Memories of Richard Kim
By
Christopher Caile
On November 8, Richard Kim, Hanshi, known affectionately to many as O'Sensei, passed away. He was 83 years old. The world has lost another great master.
Kim
was not my teacher and I was not part of his organization, but over
a few years I got to know him quite well. What follows are some
of my personal memories of Kim, and reflections on how and what
he taught me and many others. Hopefully this will give you a sense
of the man. I will leave it to others to adequately detail his life.
Kim
is best known for his books "The Weaponless Warriors",
"The Classical Man," and the series " Kobudo - Okinawan
Weapons Series 1-3." For years his column "The Classical
Man" was featured in Karate Illustrated. He was also a teacher
to thousands of students through his Zen Bei Busen organization
which has approximately one hundred martial arts schools across
the United States, Canada and Europe.
I
had the honor of building a relationship with Kim that began in
1991. It started with a letter to him about the history of some
kata. We had a lot in common including the arts we had studied and
many teachers we had both known, and thus we often spoke. Soon afterwards
he invited me to meet him at his summer camp held annually in Guelph,
Ontario, not too far from where I lived. Over the next eight years
I got to know Kim quite well.
If you met Kim on the street, the image of a karate master would be the farthest thing from your mind. His hair cut short in a crew cut and dressed with a bow tie and suspenders, he looked more like an accountant or professor.
I
found Kim to be very open, someone who genuinely wanted to help
others. He had a huge, generous heart, with no sense of arrogance
about him. When talking to him, he talked to you as an equal, with
total concentration. You always went away feeling somehow acknowledged.
This was a great gift.
Kim's personality also had a lightness about it, a youthfulness of heart. Despite his age, he had a joyful spontaneity and enthusiasm -- especially when discussing the martial arts that he loved.
What
really struck a listener, however, was his knowledge. He was the
ultimate Classical Man. He was also brilliant. He had a Ph.D., and
was fluent in five languages. It was often recounted that in his
youth he had gone directly from the third to the seventh grade,
graduated college by the age of 18 and earned his Ph.D. not long
afterwards.
As
a teacher he was a living encyclopedia of martial arts information
and history, someone who had lived in Japan and China and knew Okinawa
and Asia. More than one martial arts authority has said that Kim
was the most knowledgeable person on the martial arts that they
had ever known.
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Concept
of Kata
Kim
ran summer and winter camps that were attended by hundreds of students
drawn from his many affiliated karate dojos plus an occasional guest,
such as myself. From our many conversations at camp always came
the unexpected -- added information, untold stories, explanations
and insights. He liked the stimulation and it got him off the track
of his usual stories that he had told so many times before.
Kim's
daily summer camp schedule began at dawn with Tai Chi and the basics
of Pa qua (a Chinese internal martial art) along with deep breathing
exercises. After breakfast there would be a seminar, each day focusing
on a different kata. But there was always more -- kata applications,
concepts of strategy, distancing and body alignment, pressure points,
exercises in movement, kicking techniques taken from Muay Thai,
center line theory, punching exercises from boxing as well as joint
locks from Daito-ryu -- an almost overwhelming mix that somehow
Kim related back to the kata or subject of the day.
While
most karate organizations teach specific renditions of kata, Kim
taught different renditions of the same kata drawn from their original
teachers. This provided a unique historical perspective, something
that not only provided insight on the development of kata itself,
but also taught students something about the master from whom the
kata were drawn. In all over 70 empty hand and weapons kata were
taught.
Kim
believed, however, that the essential kata were few -- Chinto, Bassai,
Seisan, Gojushiho and Konku. "They are all that are necessary
to know to become a karate master," he would often say. One
unifying element that ran through all of Kim's teaching was the
acknowledgment of the importance of spirit. It was part of his teaching
of technique and kata just as it was the center of his many nightly
lectures, although in his lectures the concept of spirit took many
forms.
Kim
used kata as the principal method of teaching karate. He felt, however,
that in the West much of the understanding of karate kata had been
lost. His teacher, Yoshida Kotaro, had said, "kata was a way
to reach the silence between the thoughts."
Kim often related karate kata to the classical sword arts (kenjutsu). "In kenjutsu there is a moment of truth when you actually face death," he would say, "something that is lost in kendo and other modern 'do' arts."
"In karate kata you can kill your opponent in your mind. You can't do this practice fighting," he would say. "In kata when you hear 'Yoi' (prepare), you fully commit yourself to give up your life in your mind. You become committed to death."
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Reaching
this higher spiritual plain comes through training in kata, within
which you train for life and death. When people begin karate training
it is all physical. At that level, when sparring, the strongest
always win. At the higher level, however, spirit becomes more important.
If you can give up your life and are willing to die, this provides
a tremendous advantage, for in battle you must break the other's
spirit. And, Kim would often add, "Never fight with someone
committed to die in battle."
Those
who have written about kata in the West, Kim said, usually do not
understand its full meaning. They often quote the saying, "There
is no first attack in karate" (Karate ni sente nashi). But
this is only a beginning level of understanding. Real karate and
kata is to train your intuition, to respond to the intention of
attack with a full blitzkrieg of techniques.
"Thus
kata deals with the most primeval element - kill or survive,"
he would say. "You must practice it with full commitment. You
must win." This is the truth of life and death combat. "The
winner in war is always right," something that seems brutal,
he would say, but is the truth.
Thus
when you begin kata, Kim would say, you must transport yourself
onto the field of combat -- see, feel and smell the enemy and the
attacks -- act as if each second were your last -- totally commit
to action. This is "Karate ni sente hissho" - "hissho"
meaning "guaranteed to win."
Karate
masters, Kim would say, learn to go into an Alpha brain wave state
-- a state in which you lose yourself and become totally attuned
to your environment and your attacker -- in which you become one
with the enemy and intuitively connected to his every nuance.
Recently
when Peter Urban (an American pioneer of Goju ryu karate and former
student of Kim and Gogen Yamaguchi) was asked what the most valuable
thing was that he had learned from Kim, he answered, "My value
system." When asked "what belief system?" he replied,
"Today is now."
Urban was also asked to sum up his training with Kim in the early
1950s. Urban answered with a single word: "Uncompromising."
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Spirit
And Health
At
summer camp during evening lectures, Kim's focus often changed.
He complemented the daytime physical aspects of his teaching (techniques
and kata) with comprehensive discourses on the esoteric and spiritual
side of karate. Kim often said, "Developing spirituality is
the unique contribution of the martial arts."
The
ultimate goal of Kim's teaching was, I believe, to help his students
build a strong, positive and healthy spirit while nurturing the
body internally for health and long life. Toward this end Kim prompted
his students to develop an ego free attitude -- to look at the world
from a larger perspective, to have an open mind, positive attitude,
flexible outlook and spiritual source of strength.
Kim
understood the intimate connection between mind, body and spirit,
and he taught his students how to use their minds to mold their
attitude, outlook and spirit and to harness the energies of the
body (chi) for health and healing. He also taught how the subconscious
mind could be used to program the self towards any end. His goal
was to provide simple and useful tools for his students to strengthen
their spirit, change their lives, and mold their minds.
On
this journey of self-discovery Kim guided his students through a
travel log of subjects and insights. While sometimes controversial,
he was also riveting. He would regale you with stories of Zen masters,
tales of famous samurai, Zen teachers and his own World War II episodes.
Everything was punctuated with Kim's sense of humor, an occasional
chuckle and ability to laugh at himself. Sometimes Kim's jokes were
bit off color, but the humor and the sparkle in his eyes were always
present.
There
were so many stories, verbal snap shots of great budo masters with
whom he had associated -- of Shanghai, China, and about his teachers
and stories of Chojun Miyagi (the founder of Goju karate) who had
studied at the Shanghai Martial Arts Academy (where Kim visited
during WWII while serving in the Japanese army) -- of Yokahama,
Japan, where Kim met a young Peter Urban and guided him to study
karate and not boxing (Kim was Urban's first karate teacher) --
of Okinawa and Kim's tales of Gichen Funakoshi and Hohan Soken using
visualizations in their practice -- of Tokyo, Japan and Mas Oyama
and Kim's stories of Oyama's strength and his ability to bend a
coin between two fingers.
I
always wondered if Kim's focus on helping his own students with
their lives, spiritually and physically, resulted from a very personal
trial. He often spoke of his wife having survived cancer. She believed,
he said, that healing required three mental ingredients: A fighting
spirit, a willingness to learn and change, and a spiritual resource,
such as a belief in God. "These change your mental vibrations."
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While
Kim respected modern medicine, he also had some healthy skepticism,
believing much was not yet understood -- that Western doctors did
not fully understand nutrition or the power of the mind and that
much of what that goes on in medicine today is not all scientific,
but a little magical too.
About nutrition Kim said many things. He believed in the importance
of reducing red meat in the diet, and taking herbs and supplements.
But his cardinal rule was, "If you have 70% fruits and vegetables
in your diet, the other 30% doesn't matter."
Kim
also believed, at least in part, that illness reflected the body's
state of energy and that when the life force was disturbed or not
properly flowing, illness would result. He also understood various
energies as vibrations -- sounds, emotions, prayer, external and
internal energies -- things that could be harnessed to affect the
energies of the body.
Kim
would say that everyone inside had kindling, and if you pull energy
into your body and concentrate, you will produce a glow of energy.
He taught how to circulate this energy, balance the endocrine system,
use the "Six Healing Sounds", use colors for healing and
many other techniques. He also discussed the body's Chakra system
and how to use its energy.
Kim
was a strong believer in the power of the subconscious. He would
say that we live in energy. The subconscious brain (right) is its
source, something that never rests, and the conscious brain (left)
can communicate with it. If the subconscious is programmed it will
work for you. Thus, you can create yourself through your own thought
-- but to do so you must achieve an Alpha state (brain wave) to
communicate. He would say "You are in charge. It is the most
important thing in your life. If you give yourself an order your
body will follow."
Kim
also often talked about the power of thought -- how thought influenced
or prompted emotions, and that every emotion was communicated throughout
the body (by neuropeptides) and affected every cell in the body.
He would say, "To heal you must emotionally generate the right
neuropeptides to open the lock to healing."
Buddha
taught, he said, that "Everything begins and ends in thought,"
to which he often added, "So, what you plant in your head is
what you get."
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One of Kim's concepts that I always liked was how words affect our very lives and future. He would often summarize this in the following:
"Words become actions.
Actions become habits.
Habits become character.
Character becomes destiny."
I
always viewed Kim's teachings as a natural balance (yin and yang).
The hard physical martial arts were balanced with the softness of
internal spirit, discipline and self-regulated health. Kim's goal,
I think, was to promote the development of a balanced and total
human being.
Words
Of Wisdom
Here
are a few of the many sayings that I enjoyed from Kim over the years.
I took them from my notes. I believe they are his own words, but
Kim may have taken the words from other sources. I think the first
one was adapted from the Bible:
"The
secret of life and karate is to see what you really see."
"If you can change the way you see the world, the world will
be different. This is a lot easier than changing the world."
"The first step in discipline is to delay gratification."
"In Kata you must go where fire can't, and weapons can't
hurt you."
"All of us carry our raft today that we crossed the river
with yesterday."
I learned a lot from you, Richard Kim. Along with many others I will miss your advice, your knowledge and your spirit.
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