"To Subdue the Enemy Without Fighting is the Highest Skill"
Gichin Funakoshi
You have probably seen a lot of war and Martial Arts movies, either on television or at the theatre. Perhaps you have seen pictures of fighting in magazines as well. This is what I call "visual violence." Rather than real acts of violence, pictures or images of violence are presented to us in glamorous ways. The people who make these films and put out these magazines believe that showing you these images will not harm you. I do not agree. I believe that watching violence creates more violence. I think that those images of violence you see do harm you because they make you feel afraid as if you were surrounded by enemies you must learn to fight.
Are these particular enemies real? Can they actually hurt you physically? Or are they simply "invisible" enemies -
images. you create in your mind? If you have ever awakened from a nightmare in which a "bad" guy or unknown enemy was after you, have you wondered where those images came from?
If you are a regular television watcher, by the age of 18, you will have sat in front of that set for over 15,000 hours! If you watch that much TV, did you know that you will have seen over 18,000 murders, not to mention all the beatings, muggings, and other forms of violence? Do you believe you can watch this much violence without being affected by it in some way?
73
The reason I am concerned about this is that I, too, grew up watching violence on television and in movie theatres, as well as reading it in magazines. I watched so many war movies that I dreamed of being old enough to be a soldier so that I could use guns a.nd other weapons. I also used to play "cowboys and indians" with my friends. We played the game the way we saw it on television: the cowboys were always good and the indians were always bad. We cowboys pretended to kill the indians because they were the enemy. Television and movies taught us to believe this.
In addition, we had comic books that showed us super-heroes battling terrible enemies. We were excited by those battles and secretly wanted to be like those heroes, because television, movies and magazines made battles and violence look appealing. The truth is that such battles are anything but glamorous. People are hurt and killed.
This is why I am concerned about how the violence you see will affect you. The message I want you to get from this book is different from the one you get from those movies and TV
programs. We cannot stop violence by showing violence that has been created to look good and right. The only way to end violence is to not be violent.
What can you do to not be afraid of those violent images?
You can start by making yourself aware of how watching these violent pictures affects you. If you need assistance, please ask a trustedfriend, parent, or teacher to help you do these simple activities. After watching a violent movie, reading a scary book, or awakening from a nightmare, if you find that you are frightened:
74
1. Sit in a quiet place in mukuso (see Chapter 4). Allow the images to come up in your mind. Don't do anything about them. Just watch. Let them come up and go. If you need to, count your breaths 1 to 10 and over again as you watch. This helps calm the mind.
2. As you begin to see these images, watch them as if your mind was a movie screen. Don't call them fearful or joyful or happy or sad. Try to look at them without any emotion.
Realize that images are only moving pictures and that they are not going to hurt you.
3. If a particular image really bothers you, don't avoid it.
Face it. If it is too scary, first look at another less scary image.
4. Realize that you have control over these images. Here's a fun thing you can do to make a really scary image, such as a bad guy, not scary.
• Talk to the bad guy. Tell it that you are not afraid.
Tell it a joke to make it laugh.
• See if you can change the image in your head. If it is really big, make it small. If it has a scary look on its face, make it smile. Make it dance, or make it hug you.
You will be surprised to find out that you have control over these images; the more control you have, the less they will have over you.
75
Something else you can do is practice Karate with an understanding teacher who can help you develop the confidence not only to stop fights with real bullies without violence, but also help you make peace with any invisible enemy you have in your mind.
Studying the Art of Karate not only offers us the opportu-nity to learn a physical self-defense, which gives us confidence to end physical violence, but also provides us with an understanding of the psychological violence within us, so that we can talk about the violent images in our minds -
what they are,
how they got there, and what to do about them. This is the real challenge in Karate!
