that you have some chunks, you need to learn when to apply them. There is no point in having a perfect defence against a head punch if you don’t recognise that someone is punching you in the head!
Sparring is one of the ways that this part of the art can be developed, but it also needs some philosophy. You must learn to recognise not only the right time, but the right reason to employ your skills.
Ryaku – Strategy
The wisdom to be somewhere else before the fight kicks off is, in some ways, the perfect self-defence technique. Barring that, escape or negotiation are close seconds.
Once you’re in a fight, strategy is still important. Make sure to keep an eye on what’s going on around you so nobody can sneak up on you, manoeuvre your opponent so they’re squinting into the sun, use your brain to help you!
It is obviously impossible to work at this level of thought if your brain is still wondering how to make a fist, which is why you must learn the gi first. It takes time. But it is worth it. Isn’t that why you are coming to class?
Masterful use of art
Circling back to using our art in real-world situations, we know that it’s not like in the dojo. In the dojo we are learning, building up from the bottom to work towards mastery.
In the real world, we cannot start with the basics. By now the basics must be so ingrained that we don’t think of them at all – we must start with strategy. How can we avoid the fight, and failing that how can we not lose?