Finding Dory

I used to have a student we call Dory, named after the famed Disney animation character, with short term memory loss. She was called Dory, not so much for her inability to remember basic kata, but more insidiously for her penchant for repeatedly forgetting she was married, with kids. The running joke was that while her husband was out riding his fancy English sports car, she would be out riding dudes…and she, at least, would have a new ride every few months. All jokes aside, it was/is a gut wrenchingly, sad state of affairs (no pun intended).

We live in a world of greed and deception, and we manipulate and rationalize to feed the narcissism. We present intricate facades to divert and obfuscate from the truth. We try to control the narrative, and rationalize our illicit actions, to justify our behavior. “I love you” has become a euphemism for, “I want to use you”.   We even pin our debauchery to past “trauma” to excuse us, just in case we get caught. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

An elderly Kyudo (the art of archery) master once recounted his budo journey. He said in his youth, when he was on the national team, all that mattered for him was hitting the mark. He trained so hard that his hands would turn black. He was consumed with technique and outcome. However, after many years of that hard, controlled training… at a point organically derived, perhaps due to the fatigue of carrying that burden, he gave up on being conscious of the outcome. Contrived technique fell by the wayside, and what remained was his humanity, expressed in the beauty of his art. Free from the need to acquire and control, his true expression…love, presented itself for all to experience. To those judging with the eye, he may have appeared as a novice, not yet able to hit the target. For those who see with the heart though, the scale is not material, but rather transcendental.

You see, we have two “Dorys” here. One who purposefully “forgets”, in an effort to acquire….acquire male attention, acquire ego driven validation, acquire some material or physical gain, often at the expense of someone else (a husband, the wellbeing of one’s kids and family, the other dude, etc…) and ultimately at one’s own expense… and then you have the real Dory. The real Dory, like the Kyudo master, forgets all that he/she has amassed, and is free from the burden of material gain and societal norms. the former Dory fills her cup, the latter empties it. The former is never satiated, the latter always feels content, united and present in divine purpose.

Can art be taught? Can humanity be taught? In my humble opinion these things are experienced. What is taught is only the material stuff, the stuff that eventually has to be cast away. Let your art, be it karate-do, kyudo, judo…whatever it is that has meaning and beauty for you…let it be the Dory that finds peace and beauty in relinquishing…in surrendering…. to our original, natural disposition. Our “fitra”, as it is called.