One Thousand Punches, One Hell of a Bird

Last updated on: January 18, 2016 at 2:38 pm by Tom Swiss

One Thousand Punches, One Hell of a Bird 2016-01-18T14:38:36-04:00 Tom Swiss

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“Senbon”. A piece inspired by the 1,000 punch ritual

This is a cross-post from my karate blog, Sky Hand Road

Spoilers ahead for the penultimate episode of the most recent season of Doctor Who. If you’re a Whovian and the second part of this article’s title doesn’t make you say “oooh!”, come back after you’ve caught up, I don’t want to spoil one of the BEST EPISODES OF A TV SHOW EVER for you.

Like many dojo, we have a special New Years class. “Kagami biraki” literally means “opening the mirror”; in traditional Japanese homes, there is a celebration around January 11th involving breaking apart a rice cake (somewhat in the same vein as “breaking bread” in Western cultures) whose round shape suggests a mirror — or opening a cask of sake, again with a round lid — that marks the end of the New Year holiday season. But in the traditional budo kagami biraki is a New Years intense training session that is an opportunity to renew our spirit and our dedication for the coming year.

Over the past few years my sensei has instituted a tradition of starting our kagami biraki class off with us all doing one thousand punches together. With each person counting off ten at a time, and novice students not being used to keeping the cadence for such drills, just going around and counting off 1,000 can be a challenge. At about one per second, it’s almost seventeen minutes. Your arms get tired punching that long. If you’re using proper form, your core musculature, your koshi, gets tired. Your throat gets sore from 1,000 kiais. Your brain wants to wander.

It’s a heck of a meditation.

It was extra meaningful this year because kagami biraki marked the return to training for one of our senior black belts, who is recovering from a brain tumor. She joins another of our senior yudansha who recently went through surgery and chemo for breast cancer. (Cancer sucks, and while its hard to link any specific case to any one cause it would really be a good idea to stop pouring carcinogens into the environment, just putting that out there.) To see these two indomitable ladies punching and punching and punching without let-up, knowing the history that brought them there…it was like watching the embodiment of determination, humbling and inspiring.

I’m reminded of a recent episode of the British science fiction show Doctor Who. Our hero, the Doctor, emerges from a matter transmitter (think a Star Trek transporter, “Beam me up, Scotty”) to find himself in a sort of haunted castle designed to scare him into confessing certain information. He spends days fleeing the creeping horror and finds the exit…only to find it is blocked by a solid wall of a material harder than diamond.

And he punches that wall a couple of times (which just about breaks his hand, the fact that it doesn’t demonstrates the Doctor’s mastery of martial arts). And the creeping horror catches him, inflicting mortal injury and leaving him just enough life to crawl back to the matter transmitter and reset it, sacrificing himself in the process of creating a new incarnation of himself — the matter transmitter still has him “recorded” as he was when he first arrived, it just needs mass to work with…the mass of his body.

And that new incarnation picks up at the same starting point, does the whole thing again, and punches the wall a few times before being caught, zapped, creating a new version of himself, and dying. And the process repeats for billions and billions of years, through billions of avatars who each die horribly but wear the wall down microscopically, until he gains his freedom and goes to confront his captors.

The Doctor has a Crowning Moment of Awesome as he explains the situation by referring to a Brothers Grim folktale about the nature of eternity. He keeps getting interrupted and dying, so it takes billions of years and billions of incarnations (handily telescoped into a few minutes for us viewers) to complete the thought, and only gets to the last part when he breaks through:

There’s this emperor, and he asks this shepherd’s boy, “How many seconds in eternity?” And the shepherd’s boy says, “There’s this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it, and an hour to go around it. Every hundred years, a little bird comes. It sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.”

You must think that’s a hell of a long time.

Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.

We’re not punching for billions of years, but that’s the attitude we’re trying to cultivate. One hell of a bird, slowly wearing away that mountain.

You can keep up with “The Zen Pagan” by subscribing via RSS or e-mail.

If you do Facebook, you might choose to join a group on “Zen Paganism” I’ve set up there. And don’t forget to “like” Patheos Pagan and/or The Zen Pagan over there,
too.

My Blogging Life and Times

Zen

martial arts

meditation

Previous Post

January 13, 2016

David Bowie: One Wave Sets Thousands In Motion

Next Post

January 24, 2016 Fun a Day: "You're the only one who can be you"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2017 52 Makeup 2020 52 Makeup Always Roaming With A Hungry Heart Art Because I Could Not Stop For Death Caught On Video COVID-19 Culture Discordianism Ethics, Virtue, and Right Living History Magic(k), Ritual, and Mysticism My Blogging Life and Times Philosophy Podcast Poetry Random Wednesdays Religion & Politics Seasonal Musings Techno-Pagan Theology Uncategorized Warrior Path Zen

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 March 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 September 2024 August 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 October 2022 September 2022 June 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I was a scribe skilled in the Law, and I set my heart to study, practice, and teach it. Who am I?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Samuel Nehemiah Ezra Solomon