Philosophers at the cafe'

Thought of sharing some postulations of two gentlemen I coincidently met at the cafe' yesterday. Whilst casually chatting with the owner of the cafe' on this bright sunny morning under the cool canopy of South East cafe' at the quaint fishing village of Marsaxlokk in Malta, this person butted into our conversation, philosophising about life. How short or long life is, and relative to what. Anyway, one thought leads to another and we found we were contemplating about what sport and karate means to me, especially when they found out that apart from being much into karate, I am also chairman of the national governing body of sport in Malta. There was a whole metamorphosis of arguments and deliberations. We found ourselves talking about sport, competition and shogai karate, meaning life-long practice of karate. I have done my fair part in competitive karate, but I must admit that my passion is in the classical study of karate. Sport karate is very much finite by its very nature due to the epitome of results in competition. Unfortunately, the term karate seems to have been in recent years strongly associated with competition, and hence sport. Karate is an old system of self defence transformed into an educational system with contests, or shiai, done only to test oneself. There was only an observer and it was the practitioners in the contest that knew who had won and who had lost. The observer was there just as a witness. One has to remember that karate was practiced with a certain degree of diligence that brought with it respect for punches, strikes, kicks and smashes. These were practiced endlessly to build confidence that the only difference between life and death in combat, was a karate technique expressed at the right time and distance. At that time karate was known as karate-jitsu. That is why in a contest, an attacking person knew when he won as much as the other person receiving the attack without defending properly himself, knew that he lost. Sport karate has to some extent lost this respect for oneanother and for the nobility of the art and science in the techniques itself. As with any any other type of competition, the aim of the athlete is to strain her performance to the limit of competition rules and the skill effort directed more at achieving the result under the rules of the game. Here lies the essence of the difference between sport karate and shogai karate.

But needless to say, perceptions differ and I think that the age of people leads them to look at things differently. However, I think that whilst it is entertaining to compete in sport karate, it would be a pity if the art that was developed and used by humanity to defend itself against assailants, be forgotten. To me, it is this that fascinates me. I wonder what frame of mind did warriors have when practicing for their life.