The Peaceful Warrior

A Bow to the Master Builder

The greatest teachers do not teach by instruction alone. They teach by being what they are asking you to become. Grandmaster Loke has been that, always, for every person who has trained with him.

My very first grading. Grandmaster asked us to perform leg swing-up exercises. In my considerable zeal to impress — and I was, it must be said, enthusiastic to the point of comedy — I swung each leg as high as I could manage. I was, for a large man, reasonably flexible, and I got them up above my head. I was very pleased with myself. What I failed to notice, in my enthusiasm, was that I was bringing each foot down with the force and delicacy of a small earthquake. The sprung floor absorbed what it could. The rest of the building probably did not.

Afterwards, I went to my Shifu, Master Cook, and asked him how I had done. He considered this for a moment with the particular expression I would come to know well — the one that precedes something accurate delivered with perfect comic timing — and said: “You did fine. Apart from your legs coming down like a fairy elephant in the swing-ups.” Then, after a pause: “Still. You got Grandmaster’s attention.”

I have thought about this moment many times. At the time, I heard the comedy. What I understand now is the teaching. The excess energy, the need to impress, the dramatic performance where quiet competence was what was required — all of it was visible to the senior masters from the first moment. And rather than correct it with severity, it was handled with humour. The tension was broken. I felt seen without feeling diminished. I was laughed with, not at.

The Morning Practice

There came a time, some years into my training, when I began to practise alone. Forms practice, early in the morning before anyone else was up, in the small available space of whatever room I was in. The early sessions were, if I am honest, perfunctory. Without the external feedback of a teacher or the implicit pressure of training partners, my standards — which I had thought were internal — turned out to have been sustained more by social context than I had realised. Alone, I shortened the practice. I glossed over the difficult sections. I accepted approximations I would have been embarrassed to offer in class.

Then something changed. I cannot point to a specific moment. But gradually the solo practice deepened, became more honest, and in becoming more honest, became more valuable. I started to notice the difference between doing the form well and doing it accurately. Not a performance difference — there was no audience for that. A felt difference. A quality of attention and intention that either was there or was not, and that I could not fake to myself because there was no self being performed.

This is the specific gift of solitary practice: it removes the performance entirely and leaves only the work.