“Whattchu Looking At?”

Losing Your Way in the Martial Arts , or "How I learned to love the Scenario!"

By W. Hock Hochheim

There is an old Zen parable about a man pointing at the moon. The lesson of the tale is that all too many people look at the finger rather than where it is pointing- the moon. You've seen it in movies, paintings; I even have a statue in my office of an old Chinaman with his finger and face upward.

The pointing finger has been around forever because this ancient riddle is a timeless critique for politics, religion and even martial training. But is it about the finger, the moon...or both? The public is not too sure. Why are hand, stick, knife and gun tapes, manuals, books and magazines often so boring and so incomplete? Why do the courses virtually miss their mark, leaving students so unprepared and untrained? Because they leave us stuck looking at the finger-or more succinctly-a finger shaped into the fist, or what the fingers are holding as in knives, sticks and guns.

Magazines today are little more than catalogs for products. Courses and product salesmen rarely linger on what happens after you slash that $280 knife across the belly of a man. Or what happens to the lungs or skull of a man after the bullet pays a rapid, chaotic visit. And we wonder why people suffer post traumatic syndrome after violence! In fact, we have been tricked, mislead, marketed or brainwashed into obsessing about the finger. We perfect punches, obtain foreign sticks, collect macho knives and droll over mechanical guns. Gun people salivate on the firearm. Knife people covet the latest edged weapon. Stick people worship the stick. Martial artists obey the grandmasters, train for referee sport fights and film themselves doing perfect katas. We have learned to revere them all, haven't we? We pay hundreds, even thousands for them and to them.

Yes - fists, sticks, knives and guns. We hang them on our walls, we put them on our t-shirts, our logos, our business cards, cups, hats and even tattoos. We worship the finger. And yet the full moon looms above. Lets talk here and now. Let's get to it! Here's the dirty little secret, the ugly, straight-shooting truth. Hands, sticks, knives and guns hurt, main and kill people. They bash them down. They blow them up. They break them apart. They cleave them open. The moon in our parable is…the enemy. How you hurt them, is the finger. The complete relationship in training is between two (or more) combatants. What-you-do and what-he-does, together as one. Interactive. The realistic combat scenario is king of all practice, the mother of all lodes.

All roads lead to this Rome. There, I said the bloody, politically incorrect thing. And until somebody does, our bearings will never be straight, our training systems askew and our very survival is in jeopardy. Worship the scenario! Good, solid military and police training at its best is a great example. I went through the Vietnam-era, Army basic training and vets would report to us on expectations from the enemy. They told us how the NVA and Viet Cong think. How they attack. How they trick and ambush you, and what you needed to do. The same is true of the best police training. I was taught early on to interweave with the enemy soldier and the criminal. Symbiotic. Not just true veterans, but even hunters know this from actual experience. Hunters purchase gear and plan in a thoughtful and direct relationship to the habits of their prey.

Think for a moment about how intense that man-animal hunting relationship is, and how a shooting or karate instructor pays zero attention to the ways, looks and locales of a criminal, than a simple hunter does to a deer! Instead they fuss and worry about the position of your big toe in a stationary stance you won't be in during a fight anyway. I want to keep this veteran approach alive. Via this webpage and my books, DVDs and courses, I want to spread that message of truth so clear that your jaw drops with enlightenment because you know deep in your heart, “my God! This will keep me alive.” Many chuckle when they hear me frequently declare that I really don't care about differing brands of knives, sticks, and guns. They ask me, "Hock, what do you think of the new "Throat-Slitter Six, SEAL death knife? It is only $350 you know?" I could care less! I'll kill ya' with a kitchen knife. I don't care much about the products past a point of simple practicality. I cannot and refuse to fixate on them. I will lose my way.

A case I worked. One successful belly slash among many unsuccessful ones. Remember what your expensive, pretty knife is really for! So you see, when I gaze at the new tactical knife enlarged on the cover of a pretty magazine, so polished with a green velvet backdrop, like one would sell diamonds upon? I instantly see in my mind's eye the slit open, dead body in a stinking, red mass on the street. That's just what I see! Like a time warp, like a fortune-teller. This-equals-that.

When I see some obese guy that fancies himself a gun combateer, shooting the latest pistol on a range in a gun magazine, in an instant, in my minds-eye I see him dead, simply because he is too out-of-shape to run for cover. Then I see the exploded man he shot at. In one second, I picture two dead guys. Real pretty gun laying there on the ground! Nice boots. Two dead guys. Finger/Moon equals interactive combat. Not just the finger. Not just the moon. Both. When you look, do you just see a pretty new Glock pistol? A perfect JKD jab? A shiny new overpriced knife? A Kamagong stick? An egotistical grandmaster? Are you just stuck on the finger? Whatchu' looking at?

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