"Knowledge is understanding based on what has been studied and learned. Wisdom is understanding based on what has been felt and experienced.”
To experience a place, a culture, a language, a custom, an activity, you really have to go and live it yourself. Never underestimate the importance of direct contact. Period.
This past weekend presented me with the rare opportunity to experience the very ancient art of Sumo, Japan’s oldest martial art and the object of a ritualistic tradition dating back for many centuries. Last year I missed the chance to watch my first Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite the fact that I had purchased a ticket for it. At the time, a last-minute invitation to a co-workers wedding seemed far more important. Nevertheless, life being what it is... a series of events that lead you from one thing to the next, presented me with the rare chance to not only see Sumo in person this time around, but to actually step inside the sacred circular ring (dohyo) semi-naked and confront an opponent face-to-face.
I must admit that I never really fancied dressing up in a mawashi, and even-less-so enter a sumo tournament as a competitor, but when life gifts you with such a unique opportunity, you really want to avoid passing it up. I had made plans to climb 白山 (Hakusan), one of Japan’s Three Holiest Mountains, that day; however, my climbing partners assured me that Monday would work better for them anyway and so my scheduled was cleared to pencil in my appointment with sumo.
I owe it to my beautiful wife for the opportunity, for had she not encouraged me to join the event this experience would have not come to form part of my world cultural experiences.
It goes without saying that I was pretty stoked to join the event. Knowing that I would not only be the only foreigner there, but that also some of my students would see me half-naked didn’t really bother me much. After receiving some quick tips and observing a few matches , I was as ready as I could possibly be. When I was called up to enter the ring, game-face was on and although it only took a few seconds for my opponent to drag me close to the edge, I was able to shift his momentum with a bit of force and successfully threw him out of the ring. The next three matches seemed to go in my favor as well, but eventually I was beat by a couple of older and very experienced gents. The second-last match was particularly entertaining to say the least... :)
In any case, there was something really special about this experience, for there was a point in which everything in my mind simply stopped. And for a minute or two (perhaps longer or shorter than that, I’m not sure), everything that was happening in that moment made sense. It was a time of stillness, of presence, of being there. The fact that I was there, really there. Fully there. Gratefully alive and healthy. In spite of the uncomfortable mawashi, the sand and ants which began accumulating over my body match after match, the spectators, the cameras, the cheers, the anticipation of being called into the ring, the pushing, the shoveling, the strategy, the trees, the kids, the shrine, the temple, the rocks, the butterflies, the sky, the sun, the heat, the sweat, the semi-naked warriors, the chanting... everything in that moment made sense to me.
It was one of those moments in time in which nothing else seems to matter. I was simply there living the experience fully. Not just as an observer, but as a participant observer. A part of the puzzle. A part of the whole. And then it clicked, life is about saying YES, always YES to what it brings. It is not a competition, it’s a game. It is not about winning or losing, it’s about all the fun you can have before it ends. It’s about never letting a day pass by without looking for the good, feeling the good within, praising, appreciating, blessing, and being grateful. And when you make it your life commitment to do just that, you come to stand in utter awe of what happens in your life each day and moment that passes by.
For wether it is climbing to the summit of a famous, holy, or unknown mountain, paddling on a surfboard to the middle of a Bay, circumnavigating a stretch of the British coastline by canoe, trekking through Europe with company or solo, carrying a football past linebackers and DB’s to an end-zone, feeling the pain of your muscles as your crew rows 40 strokes per minute over a 2,000 m course and crosses the finish line only a millisecond ahead of 2nd place, running your first full marathon, observing and spending 10 days of complete silence with yourself, meditating overnight at an 800 year old temple, trekking along the Great Wall, following fireflies along the Philosophy Path in Kyoto on a bike through the night, snowboarding down a glacier, getting married wearing kimono at an 800 year old Shinto Shrine, singing out loud at a karaoke or the shower as if the entire world is watching, helping turn a school’s gym into a shelter before a typhoon, facing an opponent inside a sacred sumo ring, or whatever it is you’ve done or feel like doing ...it is the action, the direct contact, the doing, which teaches us most. It’s the quality of the experience which fills us most.
I thus rest assured that so long as Japan and Life continues to throw at me such rich opportunities to continue learning and enriching my existence through direct contact experience, you can be sure I’ll be there with open arms and open eyes ready to step up and live life like it’s meant to be lived.
In the words of Henry D. Thoreau,
Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me... We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look....
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
May the joy be with you.
