“You Trust The Quality Of What You Know, Not Quantity.” -Miyagi
Practice Nekkhamma ( नैष्क्राम्य) or Detachment.
Is this the day I die?
Revised Jan 24, 2023
That was often the question I often asked when I woke up in the morning as a kid because of all the violence I saw. Before the Black Lives Movement, Los Angeles had Rodney G. King who was beaten by the police. It was filmed. That is where I grew up. Trust no one.
Watch my Ted’s Talk: “Bruce Lee and Detachment!”
In America, with the stand your ground laws, you can be killed just for looking at someone in the wrong way. Life is cheap, so why die for your machismo?
I didn’t need to know about such laws, I already knew this. I never believed the Karate Kid myth where learning to fight is about self defense. I grew up in California, and I knew Hollywood was a lie. I went to the middle school where they filmed parts of the movie Grease (1978). It was the same school where Marylin Monroe once walked the halls.
The demographics have changed. White people don’t live in Los Angeles. They all left. Well most did. They abandoned the elderly. Any female with blond hair in that school was Latina and spoke Spanish. In fact, most of the students spoke Spanish while the rest spoke Chinese, Korean, or other Asian languages. The only reason English was spoken was to communicate between cultures. So English was rarely heard. Oh, the teachers spoke it too. My Spanish improved, and I became a Spanish major in college.
Everyday I saw so many fights that no Hollywood version of school life seemed to understand the real sense of dread the youth have to going to school in Los Angeles. I think we all suffer from PTSD.
I often went to Paramount Studios which was close to my home, and watched them film Happy Days. I remember one of the stars personally criticized me for daring to call him the Fonz. He would walk to the audience and shake hands after filming.
As I walked away with my friends from the pissed off Fonz and his sour expression, I started to think that this show has nothing to do with the America where I lived in every single day. Where are the Asians in the show? Where are the minorities in the show? None of my friends were white. I think Pat Morita would be on there as cook or something. I never saw him.
The white people in the audience were visiting from out of town. Los Angeles was the future of America. Every USA city would become LA. Hollywood was still pretending to be white. Even though this show was about the past and about white middle America, it was perpetuating a dying myth.
I lived in the prison that my school seemed to be. What crimes did I commit to deserve this punishment? Where were my happy days?
Instead, it is about survival or suffering (dukka) as Buddhism calls it. I didn’t believe in the super hero myths of fighting for justice. I lived in the town where Rodney King was beaten for the skin he walked in. Fighting for self defense seemed a myth. Because a real fight isn’t some MMA fight, one on one. Instead, it is often ten to one with you being on the floor while ten guys stomp you to death. That is a real fight. Not fair. No rules. A knife or a gun may be the way to end the fight. Not an MMA arm bar.
There is always the set up. That short guy who picked on you and whom you know you can easily defeat is not the real opponent. Just a few feet away is a much taller and bigger friend who is about to pounce on your dumb ass for taking the bait. And furthermore, his eight other enlightened friends are also waiting to kick your stupid tailpiece back to hell you call home. This is the real karate kid being beat up LA style.
Welcome to the Hood!
Why would anyone want to do a leg lock or arm bar while on the floor? The last place you want to be is on the floor vanquishing one opponent. The only place you want to be is standing, so you can run away as fast as you can when the ten guys are running after you. MMA seems to be useless to me. I don’t get it. I have trained MMA fighters, trying to teach them more power. I mean some MMA fighters seem powerful, but I don’t understand it.
The only place such bravado might work is in prison where you are with one person. Wise guy! Let me explain something. The same gangs that rule the streets also rule the prisons! Instead, you might do better by bribing folks with Ramen, the greatest and most powerful barter treasure known throughout the US prison system.
The real art of fighting is fighting without really fighting, as Bruce Lee said. However, it was mastered by the Jackie Chan style of running! Run wise guy run! Faster!
I have never believed the “Karate Kid” or Bruce Lee macho myth that fighting will make you a hero. Well actually I did. However, I learned that was all wrong.
It started with Bruce Lee. He changed my life. I have been studying martial arts since I was a kid. However, before Bruce Lee, my father showed my Mas Oyama’s art: Kyokushin. We lived in Japan, and he practiced at their dojo.
See the set up. You are always being set up. Demons always set up the ignoramus! What how they surround you.
So why practice martial arts? For me, it was about fighting demons. We are surrounded by the enemy. Most just don’t understand. However, the real enemy is the self, not the person in front of you.
Let me explain. You don’t have to agree, but you still might learn something. It took me half a century to learn this.
I still wake up several times a night. Within the warrior’s mind, the fight for peace never ends. I used to see ghosts and demons of the night.
Welcome to Los Angeles! The City of Angels
Even though I now live in the Heartland, the Midwest, I look at the Southside of my town which appears to be like Los Angeles. I see churches with Hangul (한글) written inviting Koreans to be saved within their segregated religious experiences besides Latino Churches who speak in Spanish, just like Los Angeles. I hear radio stations in Spanish, and I see commercials on television in Spanish even though we live in an English only state. Good luck passing your driver’s test here if you are Latino. I took my kids to the Southside for their driver’s tests because I felt they would be treated better there.
When I drive to towns outside the main city, I see vibrant Latino towns with better stores than we have in the city because we have been brainwashed into believing we are all the same, and we all need the same things.
What the white majority doesn’t understand is that their time is ending as they soon become the minority.
Welcome to LA! Déjà vu!
–Doc Nirvana
AKA Dr. Wayne Stein