Scott Sonnon shares how to take pain and create compassion.
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I have been a fighter, whether I’ve wanted it or not, all my life. I take no joy in it; in fact, I dread both facing violence, and the degree to which I must counter it with my own. With very few, trusted companions, do I actually enjoy its practice, because most people have a much different focus than myself, as you will read. Most people don’t even know how to “roll” – and think it’s a fight, rather than an exploration of greater potential.
I’m not guiltless. I’ve hurt people. A lot of them. What I could do to another person causes me to lament the prospect. Being in more and more altercations over the years, I haven’t grown desensitized to it; if anything, I’ve grown MORE sensitive to the tragic consequences of any physical violence. Someone always gets hurt, and usually everyone involved does; many with long term consequences; a tragic few… with finality.
Considering the above, most people don’t understand why I have competed in so many styles of martial art. I have competed because they’ve allowed me to develop physical governors for my actions: they’ve given me greater granularity of control, more precise proportionality
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Last weekend, I told someone that my teacher taught me this, but that’s not entirely accurate. My LIFE has taught me this, but my teacher has brought that to a conscious level of daily practice. She’s my Guru: a term I usually hide from others, because being a disciple of a guru isn’t easily digested in the West. So when people ask me about her, I instead explain that she’s my “compassion coach.” This makes some of the men with whom I have the honor of working subconsciously flinch a bit, but I fully understand that initial reaction… as I too have held suspect the utility of compassion when facing violence… until its truth was incontrovertibl
Compassion isn’t weak. It’s gentle. Gentleness isn’t impotent; quite the opposite. The compassion to increase one’s skill to the point where you can CHOOSE to be gentle, especially in the face of violence, is perhaps our only true strength…
“Love all. Serve all. Trust none but God,” my teacher said last weekend in Seattle. Appointed as lead for her security detail (with a team of incredible people), I captured what moments I could off-duty to let my external awareness ebb, and reflect upon her teachings. My team was on the floor, my teacher had begun speaking, and everyone was captivated by her gentle words and compassionate energy.
Suddenly, a distraught woman charged the stage. Before I rounded the corner, she had already ascended the stairs. My team rushed to make their way forward, but she had already begun screaming violently and thrashing about, hitting people on stage. In a few steps, I was up the stairs behind her.
Distracted by my team in front of her, screaming at them to not touch her, I moved all of the audio/visual equipment from behind her, knowing that when she struggled against me extracting her from the stage, the equipment would become a minefield, and she’d be injured when she fell.
Smiling and unphased, my teacher told the woman to sit down next to her. The audience of over two thousand held their collective breath at the sight. The woman acquiesced, but then angrily shoved aside one of the translators, and threw her body across my teacher. She wheeled around toward me, and began kicking anyone within reach. I put my body between them and myself, letting her kicks glance off me instead.
We are all emotionally drowning at any point in the day – whether from missing a meal, misunderstandin
My teacher told me to let the woman stay, but I stepped to the side, carefully scooped the woman under her back and knees, and lifted her like a parent would carry a baby. She flailed and kicked as I carried her off the stage, screaming for my teacher, punching me in the face, and kicking at people as I carried her out. I kept whispering to her, “You’re okay. You’re okay.” And when others came over to stop her from hitting me, I told them, “She’s okay! She’s fine!”
I’ve been hit many times by some of the most skilled fighters in the world. I knew that the psychologically
The crowd collectively sighed when they saw how gently she was being helped out of the hall, despite her flailing, and I knew that we had avoided casting a shadow over the energy of the event. In fact, I knew that we had actually accomplished an example, a demonstration of how we could possibly elevate our ability to face violence in the world: assertively, conclusively, but gently and compassionately
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I have a duty in my daily practice to be better than the day before, so that as my skill increases, so does my ability to protect first myself, then others, and finally, even the would-be drowning soul from whence the violence comes. Some harm will come, to those who have slipped under the water so deeply that they will claw over anyone and anything to clutch at one more gasp of air, and far more tragically – those who have resigned themselves to sinking but in their overwhelming sorrow, seek to drag others to the depths with them. Harm will come to them, unfortunately, and from our hands. I dread those moments, but I will face them. And I will be better prepared each day to make lesser harm a trained option.
My teacher has helped me realize what my life has been trying to teach me: there are no opponents; there are no enemies; there is only ignorance and the desperation it creates. Realizing that the capacity for that ignorance lies within each of us, allows us to expand our sphere of compassion. It also compels us to train harder and smarter every day, so that when we protect ourselves and others from harm, we can minimize the harm we must visit upon those ignorant of the consequences of their actions.
I don’t fear violence any less than when it was visited upon me as a child. Perhaps, I fear it even more. I am just finished with reacting to it with the same mindlessness which created it, and perpetuates it from one generation to the next.
Thomas Edison said, “5% of the world thinks; 10% of the world think they think; and the other 85% would rather die than think.” I practice every day so that I can enter and remain in the 5%, so that I can open my heart as well as my eyes to the self-fulfilling
My brothers-in-arm
I believe there’s another hopeful step: that through the righteousness of our gentle hand, we minimize the damage we must do to pernicious wolf-minded actions, so that even if they do not transform themselves, through our example, into sheepdogs, then those watching, touched by our striving for self-betterment
Love all. Serve all. Trust none but God. As the Dalai Lama wrote, “This is my simple religion. There is no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple. And the philosophy is kindness.”
a victory for love… Amma kailash.
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Scott Sonnon is currently in the Ultimate Men’s Health Guy Search, he plans to donate 100% of the prize money ($3,500.00) to help kids with learning difficulties through www.DyslexicAdvantage.com. Help support this mission by voting at http://www.mhguysearch.com/entry/720
Photo: Author’s own
Katie, thank you for what you’re doing in our school system. I strongly suggest a women’s Jiujitsu class because it helps provide us with the confidence of leverage rather than power, control of violence rather than control of others. And that generates greater bandwidth for us to remain in the compassionate state when facing violent behavior, and avoid escalating the situation with our own fearful reactivity. Not all people need the above. I did. But I had been badly broken emotionally. I know teachers and counselor who do not know martial art but have amazing breadth of skills to remain… Read more »
Scott, I teach in charter schools, all grades, all around New York City. This article helped me find a bit of context to understand the often defensive and seemingly violent reactions many of them have to simple directions and requests from their teachers and administrators. It’s difficult to not be frustrated dealing with them when to me it is such a foreign state of mind. It’s even more difficult not to take on their emotions, and ‘drown’ right along with them, in the yelling and fighting and sometimes even being put in the middle of a physical encounter. (I’m 5’1,… Read more »