Indomitable Spirit

In Wednesday’s class I was sparing against one of the low belts. This person has potential and I frequently find myself having to re-invent how I handle them. After watching this person spar against sabum and seeing how well they did I decided to mix things up. Typically I do not strike first. Rather, I like to wait for an opening and a mistake. In fact, pretty much everyone knows how I’ll start the match. So, this time I decided that the second my opponent moved I was going to blast them with a reverse side kick. This kick happens to be one of my kicks. Instead of attacking after attacked I attacked while being attacked.

With my long legs I caught them in mid-strike. They were not able to evade but were able to block. Unfortunately I was coming in at almost full speed and my kick was deflected to their inner thigh. The result being that we had to stop the match while this person shook it off.

However, they showed indomitable spirit by continuing on, despite the pain.

Originally, taken from a Chinese school of thought, Yamato-Damashii (also spelled Tamashii) was based on unquestionable loyalty to emperor and nation. Tamashii was used to describe certain qualities that only the Japanese people were thought to have.

These qualities included moral fortitude, courage, sincerity, and devotion. Given their predilection for the military, the Japanese also used this term to describe the warrior spirit.

Years later the Koreans would take the notion of indomitable spirit (백절불굴) from the Japanese and add it to their philosophy of taekwondo.

The final principle of taekwondo is possibly one of the most helpful. You learn to have a spirit that cannot be beaten. When there is a tough situation, you can handle it and know you will be able to handle it. This is helpful in all parts of life. This final principle will help you to enjoy life and everything that comes with it.

Today, martial arts use the notion to broadly define the warrior spirit in all aspects of one’s life. Realizing that often our worst enemy is ourselves and that many of us have a tendency to not show discipline and persistence in achieving our objectives, is the core lesson of Tamashii.

Another aspect of Tamashii is the art of persistence. The Japanese have a saying:

nana-korobi, ya-oki

Fall down seven times, get up eight times.

In other words, life has its ups and downs so persevere when things are tough and you will usually get through them. This notion is one of the core principles of bushido and Tamashii.

However, all of this needs to be balanced by self-control (극기). This is something that I am working on–both in life and in taekwondo.

After the above noted match this person told me that I don’t back down just because they are a girl. My reply:

You control how hard I respond. Don’t want to get hit hard? Don’t come at me hard.

Simple as that.

~BCP