The Threat of Accumulation

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Building the martial arts on a personal level seems to be driven by the need and concept of more is better, to accumulate as much knowledge as possible and to hold as many different ways as possible. Is this beneficial to the proponent of such a way? That is the question that cannot be answered except through the way of the individual. I can only answer from my seat in the audience.

Keep it simple is an older maxim of our human history that speaks to the simpler ways of life and I think that those people understood what that meant. It has come to mind and attention that a vast accumulation of things simply muddies the waters blocking any attempts to drink of the clear, crystal and cool waters of life. 

It comes to the surface of my consciousness that when too much is stored in the shed then the difficulty of finding and understanding and making adequate use of things becomes impossible. We think that the more we have the better off we are yet in the essence of martial disciplines too much fogs the mind, leaves us indecisive and unable to act. 

I am constantly inundated with how others in the martial disciplines have trained in this system and that along this path or the other while achieving recognition from a variety of sources all in the endeavor to always grow in the martial arts but is this actually growth or just the accumulation of things like the collector who loves to collect things, many and many and many things. 

Having thousands of techniques; having many symbols of mistaken growth symbolized by the accumulation of higher numbers of things; having the recognition of those caught up in the same cognizant confirmation dissonance of bias seems just a means to fill up life so that one cannot think clearly and experience what is nature and the universe but we seek out more and more every day, every minute and every moment. 

What is it that is truly important and even critical to applying martial disciplines be it the way or in self-fense? All of the collected things used to value and validate ourselves, our esteem and our needs toward survival seems to have blocked out those few things that are the essence of the many. 

All the techniques, all the kata and the basics and all the trappings are merely productions of finite principles and levels of force along with those methodologies used to apply them in fense, you can count them all in one sitting while all the rest branch out like the branches of a tree and all the leaves and flowers that bloom, all pretty but not all necessary to get the job done. 

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Wow! I am impressed. Really, I am.