The elephant fable

KARATE AND ELEPHANT'S FABLE

Years behind, when I was learning English language, I met a gentleman that I will never forget. In the course of our difficult conversation, I could to understand that those man was a professor. Unfortunately I could not understand, neither to retain, the name of the subject that he taught, although he reiterated it several times. I still remember the deception of that man when I admitted him that I had never heard about his specialization field.

Some time later - in a karate tournament that I directed - the same gentleman appeared and he called me liar. Imagine you my surprise, when I discover that the man was also a karate professor.

The missunderstanding had happened because of his pronunciation of the word " karate ". If wrong I doesn't remember, he had said something similar to "quarahdi".

Certainly it was comprehensible - and I could not reproach him - that called me liar.

He should have believed that I faked ignorance deliberately, when the truth was that - in that first meeting - we could not simply communicate, in a topic of the one both were experts, because of my poor knowledge of English language.

This lack of understanding between two people that have a common interest really discourage, especially when it happens among karate professors.

All of we say to teach the true karate, but it is very difficult to find two professors who define this Art in the same way.

For some people karate it is combat. For other it is mainly an exhibition. For many it approaches to a religion; it can also be a form of achieving a very good physical aptitude; a sport; a self-defense system; a philosophy of life, and a dozen of other possible points of view.

Certainly, I don't feel guilty of this tendency to feel as true my own definition of the karate.

I remember an episode that happened in another school. Several of my students - who had seen a strange exercise executed by the students of that school - they began to move their heads, and to smile with sarcasm. When I prepared to admonish them because of their lack of courtesy, I could see myself in a mirror.

It took the same obvious and ugly smile.

There is a fable about several blind men who had never seen an elephant. One day, the men had the opportunity to touch one, and then to discove as the elephant was.

Then, when they met to discuss the experience, a great discussion exploded. One said that the elephant was as a wool whip. Another said that it was as a great tree. Another thought that the elephant was as a rough roof.

At any way that it is chosen to define it, the Art of karate has many dimensions. It is at the same time mental and physical; artistic and grotesque; practical (self-defense) and not practical (sport); violent and comic; abstract and concrete; scientific and animist; real and metaphysician.

Irreconcilable Contradictions?

I don't believe in this way.

Could somebody accuse the blind man that perceived the elephant as a wool whip?

The tail that he felt was certainly an essential part of the elephant. But how could it convince the other ones, who they felt the belly - or the paw - of the elephant?

Probably, he would finish confuse, and confusing the other ones.

Who can say who of those blind men came closer to know how an elephant really it is?

Not me!

As each one of the blind men, my definition of karate is subjective and necessarily incomplete. Karate is in constant change. It is practiced by different people in different places and times. But beyond the continuous changes, Karate continues being an Art, being this its more characteristic feature. Karate is an answer for everything, and - because of this reason - a single man can not understand all that Karate it is.

FERNANDO PRIETO
6th. DAN KEN SHIN RYU - TOKU IN KAN
6th. DAN GOJU RYU - JKF GOJU KAI
PRESIDENT JKF GOJU KAI - URUGUAY