The Metaphysics of Muay Thai: Or, Why Muay Thai is the Greatest Artform in the World

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

I've stumbled on a giant idea, in fact an idea so large it touches on nearly every aspect of life, and every aspect of what make Muay Thai like no other fighting form in the world. It's also an idea that is so large writing about it proves daunting, an in fact unimaginable, as so much of it is full of the tangential (consequences), and explanation. Just taking it on feels like selecting a single hair at the end of a tiger's tail, and giving it a quiet pluck. But here's to just diving in...

The Paradox of Courage - How the Poet Saves the World

There is a fundamental, seemingly logically paradoxical contradiction to bravery or courage. Without fear, there is no courage. The courageous person is not someone who feels no fear. In fact fear itself can be argued to be essential to courage. Much as someone who has lost the ability to feel pain, and so might move physically and emotionally in seeming defiance of pain, a person who has no fear might appear courageous, but what we cherish about courage is very different. It's the very ability to feel it, and then overcome it in someway. The value lies in contradictions being able to persist together. This contradiction will form the essence of the heroic, in a certain line of Philosophical thinking.

Walter Benjamin, a German social critic and philosopher was living through the tidal rise of World War I. He was a young man and two of his friends had committed suicide over the impending catastrophe that was about to rip European culture to shreds and end any semblance of the Old World. He was struggling with the role of the poet, what could a poet matter in the face of this terrible World conflict that was going to tear at the fabric of reality? What did the deaths of his friends even mean? He took on the examination of a poem by the German poet Holderlin, which itself was an examination of poetic courage. In fact that poem existed in several versions, one of which was titled "Courage", the other "Stupidity" (or "Timidity"). It's hard for us to imagine poets and courage placed together in the same thought construct, except in maybe the most metaphorical way. Can a poet be "brave" choosing words as men are being brave (like, really brave) in trenches while everyone around them is being cut down? But bear with him, and me, because this is about studying the nature of an art, and its importance to us. We love and value an art because it reveals things to us, important things, and it sets our course. The soldier in the trench is brave, in part, because we have stories, indeed some very artful, poetic stories that last for epochs, of bravery.

Walter Benjamin took hold of what was a fundamental logical puzzle of Holderlin's version of the poem. Why did Holderlin go from "Courage" to "Stupidity" or "Timidity" (what is the meaning of this change?). What Benjamin locked onto, and of course there is debate over his interpretation because people like to debate, what he locked onto was that fundamental binary of what courage is. That one is courageous in spite of, but in a sense dependent on FEAR. And, correlate to all of that, the more fear you felt, the more courageous you could be.

Note: for instance, a fighter who just walks forward, numb, feeling nothing, not even perceiving danger, as if that part of her or his brain is turned off, is not admirable. Is uninteresting. Such an imagined fighter is only interesting to the degree that we project our own fears, what we would feel if we stood there, if we create the contrast.

The poet, he argued, in his most heroic (and this is a very male world, Germanic heroism) is the one what looks straight into the divine, straight into the beauty of the world, with no filter on, and is completely dumbstruck. He is immediately aware that no word he utters is of any value, cannot communicate that terrible, awful, tremendously beautiful thing that he sees, his only response is pure gibberish, imbecility, nonsense. That is the extreme condition out of which the poet's courage take seed. That is the reason Holderlin changed the title of his poem in the last version from "Courage" to "Stupidity". It's supidification.

Once stupidified, the poet then courageously seeks to speak. At first he is merely babbling. He is like a baby, but he wades in, and seeks to hold onto the thing that terrifies him. He does not try to dismiss it, or nullify it. He wants to keep it, and bring it forward. He struggles with that terror, and seeks to articulate it. He wants to bridge the world of terrible beauty (the unspeakable, divine) and the articulate.

Above is an essay fragment describing the way that Benjamin proposes that the poet saves the world through his submission to fear itself as a fundamental relation, embodying all the fears we have of the bounded world.

Now, this might sound like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to you. Abstract words describing Germanic Philosophy far removed from the concrete things that matter. But let me suggest to you that what it is talking about is perhaps the most concrete thing in the world. Fear. When I say it is concrete, I do not mean its a "thing". It's concrete in that it is a fundamental relation. Every organism that has ever existed is built on a single grammatical plan. Attraction vs Aversion. Philosophy likes to talk about all kinds of binaries, it plays games with concepts left and right, but when you dig right down to the root of binaries you are entering the absolute fundamentals of not only human experience, but all of experience. Fear, aversion, trepidation forms the very weft our what we are. You cannot get below this fundamental pole in the binary. There is nothing more fundamental. So when Benjamin is waxing poetic about the poet and his relationship to fear, this is not just the imagination of Greeks lounging near white statues eating grapes. He is talking about the Ur-logic of all of life. And he is talking about the death of his friends, as the horrible figure of World War is about to rip through all life and culture. In the figure of the poet he is outlining the beauty of the fighter. He gives us the key to understanding why we love fighters so much - for those of us who do - and what separates out fighters from each other. What is it about fighting that invokes so much that is important?

Autarchy of the Relation - What Sets Fighters Apart

The Greek suffix -archy we know in words like plutarchy, patriarchy, matriarchy. It means something like "rule by". But in Greek it goes much deeper than that. Something that is ruled is really genetically founded by, in something. It goes like a mighty oak with roots that sink deep within a soil where we cannot see. Benjamin proposed phrase to describe the irreducible nature of the Poet's Heroism (and for us, the Fighter's Heroism). The Autarchy of the Relation. The thick girded oak is self-founded, self-ruled (auto+rule) out of the relationship itself. It is not founded on fear, nor on courage, but out of the relationship between the two of them. We talk a lot about overcoming fear, and sometimes imagine that fear is something that we fundamentally need to be done with. You finish it off, and them move onto the next thing (ideally), and when you struggle with fear you are somehow failing in some way. But Benjamin, in his figure of the poetic, is saying no: you bring the relationship with you. The heroic consists of the relationship itself. There is no maturing past fear. There is no growing out of fear. If you have lost touch with fear you have lost touch of the relationship. It would be like a poet who writes and is no longer terrified of Beauty.

Anyone who has sparred understands this immediately. These abstract words and concepts suddenly boil down to real things. The fundamental core act of sparring is really an emotional one. Sylvie writes about this in a forum post here, if you want to take a tangent:

What I want to call attention to is how even the absolute beginner in training, when she or he stands in front of someone who can possibly hurt them, or shame them, is standing right on the precipice of greatest heroic, chasm-facing dimensions of all the world. This is the same precipice that every organism that has ever beat has lived. This is the Autarchy of the Relation. Fear, and how to speak when you are dumbstruck. As fighters many learn fixed patterns of how to "speak" in sparring, and then in fighting. These are formulaic vehicles designed to take you forward when you feel fear. When you feel aversion. And trusting in these, using them to cross the divide, is much appreciated. But...using vehicles to crossover is missing what is really happening in fighting when it comes to its highest art. At its highest art, what is principal is the Relation itself. It is the presence of fear, and the willingness to submit to it, fully.

The Ceasura - Poetry's Gift to Understanding Fighting

Much of what we do, in fact maybe almost all of what we do, is to try and get fear (and its sister, pain) to stop. We move away from things that threaten to hurt, either physically or psychologically. Or, if we are really brave, we rush through the dangerous zone to the other side. We have all kinds of irrational "fears" (fears that we imagine if we looked at them soberly, would vanish) and if we can just get through the immediate "Stop!" we are told everything will be ok. We jump in the cold water, swim across the brook, and are refreshed on the other side. This is something that is different than the Autarchy of the Relation. At its highest art you do not rush through the fear-zone, only to find the happy ending on the other side. The happy ending is just one more version of the avoidance of fear. What you are afraid of will simply disappear. At the highest form of fighting, it does not disappear. It is preserved. It is held in a sacred binary. 

Note: This perhaps speaks to the western preoccupation with the knockout, and the deep dissatisfaction it has with Thai style Muay Thai which often shuns the knockout. The knockout for the west is the relief, the cessation of the fear. It's all over, nothing to fear anymore! The monster is dead. It's nothing more than the parallel of having run away so well you never have to see it again. Muay Thai in Thailand has developed a much keener sense of the preservation of the Relation, holding fear and courage together. You are not, principally, trying to END the fight, as in, end the fear, the aversion. You are standing in it, graced.

Readers of David Goggins will be familiar with this. Goggins an an ultra athlete who uses his extreme training to confront and overcome his own weaknesses and fear. Not to move too far from the topic here is the Rogan interview if you don't know him:

One of the most compelling things that Goggins preaches is how much he chaffs at people who work out, work hard, expose themselves to the extreme in order to be done with it. He felt he ran into this when training to be a Navy Seal. He felt many of the men were "tough guys" who walked around with the badge of their official mark, having gotten to the other side. Goggin's motto was "always back to square one". For him he was always returning to exactly how he felt when he lifted his first weight, ran his first mile. This is the very same horror that Benjamin through Holderlin was talking about. Just because you run ultras doesn't mean that when you wake up at 5 am to run you don't feel horror. In fact, for Goggins, you put those shoes on in order to feel horror. That's the Autarchy of the Relation, remaining in touch with the core binary of fear and courage.

Now, let me take a further detour into the poetic to explain one of the most beautiful things about fighting, and give key into how to watch and appreciate fights. The caesura. The caesura is a gap, a break in a metrically line of poetry. It's used in various ways across human history, but it always has the impact of placing an empty spot, a null value, within a larger economy of expression. Here are famous uses of caesura from the history of literature (from wikipedia):

The opening line of the Iliad:

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ || Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

("Sing, o goddess || the rage of Achilles, the son of Peleus.")

 

 

Opening line of Virgil's Aeneid:

Arma virumque cano || Troiae qui primus ab oris

(Of arms and the man, I sing. || Who first from the shores of Troy...)

 

The opening line of Beowulf reads:

Hwæt! We Gardena || in gear-dagum,

þeodcyninga, || þrym gefrunon,

hu ða æþelingas || ellen fremedon.

(Behold! The Spear-Danes in days gone by,)

(and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness,)

(We have heard of these princes' heroic campaigns.)

There is great nuance to how caesura are used, but for us its enough to just appreciate how it is always a gap, always a silence, a breath. Holderlin argued that this gap, this break - not only in lines, but in dramatic structures - had the potential to signify the fundamental relationship between fear and courage itself. Benjamin's Autarchy of The Relation is signified by the caesura. It's the moment when in the film-strip of representations (frames which each "show" some event), there comes a frame which shows representation itself, which is just a weird, fancy way of saying "I'm speechless", or "representation isn't sufficient". Pictures won't do. This is the dumbness of the poet before the beauty and tragedy of the world. It's a single piece of emptiness in the presentation.

Now this is where it gets really fascinating. And how we come down off of those ivory towers of the poetic and narrotology, and into the nitty-gritty of the things that motherfucking matter to all of us in this world. The caesura, the gap, is the gap that exists between fighters. It's the space that sits there and is unresolved. It's the bubble that is invisible that generates the entire theatre of conflict. It's what generates the heroic and the poetic, and its what makes fighting, when it is at its highest, one of the great art forms of the world. We are dealing with the very fabric and Ur-source of all relations, of every single thing you and I do in the world. Every word we say, every gesture we make.

When I say that that space between fighters is the caesura, I'm not being metaphorical, at least to the degree that they perform the same thing. They invoke and instantiate the Autarchy of the Relation. The reason for this is that each fighter feels fear in relationship to this gap, this space. We think of a fighter maybe fearing another fighter, but fundamentally they are fearing the space itself. As organisms our virtuality, the way that we experience space, project ourselves into the material world, represent and orient ourselves is through both fear and spatial compassry. We are negotiating the caesura in front of us in all things. And in the art (and sport) of fighting this is not only literalized (the performance involves a real space) it is performed by agents, by actors, onto which we can graft ourselves. We are projected into the space and relation through the spectacle.

This is the interesting, vital thing. At its highest the fighter does not seek to extinguish the fear. This would negate the relation. She/He seeks to preserve it, and act it out in terms of courage itself, to create a continuity between fear, being dumbstruck, and action (finding words). And all the things we love about fighters, each and every style of fighting and be defined by the quality of that fighter's relationship to the gap, that space sitting between fighters. How much do they stand it in, how often? Can they persist in it? Do they avoid it? Do they rush through it? And, at a deeper, more poetic sense, how do they relate to the gap in terms of their own rhythm? What metrical expression do they use to work through that gap, gauge it, negotiate it? For me, when I watch fights now, I don't even watch strikes anymore. I mean, yes, I see them, but my eye is locked onto the gap between fighters. What is the relationship between each fighter and the gap? It's the glue, the Autarchy of The Relation, which puts all the elements together. If you read poetry, it's like discovering that there was a ruling meter all along, beneath the words.

Watching the Gap - Why Muay Thai Is Special

Watch this fight between two young Thai fighters providing an example of what I'm referring to, the sense of fight space.

watch the fight here - or if that link doesn't work, try this one (mobile)

I'm presenting two fights that just fell into my feed, almost by accident, together. It's not that they are individually primary examples, but they do work to illustrate fundamental differences between the Thailand of Muay Thai and the Muay Thai (and kickboxing, and MMA, etc) of the rest of the world. If you would take 10 minutes and just watch the fight above, but in so doing, mostly just watch the gap between the fighters. Yes, the variety of strikes, the changes in tempo are beautiful, but watch the entire fight looking at the gap, the caesura. This is the fear-gap buried at the heart of all fighting arts and sport.

Now watch this fight below, from ONE Championship, a version of Muay Thai that is maybe closer to kickboxing in its encouraged fighting styles (fast clinch breaks, etc) as it seeks to popularize Muay Thai to an international audience. It features a popular western fighter in Liam Harrison, and an older Thai in Rodlek. Almost all the talk about this fight was about the strikes. But watch the extremely simplified gap-relationship, when compared to even the children fighting above. The very vocabulary of relations to the gap in this second fight consists of Harrisons' safe leg-kicks (his specialty), and his kind of hold-your-breath-and-go memorized combinations through the zone (a very common western style of fighting). Rodlek on the other hand also takes a very simplified approach to the gap, he's just gradually shrinking that gap, in a kind of slow motion vice-grip, making Harrison more and more uncomfortable. It's nothing complex, Rodlek though is in positive relation with the gap. More comfortable in it, and working through the gap, almost using it as a weapon. 

Debates occurred as to how much "damage" Harrison did with his leg kicks, or how tough Rodlek is. But what I want you to see is far beyond this fight. Look at the differences in vocabulary between these two fights. Look at the intense variety of spatial relationships, and attempts to control, work through, live through the gap in the Thai fight, and the very simplistic march down of the One fight. These are not the same sport, not the same art.

As a commercial product you can certainly see the imperative of the 2nd fighting style. It can appeal across cultures, enter into different markets. It encourages viral like fight edits that can frictionlessly slip through social media platforms. It is segmentable. Reproducible. It also grafts more easily onto the immense popularity (and visual structure of) MMA. (Think about the gap, the caesura in MMA.) But, what I'm calling attention to is that the deeper, more profound vocabulary of fear and its sister courage as found in traditional Muay Thai in Thailand, and reaching for an explanation as to why Muay Thai might be the greatest artform in the world. What is incredibly special about Thailand's Muay Thai is how it has created a value, an aesthetic of performance that maintains the Autarchy of The Relation. It has created a poetry of staying in the spaces of fear, and relating to them. And in that aesthetic and those skills it accedes to the highest endeavor of humanity, reaching up to and beyond the poetics of German Philosophy, and Ancient Greek culture itself (considered a root of all the things we think and believe as westerners). And, it presents it all, without dilution, for the common man to see, to witness. Yes, it does require some education of eyes to see, you have to learn to look at the gap between fighters, and not their strikes - I am reminded of the admonition: The music, not the words.

Now look at this Golden Age fight, all time legends of the Golden Age. You can pick 100s of fights from this era, but just watch this fight looking at the gap. Karuhat takes a big lead counting Kaensak who is one of the all time greats, 2x fighter of the year. Kaensak happened to be using the low kick as an early primary weapon. Much of this fight is Karuhat defending his lead. Just look at how buttery he is in the gap. On the edge of it, in it. It's like a force field, a bubble, as Kaensak fights his way through it trying to come from behind. Kaensak was a ferocious kicker and puncher. 

 

There is some concern that the poetics of Thailand's Muay Thai are being lost, a real concern. But one can see much of what Karuhat does in the fight between the young fighters above. You can feel the same relationship to the gap, the caesura, so we have not lost the thread. What I want to call attention to is not what is better fighting than some other form of fighting, but rather to the buried meaning in fighting itself, and the secret way that is expressing something so close to our soul, all our hearts, and the urge that we must hold onto this. Fighting, at the highest, vocabulary-rich manifestation is putting into reality the things that poetry and the plastic arts, what many consider upper reaches of cultural achievement, and fashioning them out of the raw sinews, nerves and spirit of human beings. Fighters are artists of themselves, and in that way are the mid-point between the dumbstruck and the brave, what we all aspire to be. The fighter takes up in her or his real hands the substance of the thing that the painter lifts when she or he lifts the brush, the composure does when striking piano keys, in a way that transcends or at least bridges class, and radicalizes art itself, touching the chords of what makes us what we hope to be.

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Parallel in evidence, when we asked Samart who would win between himself as Somrak - the two are thought to be two of the most artful fighters Thailand has ever produced, though in different eras - his response was both surprising and simple. "I'm not afraid of Somrak," he said forcefully, defiantly,..calmly. He immediately, and in the present tense, positioned himself in terms of fear. The fighter's art, at its highest, is the display of grace in the midst of fear. Fear is the material on which the sculptor's chisel falls.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Corollary 1: This argument also provides a framework for understanding why any striking art (entertainment form, sport) that does not include grappling is at deficit. The reason for this is that if there is no grappling amid striking it encourages hold-your-breath-ism, which means when faced with the gap, the fear, you can just grit your teeth and throw your combo. Get to the other side of the gap and be "safe". You see this all the time in various kickboxing timeouts and ref breaks. The relationship to the gap is just two people holding their breath and jumping over it, to "safe" (the cessation of fear). This is related to aggressive attacks that Jack Slack humorously has called "Karate, karate, karate!". I'm over-simplifying it, and this certainly isn't the intention of for instance kickboxing rules that are imagined to unleash "pure action", but it is what evolves when proximity has no consequence and produces a "timeout". It could be argued that one of the hidden reasons why MMA has thrived in terms of entertainment is that it produces a richer sense of distance and danger. MMA fighters have an inordinate fear of the gap, by and large, but some of this is because they can't just jump through the space and call a time out on the other side. By privileging grappling MMA gives the fighter no safe space, they are forced to more or less continually deal with fear (at least when standing up). Striking arts that remove all or most of grappling are seriously compromising the very logic of the caesura. There is no safe space. 

Boxing makes an interesting example in this, in that because it's a highly developed artform evolved through decades and decades of full contact fighting, and the spatial skill levels are as high as those shown in the classic Muay Thai of Thailand, it rivals Muay Thai in terms of the metaphysics of the caesura, the work in fear. True, there is no explicit grappling in western boxing, but infighting, clinch and dirty boxing up close are art-forms within the ruleset. And, all the proximate spaces are fraught with difficulty. You cannot box effectively by just holding your breath and throwing combinations, and waiting for the clinch break. I also suspect that the reason why so many top level Muay Thai fighters transitioned to western boxing and had great success there wasn't so much because of their "hands" (individual skills), but because of their fundamental spatial awareness, the priority of the relationship to the fear gap. Not needing to grab the side of the pool, the ability to tread water and engage for extended periods in space.

[LengLeng]

It always takes a while for me to get through your texts. There are many expressions used you leave undefined. And many references (although I speak German fluently 555) I'm not familiar with and I have to ask myself whether this is an English word I don't know or another reference I'm not familiar with(555×2). This text I read backwards and then uh the normal way (forward?).

And it was so worth the effort. I can somewhat grasp it, the space, the dramatic pause and how well the fighters can endure it and manage it. Maybe I'm interpreting what you wrote differently than how it was intended, but it reminds me of a yoga teacher I had some years back. Who would keep us in poses forever encouraging us to feel and fully embrace the discomfort and later in shavasana repeating how we now are comfortable, we feel pleasure ONLY because "there was discomfort before and without discomfort there can be no pleasure. Everything is two. They come together. Except yoga. Yoga is one" (imagine an Indian accent).

Obviously you can understand this intellectually, but feeling the contrast between discomfort and pleasure and resisting the urge to run away from the discomfort makes you understand it in a different way. 

And to me this how I can see great fighters (after having read this). Not only the unreal body control and fluidity. But who can endure and manage the uncertainty + extreme discomfort (=fear) caused by what you call the gap. 

Edited June 20, 2019 by LengLeng
Clarification

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

32 minutes ago, LengLeng said:

It always takes a while for me to get through your texts. There are many expressions used you leave undefined. And many references (although I speak German fluently 555) I'm not familiar with and I have to ask myself whether this is an English word I don't know or another reference I'm not familiar with(555×2).

I feel you! I have to write this way, otherwise I just would never write. Every thought stream would require a book. I do apologize though, it is in a way inconsiderate to the reader. It's my vast compromise, just so I can get the sketch out, in a way to propel another thought, or give a wispy gust of wind to another person's mental sail, if I can put it like that! Something to move everything along.

32 minutes ago, LengLeng said:

And it was so worth the effort.

I totally thank you for that effort!

32 minutes ago, LengLeng said:

Maybe I'm interpreting what you wrote differently than how it was intended, but it reminds me of a yoga teacher I had some years back. Who would keep us in poses forever encouraging us to feel and fully embrace the discomfort and later in shavasana repeating how we now are comfortable, we feel pleasure ONLY because "there was discomfort before and without discomfort there can be no pleasure. Everything is two. They come together. Except yoga. Yoga is one" (imagine an Indian accent).

That's a very interesting analogy! Some of my understanding on this comes from Sylvie's experiences in Vipassana Meditation, her first dive into it is here. What differed in the Vipassana approach was that tranquility or calmness of mind was not the goal of the practice. It was simply building the skills to perceive how everything the body does is a move away from suffering or discomfort. And this awareness seems to lead to a certain understanding that there is no end to suffering, or discomfort. Pleasures, like the one you describe as a contrast, are kinds of distractions from a fundamental "existence is suffering" realization. Sylvie in a similar vein described a realization she had when her arjan was really pounding the sak yant needle into her skin on one of the most painful stretches. She was really mentally breaking. She realized that if she just kept waiting for the needle to stop, she would break. She had to get to the place where she just accepted: This will never end. She is convinced that this was the arjan's lesson. He purposively was pushing her. So, my theories about the caesura, the fear gap, and the art of fighting being the relationship to that gap, that mental suffering, are really informed by Sylvie's report on Vipassana, and from her sak yant trail, the value of staying IN something, and not trying to get out. This is maybe a little different than the yoga teacher's lesson, but perhaps related.

32 minutes ago, LengLeng said:

Obviously you can understand this intellectually, but feeling the contrast between discomfort and pleasure and resisting the urge to run away from the discomfort makes you understand it in a different way. 

This is the beautiful thing about the art of fighting to me, and in this essay maybe what I hoped to reach for. German philosophers and poets may very well have wrestled with these concepts, but fighters live them. Even the beginner in a Muay Thai class, sparring for the first time, grasping for the tools that are supposed to save him or her, feeling the fear, is living them. Performing them. It's beautiful to see how mundane (earthbound) and how heavenly the ambition is.

32 minutes ago, LengLeng said:

But who can endure and manage the uncertainty + extreme discomfort (=fear) caused by what you call the gap.

Yes! Endure and manage the uncertainty, so well honed and said.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

50 minutes ago, LengLeng said:

Obviously you can understand this intellectually, but feeling the contrast between discomfort and pleasure and resisting the urge to run away from the discomfort makes you understand it in a different way. 

This is the extended passage from Sylvie's post on her sak yant, to which I referred above and was remembering. She says it better than I ever could. It influenced me in these thoughts on the gap. Re-reading it now it is interesting that she directly compares it to the kind of training Kru Nu does in terms of Muay Thai, the kind of stretching of a person required:

I was given the option to stop by Arjan when the tigers were complete, but I didn’t want to stop. So we kept going. And there’s something in the process of knowing that you just have to endure, that you can’t stop it, that is a very keen lesson for life, for Muay Thai, for existence in general. It’s hard because part of what makes pain tolerable is the knowledge that it will stop. A “this too shall pass,” kind of thing. But you’re sitting there with this pain that makes the whole body quake involuntarily and it’s not passing; there’s no end. So I breathe and try to just be in the moment, but the moment is filled with pain and so it’s becoming this eternity of pain and I can’t think or distract my mind until it ends, because I don’t know when it will end. I just have to breathe and accept it. My pain tolerance is considered high – but this was different, even compared to the Sangwan I received across my chest. Near the end, Arjan just kept adding and adding to the middle – the most painful parts. He was putting in the spells – that part is the magic, a syllable here, two syllables there. He would stop for a moment, wipe down the whole piece and there would be this fleeting feeling a kind of tender care of the damp cloth cleaning off the sting. I’d look into the reflection of the doors and see him pick up the marker; and he’d pick up the needle again… all I could do was shake my head and accept. I could not make it stop. It stops only when it’s finished.

I did cry, involuntarily. Only near the end, only for a few minutes, and Arjan “tsk-ed” me, quietly chiding me for losing control and would ask gently but firmly, “Sin-wee-uh, wai mai?” (“Can you endure?”) And I’d calm myself, breathe and carry on.  I know that for sak yant in general you cannot, or simply do not, stop even if someone is breaking down. The Arjan gives you the chance to recollect yourself but they don’t stop to do it. What’s amazing about Arjan Pi – and I’ve never been tattooed by another Arjan, so I don’t know if this is unique to him or not – is that he actually seems to go a bit harder when you betray your struggle. It’s like, “if you want to let your mind break down then it will be worse; get your shit together, that’s how you make it easier.” He doesn’t say that, of course, but that’s the way the pain teaches you… or directs you. My trainer at Petchrungruang, Pi Nu, does something similar. He’ll put more pressure on you when you start to struggle, to see where your breaking point is. He’s stretching limits – or giving you the opportunity to do so, really – and if you figure out how to relax and just keep answering then he’s happy and you’ve grown. If you break, if you give up, he’ll take into account whether it’s a bad day for you or whether your limits are just too rigid, if they’re “set,” so to speak. Pi Nu guides young boys to become Lumpinee fighters and champions this same tacit, “find the solution within yourself,” manner that Arjan Pi practices with the tattooing of yant.

And that’s what’s so transformative about this experience.  Have you heard folks talk about using psychedelics as a “shortcut,” to glimpse the shores and open the mind to islands of consciousness it may not have known, but then you have to do the hard work through meditation and living to get back to those shores for real… to actually touch them?  That’s what being tattooed by Ajarn Pi is like.  He’s a teacher and a guide. Pain is this river and it’s moving and you can kind of work around within its limits but you just have to let it carry you to wherever it’s going.  This last experience was the most intense ever.  I realized, very early on in the process, that most of the physical pain we experience in life is incredibly short – it’s very intense but temporally very short – a burn, banging your toe on a table, a cut, a fall, even a broken bone will fade into an ache after a pretty short time.  Most of us are lucky to not live with chronic pain.  So to sit here, voluntarily, and endure nearly 4 hours of constant pain is something unlike anything else.  You have to sit in it; you have to realize you’ve chosen this."

from Transformation and Belief: Receiving my Sak Yant Sua Ku and Takroh

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Here, to give a worthy example of differences in capacity to relate to the gap between fighters, Glory 59 Robin van Roosmalen vs Petchpanomrung. Just watch this fight looking at the gap, the space between fighters, and how each fighter deals with, relates to the space. You can see the "hold your breath and go" tactics of Roosmalen. To be fair to him, this is just the kind of fighting that Glory type rules encourage. With the absence of any kind of grappling there is no penalty for just rushing through the space with a combo. Nonetheless, Petchpanomrung is just living in a different vocabulary and awareness of the gap between them. This comes from the core of Muay Thai, and he can use that spatial knowledge despite primary weapons removed by the rules.

One might say, but Roosmalen is a stalking fighter, he's just pressing the space. Having watched the above fight (conditioned by the rules of Glory, and the nature of contemporary kickboxing) now watch the Ray Robinson vs Rocky Graziano World Middle Weight boxing championship. I know it's a different sport, but just watch this fight (below) only looking at the gap. And don't watch Robinson (who is an absolute artist and who some consider the greatest ever), watch Graziano, a stalking power-punching fighter. Watch his relationship to the gap. And compare it to the rudimentary fighting of Roosmalen. I'm speaking only of the relationship to the fighting space, using this as a (possible) fundamental vector of fight comparison.

 

We have in these two fights two illuminating illustrations. In the first you can compare two fighters to each other, the way they both navigate the shared fight space. And, between the two fights you can compare how two stalking power fighters (Roosmalen vs Graziano) each relate to the fighting space. Yes, they are very different sports...but I'm proposing a metaphysical judgement, something that crosses eras and rule sets. It's still an aesthetic judgement, but a judgement along a particular, argued-for criteria. Even if trying to be fair to Roosmalen, for the limits of his vocabulary and tactics, at the very least we could argue that kickboxing rules if nothing else produce this kind of fighting, this kind of relationship to the gap.

Prospectively: If my metaphysics are right, or at least productive, we should have a register by which to measure the value of differing combat sports and fighting arts, and also to compare and weigh eras, and fighters to each other.

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

18 hours ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

This is the interesting, vital thing. At its highest the fighter does not seek to extinguish the fear. This would negate the relation. She/He seeks to preserve it, and act it out in terms of courage itself, to create a continuity between fear, being dumbstruck, and action (finding words). And all the things we love about fighters, each and every style of fighting and be defined by the quality of that fighter's relationship to the gap, that space sitting between fighters. How much do they stand it in, how often? Can they persist in it? Do they avoid it? Do they rush through it? And, at a deeper, more poetic sense, how do they relate to the gap in terms of their own rhythm? What metrical expression do they use to work through that gap, gauge it, negotiate it? For me, when I watch fights now, I don't even watch strikes anymore. I mean, yes, I see them, but my eye is locked onto the gap between fighters. What is the relationship between each fighter and the gap? It's the glue, the Autarchy of The Relation, which puts all the elements together. If you read poetry, it's like discovering that there was a ruling meter all along, beneath the words.

This is that thing about how animals "chon" and fighters "su," that I saw in Thai a while back. The biting down on a mouthpiece, closing your eyes and just rushing in to deliver a clashing attack is, indeed, driving headlong into fear in some ways. It has its own merit. But it's not the same thing as interacting with the fear itself, like sitting in it and shaping it. Ducking into a wave versus surfing it.

I'm most interested in this achievement-as-stopping-point that you used Goggins to illustrate. This whole notion that you do something hard with the end of it in mind, where you get the seal of approval or the pin or whatever else that shows that you've "done" it, rather than that you can always keep doing it. That's what belts are like. That's what rankings are like. But then you have someone like Dieselnoi, who sneers at these fighters who become champion and then become lazy, no longer training hard because they've arrived, or whatever. His whole heart screams with this ferocity that, once you're champion, you've got to hold the throne and so you're training even harder, because those fuckers are coming for the king. That's a man who can sit with fear. The others are holding their breath and ducking through it.

So many people ask me if I still get nervous. I must be so desensitized after so many fights. But how can you be? Every fight is a fight. They don't stop being fights. They don't stop being challenges. The game hasn't changed so that now people aren't trying to beat me, hurt me, humiliate me. All that stays the same. All that is the scary part. So why would the nerves disappear? Watching these fighters in space, how they fill it up instead of dancing around it, that's the amazing part about letting fear be part of the process. Not a tool within the process that then has a expiration. Literally part of the process the way water is part of a river.

[LengLeng]

14 hours ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

I feel you! I have to write this way, otherwise I just would never write. Every thought stream would require a book. I do apologize though, it is in a way inconsiderate to the reader. It's my vast compromise, just so I can get the sketch out, in a way to propel another thought, or give a wispy gust of wind to another person's mental sail, if I can put it like that! Something to move everything along.

I totally thank you for that effort!

No worries I feel more educated than before :). 

14 hours ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

This is the extended passage from Sylvie's post on her sak yant, to which I referred above and was remembering. She says it better than I ever could. It influenced me in these thoughts on the gap. Re-reading it now it is interesting that she directly compares it to the kind of training Kru Nu does in terms of Muay Thai, the kind of stretching of a person required:

 

Thank you for this elaboration. I think I grasp the concept the way you do. I say grasp because i is more the feeling of having them on the tip of my tongue.

I remember this post very well. I am not sure to what degree Vipassana, yoga philosophy and art of sak yant overlap, but to me it all seem to stem from the same idea of accepting what is, instead of trying to escape from it. Surrender to the now. Most of my yoga teachers have emphasized the necessity of stop trying to escape from the present (the difficult, uncomfortable pose) and simply breathe into it and just accept what is. By pointing out how, when being told to stay in a difficult pose, our minds keep trying to convince us to think about other things or trying to calculate how long the teacher will hold us in that pose, we discover how we all try to escape from the now (what is). Adding the physical experience to the mental thought process is very effective for understanding. 

The same teacher I paraphrased also once told me that the most skilled martial artists are not the ones who can endure the pain, but the ones who choose not to absorb it. Sort of pain is inevitable, suffering is voluntary kind of thought. 

 

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

58 minutes ago, LengLeng said:

By pointing out how, when being told to stay in a difficult pose, our minds keep trying to convince us to think about other things or trying to calculate how long the teacher will hold us in that pose, we discover how we all try to escape from the now (what is).

It kind of amazes me that I wasn't heading in this direction, but ended up there with the example of Pi Nu's training of Muay Thai. There is very little "correction". A touch, just to tap you toward where you should be, but a lot of it is just stretching you. His padwork is legendary. He mostly just finds your limit - where you are generally, but also that day - and pushes it. He's looking for equanimity in the face of failure. It's almost as if its the only thing he is looking for. Standing in the fire. This doesn't produce a good or great fighter in a short period of time, but I can see how it connects up with this larger picture of relating to the pain, the fear, the gap. It's a kind of gap training. In other gyms, perhaps in the west, you might be beat on until you "toughen up", but this is a different sort of thing it feels like. It's almost just teaching you to be a salamander who chooses to stand in the fire, because the fire is its element. Not in a tough sort of way, but in an aesthetic, almost spiritual sort of way. What is compelling is that in Muay Thai (and other forms of fighting, but perhaps uniquely in Muay Thai due to it's history and cultural core) we have an artform that expresses this very human, metaphysical venture, in terms of tempo, rhythm, space and violence. The relationship to the gap is right there in front of us to be witnessed and experienced, and even relived (in video). It is an artform, perhaps of the highest form because it enacts and aestheticizes this primordial metaphysics.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Becoming the Center of All Relations - The Metaphysical Project

The poetics Benjamin was investigating proposes that the poet (and for us, the fighter who does his art in a much more concrete, and perhaps universal fashion), in submitting to his fear, courageously, unifies seemingly oppositions. As such Benjamin suggests that he becomes "the center of all relations". He lives in the caesura, which signifies the gap between the human and the divine, the disjunction which characterizes human existence. This is really the apogee of the argument for the possible elevation of the fighting form, and perhaps Muay Thai in particular, as THE artform. For some aid in fleshing out this position here are fragments from a secondary source essay summarizing Benjamin's position:

 

 

And then:

 

Ultimately, questions like these bend to questions to the value of the Heroic. I think we can imagine that the value of fighting and the fighting arts, other than just utility value, lies within their heroic qualities, or project, and in that heroic project, as many traditional martial arts assert, a self-cultivation. Watching fights, appreciating great fighters connects up to these much higher aiming values. We don't realize it when watching fights - and one of the most beautiful things about the fighting arts/sports is how they transcend class, the art speaks to all socioeconomic classes, something few do - but unconsciously we are swept up into something that potentially has a very high, really metaphysical aim. To come heroically in touch with the untouchable. The fear gap, the caesura. Benjamin's Center of All Relations, the Autarchy of the Relation, is really the acme of where this argument leads us.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

The Natural Bridge Between the Poet and the Fighter

It should be noted, while it may seem extreme to try and bridge German Philosophy, and arguments about the highest art, with real fights happening in real rings, in commerce-fraught promotions broadcast to passionate fans, but the poetic and the warrior have long been meshed. The Homeric song that sung the war, Greek Tragedians contemplating the fate and character of warrior/heroes, even Pindar (who Holderlin and much of his generation studied) glorifying winners in the original Olympiads, the first western "sports stars". There is a great arc between the rare world of the poet who seeks to immortalize the hero, the warrior, and the warrior who wishes to be sung about. And this arc, I believe, is outlining some of the more profound projects of human endeavor. There is a thread that is sewn across these centuries, and these seemingly divergent realities. It's what fighting means. What I am suggesting is that in attentiveness to the fighting space, the gap, as a plasticity, we gain access to the very register of the aesthetic/spiritual endeavor.

Examples from Antiquity

Satyrus, boxer from the 4th century BC

boxing of antiquity

Pindar, who some see as the greatest poet ever, celebrating the most famous boxer of his day, Diagoras, a huge fighter noted for his non-evasive fighting, and erect style:

"...But do thou, O Father Zeus, who holds sway on the mountain ridges of Atabyrios, glorify the accustomed Olympian winner’s hymn, and the man who hath done valiantly with his fists: give him honor at the hands of citizens and of strangers; for he walks on the straight way that abhors arrogance..."

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

And in the Eastern Tradition we have the unity of the artist and the warrior in the concept of Budo, and the related pair of the Sword and the Brush. The metaphysical claim that the brush is the sword of the mind. Here is Musashi's  (d. 1645) calligraphy of "Fighting Spirit" along with a short poem "Cold currents envelop the moon/Clear as a mirror"

Critical observation on the calligraphic style of the great Japanese swordsman (author of the Book of Five Rings),

"Several things strike you about this calligraphy, especially when you try to duplicate it with a brush. The two characters are written in virtually one continuous stroke, and yet the strength of the line is continuous and rhythmical. This is only possible by the concentration of deep engagement and continuous exhalation.

The strokes are bold and continuous, but a balance of thick and thin strokes reveals an exceptional sense of rhythm and agility, a mind that can find it’s way in and out of trouble. The strokes are tightly laced, giving you a feeling for what Musashi calls nebari, a pasty persistence that sticks to the core and does not let go." - source

Here as well, it is about how one passes through the fighting space, or in this case, how the brush passes through the empty white, which for Holderlin is the poet's horror.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

4 hours ago, LengLeng said:

I am not sure to what degree Vipassana, yoga philosophy and art of sak yant overlap, but to me it all seem to stem from the same idea of accepting what is, instead of trying to escape from it. Surrender to the now. Most of my yoga teachers have emphasized the necessity of stop trying to escape from the present (the difficult, uncomfortable pose) and simply breathe into it and just accept what is. By pointing out how, when being told to stay in a difficult pose, our minds keep trying to convince us to think about other things or trying to calculate how long the teacher will hold us in that pose, we discover how we all try to escape from the now (what is). Adding the physical experience to the mental thought process is very effective for understanding.

Yes, I didn't mean to suggest, or maybe emphasize how Vipassana and your yoga instructor are giving different lessons. I may have accidentally done that. I think it's what you say, that all of these endeavors are about "staying in" as a mode of growing awareness, and betterment. First there is just plain old forcing yourself to stay in it, whatever it is. But the gradual challenge is learning to relax in the very thing that is triggering all your alarm bells --- "Get out!" That the really interesting thing about talking about certain kinds of fighting as possibly very high artforms. You have aspects of traditional martial arts which strike one as kinds of meditations, or disciplines modeled on fighting. In many of them there is no fighting, or they did not develop in the modern era through fights. So, you have a kind of poetry of fighting in some of these arts. Others of them did develop through sport fighting, but often under odd-rules, maybe distortive rules (like point fighting, etc).  Then, on the other hand, as you suggest there are things like meditative practices, or something of a more meditative physical discipline like yoga. These are reaching for states, qualities of mind (and body), but we do not thing of them as arts. There is no performance, no presentation, so in a strange way they are unshared, at least in the artistic sense. You would not watch yogi confront the emptiness of the world, just sitting there. I mean, one might, but that isn't really the path. Then on the other hand you have combat sports, which largely are seen as just two people trying to hurt each other, end each other, if you talk lowest common denominator, supposedly quite far from these otherwordly, or transformative practices. But what is most interesting to me is that the fighting arts, at least in those that have evolved over decades and decades of countless real fights (boxing and Muay Thai come to mind as maybe the best examples of grassroots development), you have an art which speaks to all the things the Shotokan Karate Master is invoking in his transmission of katas, or the 17th century swordsman displayed in duel, or a yogi on the mountain seeks, or how yoga teachers guide students forward. And this is achieved, or really manifested in the fighting space, and how the fighter relates to that empty zone which is full of fear. And what is amazing is that this battle with the empty zone, the trained, rhythmed, improvised, prodded, wading glide in, is put on display. What others in other practices are doing internally, is made real (visible), so that it can be shared, and spread, with minds taking it in at whatever level they wish. I think all these practices, and maybe really so many more, are of a single thing. What is notable about the fighter is that they are working in "fear". That is the canvas they are working on. And it's sitting right there in front of them, for all of us to see. And...very few people look at it (the caesura), intentionally.

There's a beautiful short story written by Kafka called A Hunger Artist, a many in a traveling show who sits in a cage and basically just starves himself to death...well, not death, but for Kafka, into invisibility and disappearance. It's been many years since I read this, but it invokes Kafka's immense self-hate, and symbolizes all the ways that he deprives himself, isolates himself, so much so that it becomes a kind of artform. He definitely is also calling to mind the ascetic, who rarifies himself into an almost spiritual state. Kafka is really talking about himself as a writer. There is just a tremendous end to this story ---- and if anyone is going to read it, it's linked above, spoiler below ----

 

He suffers kind of culmination of his invisibility, his growing thinness, he expires in his feebleness...because he is forgotten, he lost the attention of audience, if I recall. And then with a suddenness a panther is placed in this same cage. This just struck me like a hammer when I first read it so many years ago:

" “All right, tidy this up now,” said the supervisor. And they buried the hunger artist along with the straw. But in his cage they put a young panther. Even for a person with the dullest mind it was clearly refreshing to see this wild animal throwing itself around in this cage, which had been dreary for such a long time. It lacked nothing. Without thinking about it for any length of time, the guards brought the animal food. It enjoyed the taste and never seemed to miss its freedom. This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to the point of bursting, also appeared to carry freedom around with it. That seem to be located somewhere or other in its teeth, and its joy in living came with such strong passion from its throat that it was not easy for spectators to keep watching. But they controlled themselves, kept pressing around the cage, and had no desire to move on. "

This is what is so beautiful about the fighter, and the fighter's art. In relating to the void, the caesura between them and their fear, in going through endless training of absolute rigor, and being broken again and again, in doing all the things that I've described above in the first post, they are somewhat like the Hunger Artist. They are painfully submitting to the fear, and becoming relaxed in it. But, transformatively, they are also doing this as the Panther. They are, potentially and apogetically both the yogi (transcending common fear, bounded fear) and the panther, fully embracing their animality and vitality, as someone connected powerfully to the earth and the full stream of being that they are a part of. It is the starved and the feasting, together. 

[threeoaks]

On 6/20/2019 at 6:08 AM, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

I've stumbled on a giant idea, in fact an idea so large it touches on nearly every aspect of life, and every aspect of what make Muay Thai like no other fighting form in the world. It's also an idea that is so large writing about it proves daunting, an in fact unimaginable, as so much of it is full of the tangential (consequences), and explanation. Just taking it on feels like selecting a single hair at the end of a tiger's tail, and giving it a quiet pluck. But here's to just diving in...

The Paradox of Courage - How the Poet Saves the World

There is a fundamental, seemingly logically paradoxical contradiction to bravery or courage. Without fear, there is no courage. The courageous person is not someone who feels no fear. In fact fear itself can be argued to be essential to courage. Much as someone who has lost the ability to feel pain, and so might move physically and emotionally in seeming defiance of pain, a person who has no fear might appear courageous, but what we cherish about courage is very different. It's the very ability to feel it, and then overcome it in someway. The value lies in contradictions being able to persist together. This contradiction will form the essence of the heroic, in a certain line of Philosophical thinking.

Walter Benjamin, a German social critic and philosopher was living through the tidal rise of World War I. He was a young man and two of his friends had committed suicide over the impending catastrophe that was about to rip European culture to shreds and end any semblance of the Old World. He was struggling with the role of the poet, what could a poet matter in the face of this terrible World conflict that was going to tear at the fabric of reality? What did the deaths of his friends even mean? He took on the examination of a poem by the German poet Holderlin, which itself was an examination of poetic courage. In fact that poem existed in several versions, one of which was titled "Courage", the other "Stupidity" (or "Timidity"). It's hard for us to imagine poets and courage placed together in the same thought construct, except in maybe the most metaphorical way. Can a poet be "brave" choosing words as men are being brave (like, really brave) in trenches while everyone around them is being cut down? But bear with him, and me, because this is about studying the nature of an art, and its importance to us. We love and value an art because it reveals things to us, important things, and it sets our course. The soldier in the trench is brave, in part, because we have stories, indeed some very artful, poetic stories that last for epochs, of bravery.

Walter Benjamin took hold of what was a fundamental logical puzzle of Holderlin's version of the poem. Why did Holderlin go from "Courage" to "Stupidity" or "Timidity" (what is the meaning of this change?). What Benjamin locked onto, and of course there is debate over his interpretation because people like to debate, what he locked onto was that fundamental binary of what courage is. That one is courageous in spite of, but in a sense dependent on FEAR. And, correlate to all of that, the more fear you felt, the more courageous you could be.

Note: for instance, a fighter who just walks forward, numb, feeling nothing, not even perceiving danger, as if that part of her or his brain is turned off, is not admirable. Is uninteresting. Such an imagined fighter is only interesting to the degree that we project our own fears, what we would feel if we stood there, if we create the contrast.

The poet, he argued, in his most heroic (and this is a very male world, Germanic heroism) is the one what looks straight into the divine, straight into the beauty of the world, with no filter on, and is completely dumbstruck. He is immediately aware that no word he utters is of any value, cannot communicate that terrible, awful, tremendously beautiful thing that he sees, his only response is pure gibberish, imbecility, nonsense. That is the extreme condition out of which the poet's courage take seed. That is the reason Holderlin changed the title of his poem in the last version from "Courage" to "Stupidity". It's supidification.

Once stupidified, the poet then courageously seeks to speak. At first he is merely babbling. He is like a baby, but he wades in, and seeks to hold onto the thing that terrifies him. He does not try to dismiss it, or nullify it. He wants to keep it, and bring it forward. He struggles with that terror, and seeks to articulate it. He wants to bridge the world of terrible beauty (the unspeakable, divine) and the articulate.

Above is an essay fragment describing the way that Benjamin proposes that the poet saves the world through his submission to fear itself as a fundamental relation, embodying all the fears we have of the bounded world.

Now, this might sound like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to you. Abstract words describing Germanic Philosophy far removed from the concrete things that matter. But let me suggest to you that what it is talking about is perhaps the most concrete thing in the world. Fear. When I say it is concrete, I do not mean its a "thing". It's concrete in that it is a fundamental relation. Every organism that has ever existed is built on a single grammatical plan. Attraction vs Aversion. Philosophy likes to talk about all kinds of binaries, it plays games with concepts left and right, but when you dig right down to the root of binaries you are entering the absolute fundamentals of not only human experience, but all of experience. Fear, aversion, trepidation forms the very weft our what we are. You cannot get below this fundamental pole in the binary. There is nothing more fundamental. So when Benjamin is waxing poetic about the poet and his relationship to fear, this is not just the imagination of Greeks lounging near white statues eating grapes. He is talking about the Ur-logic of all of life. And he is talking about the death of his friends, as the horrible figure of World War is about to rip through all life and culture. In the figure of the poet he is outlining the beauty of the fighter. He gives us the key to understanding why we love fighters so much - for those of us who do - and what separates out fighters from each other. What is it about fighting that invokes so much that is important?

Autarchy of the Relation - What Sets Fighters Apart

The Greek suffix -archy we know in words like plutarchy, patriarchy, matriarchy. It means something like "rule by". But in Greek it goes much deeper than that. Something that is ruled is really genetically founded by, in something. It goes like a mighty oak with roots that sink deep within a soil where we cannot see. Benjamin proposed phrase to describe the irreducible nature of the Poet's Heroism (and for us, the Fighter's Heroism). The Autarchy of the Relation. The thick girded oak is self-founded, self-ruled (auto+rule) out of the relationship itself. It is not founded on fear, nor on courage, but out of the relationship between the two of them. We talk a lot about overcoming fear, and sometimes imagine that fear is something that we fundamentally need to be done with. You finish it off, and them move onto the next thing (ideally), and when you struggle with fear you are somehow failing in some way. But Benjamin, in his figure of the poetic, is saying no: you bring the relationship with you. The heroic consists of the relationship itself. There is no maturing past fear. There is no growing out of fear. If you have lost touch with fear you have lost touch of the relationship. It would be like a poet who writes and is no longer terrified of Beauty.

Anyone who has sparred understands this immediately. These abstract words and concepts suddenly boil down to real things. The fundamental core act of sparring is really an emotional one. Sylvie writes about this in a forum post here, if you want to take a tangent:

What I want to call attention to is how even the absolute beginner in training, when she or he stands in front of someone who can possibly hurt them, or shame them, is standing right on the precipice of greatest heroic, chasm-facing dimensions of all the world. This is the same precipice that every organism that has ever beat has lived. This is the Autarchy of the Relation. Fear, and how to speak when you are dumbstruck. As fighters many learn fixed patterns of how to "speak" in sparring, and then in fighting. These are formulaic vehicles designed to take you forward when you feel fear. When you feel aversion. And trusting in these, using them to cross the divide, is much appreciated. But...using vehicles to crossover is missing what is really happening in fighting when it comes to its highest art. At its highest art, what is principal is the Relation itself. It is the presence of fear, and the willingness to submit to it, fully.

The Ceasura - Poetry's Gift to Understanding Fighting

Much of what we do, in fact maybe almost all of what we do, is to try and get fear (and its sister, pain) to stop. We move away from things that threaten to hurt, either physically or psychologically. Or, if we are really brave, we rush through the dangerous zone to the other side. We have all kinds of irrational "fears" (fears that we imagine if we looked at them soberly, would vanish) and if we can just get through the immediate "Stop!" we are told everything will be ok. We jump in the cold water, swim across the brook, and are refreshed on the other side. This is something that is different than the Autarchy of the Relation. At its highest art you do not rush through the fear-zone, only to find the happy ending on the other side. The happy ending is just one more version of the avoidance of fear. What you are afraid of will simply disappear. At the highest form of fighting, it does not disappear. It is preserved. It is held in a sacred binary. 

Note: This perhaps speaks to the western preoccupation with the knockout, and the deep dissatisfaction it has with Thai style Muay Thai which often shuns the knockout. The knockout for the west is the relief, the cessation of the fear. It's all over, nothing to fear anymore! The monster is dead. It's nothing more than the parallel of having run away so well you never have to see it again. Muay Thai in Thailand has developed a much keener sense of the preservation of the Relation, holding fear and courage together. You are not, principally, trying to END the fight, as in, end the fear, the aversion. You are standing in it, graced.

Readers of David Goggins will be familiar with this. Goggins an an ultra athlete who uses his extreme training to confront and overcome his own weaknesses and fear. Not to move too far from the topic here is the Rogan interview if you don't know him:

One of the most compelling things that Goggins preaches is how much he chaffs at people who work out, work hard, expose themselves to the extreme in order to be done with it. He felt he ran into this when training to be a Navy Seal. He felt many of the men were "tough guys" who walked around with the badge of their official mark, having gotten to the other side. Goggin's motto was "always back to square one". For him he was always returning to exactly how he felt when he lifted his first weight, ran his first mile. This is the very same horror that Benjamin through Holderlin was talking about. Just because you run ultras doesn't mean that when you wake up at 5 am to run you don't feel horror. In fact, for Goggins, you put those shoes on in order to feel horror. That's the Autarchy of the Relation, remaining in touch with the core binary of fear and courage.

Now, let me take a further detour into the poetic to explain one of the most beautiful things about fighting, and give key into how to watch and appreciate fights. The caesura. The caesura is a gap, a break in a metrically line of poetry. It's used in various ways across human history, but it always has the impact of placing an empty spot, a null value, within a larger economy of expression. Here are famous uses of caesura from the history of literature (from wikipedia):

The opening line of the Iliad:

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ || Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

("Sing, o goddess || the rage of Achilles, the son of Peleus.")

 

 

Opening line of Virgil's Aeneid:

Arma virumque cano || Troiae qui primus ab oris

(Of arms and the man, I sing. || Who first from the shores of Troy...)

 

The opening line of Beowulf reads:

Hwæt! We Gardena || in gear-dagum,

þeodcyninga, || þrym gefrunon,

hu ða æþelingas || ellen fremedon.

(Behold! The Spear-Danes in days gone by,)

(and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness,)

(We have heard of these princes' heroic campaigns.)

There is great nuance to how caesura are used, but for us its enough to just appreciate how it is always a gap, always a silence, a breath. Holderlin argued that this gap, this break - not only in lines, but in dramatic structures - had the potential to signify the fundamental relationship between fear and courage itself. Benjamin's Autarchy of The Relation is signified by the caesura. It's the moment when in the film-strip of representations (frames which each "show" some event), there comes a frame which shows representation itself, which is just a weird, fancy way of saying "I'm speechless", or "representation isn't sufficient". Pictures won't do. This is the dumbness of the poet before the beauty and tragedy of the world. It's a single piece of emptiness in the presentation.

Now this is where it gets really fascinating. And how we come down off of those ivory towers of the poetic and narrotology, and into the nitty-gritty of the things that motherfucking matter to all of us in this world. The caesura, the gap, is the gap that exists between fighters. It's the space that sits there and is unresolved. It's the bubble that is invisible that generates the entire theatre of conflict. It's what generates the heroic and the poetic, and its what makes fighting, when it is at its highest, one of the great art forms of the world. We are dealing with the very fabric and Ur-source of all relations, of every single thing you and I do in the world. Every word we say, every gesture we make.

When I say that that space between fighters is the caesura, I'm not being metaphorical, at least to the degree that they perform the same thing. They invoke and instantiate the Autarchy of the Relation. The reason for this is that each fighter feels fear in relationship to this gap, this space. We think of a fighter maybe fearing another fighter, but fundamentally they are fearing the space itself. As organisms our virtuality, the way that we experience space, project ourselves into the material world, represent and orient ourselves is through both fear and spatial compassry. We are negotiating the caesura in front of us in all things. And in the art (and sport) of fighting this is not only literalized (the performance involves a real space) it is performed by agents, by actors, onto which we can graft ourselves. We are projected into the space and relation through the spectacle.

This is the interesting, vital thing. At its highest the fighter does not seek to extinguish the fear. This would negate the relation. She/He seeks to preserve it, and act it out in terms of courage itself, to create a continuity between fear, being dumbstruck, and action (finding words). And all the things we love about fighters, each and every style of fighting and be defined by the quality of that fighter's relationship to the gap, that space sitting between fighters. How much do they stand it in, how often? Can they persist in it? Do they avoid it? Do they rush through it? And, at a deeper, more poetic sense, how do they relate to the gap in terms of their own rhythm? What metrical expression do they use to work through that gap, gauge it, negotiate it? For me, when I watch fights now, I don't even watch strikes anymore. I mean, yes, I see them, but my eye is locked onto the gap between fighters. What is the relationship between each fighter and the gap? It's the glue, the Autarchy of The Relation, which puts all the elements together. If you read poetry, it's like discovering that there was a ruling meter all along, beneath the words.

Watching the Gap - Why Muay Thai Is Special

Watch this fight between two young Thai fighters providing an example of what I'm referring to, the sense of fight space.

watch the fight here - or if that link doesn't work, try this one (mobile)

I'm presenting two fights that just fell into my feed, almost by accident, together. It's not that they are individually primary examples, but they do work to illustrate fundamental differences between the Thailand of Muay Thai and the Muay Thai (and kickboxing, and MMA, etc) of the rest of the world. If you would take 10 minutes and just watch the fight above, but in so doing, mostly just watch the gap between the fighters. Yes, the variety of strikes, the changes in tempo are beautiful, but watch the entire fight looking at the gap, the caesura. This is the fear-gap buried at the heart of all fighting arts and sport.

Now watch this fight below, from ONE Championship, a version of Muay Thai that is maybe closer to kickboxing in its encouraged fighting styles (fast clinch breaks, etc) as it seeks to popularize Muay Thai to an international audience. It features a popular western fighter in Liam Harrison, and an older Thai in Rodlek. Almost all the talk about this fight was about the strikes. But watch the extremely simplified gap-relationship, when compared to even the children fighting above. The very vocabulary of relations to the gap in this second fight consists of Harrisons' safe leg-kicks (his specialty), and his kind of hold-your-breath-and-go memorized combinations through the zone (a very common western style of fighting). Rodlek on the other hand also takes a very simplified approach to the gap, he's just gradually shrinking that gap, in a kind of slow motion vice-grip, making Harrison more and more uncomfortable. It's nothing complex, Rodlek though is in positive relation with the gap. More comfortable in it, and working through the gap, almost using it as a weapon. 

Debates occurred as to how much "damage" Harrison did with his leg kicks, or how tough Rodlek is. But what I want you to see is far beyond this fight. Look at the differences in vocabulary between these two fights. Look at the intense variety of spatial relationships, and attempts to control, work through, live through the gap in the Thai fight, and the very simplistic march down of the One fight. These are not the same sport, not the same art.

As a commercial product you can certainly see the imperative of the 2nd fighting style. It can appeal across cultures, enter into different markets. It encourages viral like fight edits that can frictionlessly slip through social media platforms. It is segmentable. Reproducible. It also grafts more easily onto the immense popularity (and visual structure of) MMA. (Think about the gap, the caesura in MMA.) But, what I'm calling attention to is that the deeper, more profound vocabulary of fear and its sister courage as found in traditional Muay Thai in Thailand, and reaching for an explanation as to why Muay Thai might be the greatest artform in the world. What is incredibly special about Thailand's Muay Thai is how it has created a value, an aesthetic of performance that maintains the Autarchy of The Relation. It has created a poetry of staying in the spaces of fear, and relating to them. And in that aesthetic and those skills it accedes to the highest endeavor of humanity, reaching up to and beyond the poetics of German Philosophy, and Ancient Greek culture itself (considered a root of all the things we think and believe as westerners). And, it presents it all, without dilution, for the common man to see, to witness. Yes, it does require some education of eyes to see, you have to learn to look at the gap between fighters, and not their strikes - I am reminded of the admonition: The music, not the words.

Now look at this Golden Age fight, all time legends of the Golden Age. You can pick 100s of fights from this era, but just watch this fight looking at the gap. Karuhat takes a big lead counting Kaensak who is one of the all time greats, 2x fighter of the year. Kaensak happened to be using the low kick as an early primary weapon. Much of this fight is Karuhat defending his lead. Just look at how buttery he is in the gap. On the edge of it, in it. It's like a force field, a bubble, as Kaensak fights his way through it trying to come from behind. Kaensak was a ferocious kicker and puncher. 

 

There is some concern that the poetics of Thailand's Muay Thai are being lost, a real concern. But one can see much of what Karuhat does in the fight between the young fighters above. You can feel the same relationship to the gap, the caesura, so we have not lost the thread. What I want to call attention to is not what is better fighting than some other form of fighting, but rather to the buried meaning in fighting itself, and the secret way that is expressing something so close to our soul, all our hearts, and the urge that we must hold onto this. Fighting, at the highest, vocabulary-rich manifestation is putting into reality the things that poetry and the plastic arts, what many consider upper reaches of cultural achievement, and fashioning them out of the raw sinews, nerves and spirit of human beings. Fighters are artists of themselves, and in that way are the mid-point between the dumbstruck and the brave, what we all aspire to be. The fighter takes up in her or his real hands the substance of the thing that the painter lifts when she or he lifts the brush, the composure does when striking piano keys, in a way that transcends or at least bridges class, and radicalizes art itself, touching the chords of what makes us what we hope to be.

 

I only read a short form version of this.  You alluded to your love of the space between fighters, or distance, as the negative space and ne plus ultra of fighting.  Its good to read your ideas more developed (elegantly developed) here.  I am going to have to study this for a bit.

[threeoaks]

On 6/20/2019 at 6:59 AM, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

Corollary 1: This argument also provides a framework for understanding why any striking art (entertainment form, sport) that does not include grappling is at deficit. The reason for this is that if there is no grappling amid striking it encourages hold-your-breath-ism, which means when faced with the gap, the fear, you can just grit your teeth and throw your combo. Get to the other side of the gap and be "safe". You see this all the time in various kickboxing timeouts and ref breaks. The relationship to the gap is just two people holding their breath and jumping over it, to "safe" (the cessation of fear). This is related to aggressive attacks that Jack Slack humorously has called "Karate, karate, karate!".

 

I definitely get this distinction and agree regarding combat sports with no grappling.  I cannot resist defending karate against this though, as I think the gap in this case is a very different one involving time in a completely different manner.  Its so freaking fast and you fight from so far outside that you enter fight space lightning fast and exit it as well.  I think your ideas can be worked out here at least in some kinds of karate though of course i get why everyone loves to put karate down.  The gap is not spatial, its about being out of time, risking a complete departure from conscious time.  What I love and prefer about Muay Thai though is its seeming slowness in comparison, the relaxation into shuffling, the illusion of stillness.  

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

11 minutes ago, threeoaks said:

Its so freaking fast and you fight from so far outside that you enter fight space lightning fast and exit it as well.  I think your ideas can be worked out here at least in some kinds of karate though of course i get why everyone loves to put karate down

It's definitely an artform, as are all fighting sports. The problem with Karate (at least point fighting Karate) is that without blows to the head you are changing the intensity of the gap, the fear-space. Part of what elevates fighting is that fighting triggers some of our most primal, defensive reactions and instincts. Protecting the head when moving through the space, the centering of the perceptive self in the head is a large part of what gives charge to the negative space. When this charge is lowered, or alleviated in someway, the heroic quality, the poetic value falls, just as a mater of course. Of course there are things that happen in that space which are full of fear. You can still be hurt, and still be humiliated. But, with the head off limits it is just a very different thing, making it hard to compare to fighting sports/arts where the head is at risk.

[threeoaks]

3 minutes ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

But, with the head off limits it is just a very different thing, making it hard to compare to fighting sports/arts were they head is at risk.

Head's not off limits in Tang soo do.  Head kicks all day.  But I understand what you mean about giving charge to the space, the risk level.  There is no question that MT is a more martial martial art.  My new friend the Army Ranger agrees.  

[Jeremy Stewart]

55 minutes ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

relating to the void, the caesura between them and their fear, in going through endless training of absolute rigor, and being broken again and again, in doing all the things that I've described above in the first post, they are somewhat like the Hunger Artist

If I'm correct in my understanding of what you wrote, with your usage of caesura and it's implications to the context. The Japanese concept of kokoro seems similar. Not the literal meaning as to kokoro but the concept of, which is really hard to explain in English, as we tend to deal with absolutes.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

2 minutes ago, threeoaks said:

Head's not off limits in Tang soo do.  Head kicks all day.

I don't follow Karate, but I assume you cannot punch the head with the fists. This is huge change in spatial and fear dynamics. If you can't strike me in the head with your hand (or even elbows) as I move through the fighting space, this is a vast difference in how I will move through that zone. 

[threeoaks]

6 minutes ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

I don't follow Karate, but I assume you cannot punch the head with the fists. This is huge change in spatial and fear dynamics.

Back fists to the head allowed., usually the side of the head, no face-punching  Kicks are fucking scary though, and of course they are longer.  I think part of the problem here is you are primarily talking about tae kwon do because of that book (which is on my shelf).  I hear no end of shit-talking about tae kwon do at the tang soo do gym, perhaps for some of the same reasons   But I get your distinction.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

4 minutes ago, Jeremy Stewart said:

The Japanese concept of kokoro seems similar.

wow, interesting. Do you have any kind of links to where I can look through that word? I did a quick Google and wasn't sure if I was finding the right stuff. I'd love to follow that path a bit.

[threeoaks]

12 minutes ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

I don't follow Karate, but I assume you cannot punch the head with the fists. This is huge change in spatial and fear dynamics. If you can't strike me in the head with your hand (or even elbows) as I move through the fighting space, this is a vast difference in how I will move through that zone. 

The difference in space is interesting.  You can travel on one leg before throwing the kick in TSD, which makes distance play a very live & central part of the form.  We are both editing as we go.  I am going back to read your clarifications.  But I am also going to drop this line of thought in favor of returning to your more central points.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

3 minutes ago, threeoaks said:

The difference in space is interesting.  You can travel on one leg before throwing the kick in TSD, which makes distance play a very live & central part of the form. 

It think for me almost all rule-cushions that cordon off the space and give "safe zones" all work to reduce what I am now calling the "heroic value" of fighting, which is to say, the metaphysical component of working on the substance of fear. All these fighting practices, as they have moved away from fear-fabric, certainly are admirable, but they lack the great substance which I feel has given fighting its value in culture throughout the ages. That isn't to say that they lack value, but they lack that particular value, at least by degree. I have the same feeling with IFMA Muay Thai, or Kickboxing (with its rule cushions). In a sense it's a little like watching a high-wire act, and a low-wire act, for me. Or, that the degree-of-difficulty, the degree of calm, required and performed is just at a different threshold. I know this will sound like I'm putting certain fight forms down, but I choose not really to look at and criticize those things I find to be lessor, rather than, it's more that I'm trying to celebrate the thing, the quality, I find greater.

Part of the reason I am enamored with the notion of the fear-gap is that I think it can tap into so much of how we experience ourselves in the world, both physically and emotionally. So trials by fear-gap, for instance in full contact fighting, make very interesting acme case-studies.

[threeoaks]

10 minutes ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

 I have the same feeling with IFMA Muay Thai

Can you please describe some of the rule changes?  I know for example in the US back of the head hits are often called as fouls, but they really are not.  Or I think so anyway.  LIke to know more and again, once I return from training, I look forward to re-reading your more central arguments.