Shihan Richard Norton Philosophies on Martial Arts 9th Feb 2008

By: Sensei John Alford

SABJC: What are your philosophies on martial arts, acting & your personal life that have held you in good stead?
Richard: “Just to be the best you can be & to have some sort of moral code. I mean we really are responsible for what we know. We know the right way to live, the right way to conduct ourselves.
It’s a choice we can consciously make – to be a good role model with uplifting principles, or be kind of on the fringe of society and a bit of a misfit, to be abusive, aggressive and a bad role model or whatever. These are all human traits that we choose & and can and should be aware of. I feel you need to continually check yourself on how you are living and the example you are setting for the younger Martial Artists around you. In training, I love the etiquette that goes with the dojo & the martial arts. I pray that we never lose that part of our art. Remember too, that you are not a Martial Artist just when you put your gi on & step onto the mat. You are a martial artist 24 hours a day. You have a responsibility outside of the Dojo to behave and act in a certain way. You are role models for the younger ones and this gets more important the higher ranked you get. Listen, whether we like it or not, these young kids are looking up to us when they become part of our systems and schools. I think you need to take pride in the way you look, your physical condition, your ability, especially your martial arts ability. These are important things to uphold.
You know, to be a good representative of the arts we have chosen, to be a good representative of yourself as a human being. Of course we all fall down, we’re fallible, but it’s important toalways pick ourselves up, to keep rechecking ourselves.

So that’s my philosophy- to just strive to be the very best I can be. Now one other thing, I think it’s also important to not always compare yourself with others. The trouble with comparisons is that you’re always going to be better than or worse than whomever it is you’re trying to compare yourself to. So you’re either going to feel like crap, cause you’re not as good as, or you’re going to be egotistical & big headed if you’re better than. As I said earlier, of course have your healthy role models in the arts, but try to keep a healthy balance and just be the best you can be. It’s a hard thing, you know, to keep your ego in check. I just try to be accepting of all people, their abilities & where they’re at in their journey & to be tolerant, you know. That’s basically what I try to be about.

Sensei John Alford: How do you keep your immense confidence & your self esteem up – does that evolve naturally with habit?
Shihan Richard: “As I told you, when it comes to martial arts, confidence is built from confidencein your ability (which is) built from drilling, through training – knowing what you’re capable of. Lack of confidence comes from a lack of preparation, from being unsure – am I fit enough, am I strong enough, can I punch hard enough, am I fast enough,
you know. Listen, I lack confidence in areas like everybody else depending on what it is I’m delving into – like take being on a movie set for example. I recently started working on ’The Justice League of America’ with George Miller, who of course directed Happy Feet, Road Warrior & Babe, to name a few of his movies. He’s the director of a 200 million dollar picture and I’m the fight coordinator. Now there’s seven superhero leads & there’s 44 fights and I have been told to make all the fights unique to each character and different from any other fights already seen in this genre of movie. Yeah, right! You don’t think that scares the c..p out of me – absolutely, but that’s what it’s all about. The easiest thing in the world would have been for me to have said, ‘oh no, sorry George, I’m kinda busy, sorry’ & just go home and continue on being mediocre. I feel the hardest thing, when confronted with a daunting problem that scares you is to say yes, & then go, ‘well s..t, now you’ve committed yourself, now you’ve got to go about finding a way to complete this mission’. But that’s what makes you better, that’s what gets you better, That’s like fighting the toughest guy in your school, rather than the weakest. You know, cause by tapping out or getting tapped on the chin, is how you learn, & better yourself. You must confront these fears. Don’t run away from them and don’t rationalize your way around and out of them – Confront them & accept them for what they are & do the best you can with it. As I said, I feel that a certain amount of self esteem comes from the way you conduct your life, to be able to hold your head up high, without guilt & knowing you believe yourself to be a reasonable human being. There’s a lot of people in our arts that I don’t think are honestly able to say that about themselves. Again, just continually strive to be the best Martial Arts role model you can be, 24 hours a day. I can’t stress how important I feel it is to represent these virtues 24 hours a day, not just when we are on the mat. Let me finish that theme by telling you a story of one of my learning experiences that really brought this home to me whilst out on the road as Body Guard for James Taylor.

There’s a guy called David Sanborn, who is considered to be one of the best jazz saxophonist’s in the world. One time I was sitting in the bleachers and I was watching David play on stage in a sound rehearsal. I remember thinking how the noises he was making with the sax were not like the normal ‘licks’ a musician would make with his instrument when playing a riff. The sounds he made with the Sax seemed to me to be very intermittent and I don’t know, kind of disjointed. So later that night I was in the tour bus with David & I said hey, I’m really fascinated with how the notes you were playing and that I heard seemed different to players I had heard in the past. To cut a long story short, basically this is what David said “The notes you hear are just when I tend to externalize my art & make it audible
& obvious to you, looking on and listening, that I’m playing the Sax. That’s when you conclude, ah! he’s a saxophone player. In reality, I am playing 24 hours a day. I just don’t totally ‘externalize’ it the whole time”. He ended by saying, “I don’t create noise, I merely punctuate the quiet”. I thought wow! How Zen is that. I then realized that the analogy & parallel with martial arts is ‘We don’t create movement we merely punctuate the still’. But in the still, you’re still a martial artist. That again is what I am talking about. It’s not just when we walk on the mat and cross our hands or put on a gi that we ‘become’ Martial Artists. We’re martial artists 24 hours a day. When we do this is when it becomes
obvious to somebody outside ‘Oh, he’s a martial Artist because he’s kicking or whatever’. No, the feelings & the responsibilities that go with what we do are there with us 24/7. Just because you’re behind closed doors or outside of the dojo doesn’t mean you can be a complete jackass & be other than what we expect a true Martial Artist to be. We need to hold ourselves to the highest levels of behavior at all times, or at the very least, we should strive to.”

Sensei John Alford: Do you have any spiritual persuasions?
Shihan Richard “I was brought up as an Anglican, or in the Church of England. As kids we were never really made to go to church or anything, though I used to of course have my own personal beliefs in things relating to religion. I know that at an early age I was very much drawn to Zen Buddhism. The simplicity of it & its connection with of course the Martial Arts, especially Japanese Martial Arts, was something I felt I could really relate to. Especially the belief that God is within and not outside of us. By believing that God, or whatever name you want to use, is within us means that we have to take personal responsibility for our lives and actions, rather than handing over the blame and looking to some higher power outside of ourselves. Yeah, I really like the whole Zen thing. Hey, if you want to get the greatest book on Zen and the Martial Arts, get ‘Zen and Japanese Culture’, by D T Suzuki. It has been like my bible regarding where the mind should be in the Martial Arts. Right now I am also reading some books and listening to some tapes by a guy called Eckhart Tolle. He wrote a book called ‘The Power of Now’. It’s just fantastic stuff because it’s all about being in the moment. The parallels in his teachings and what we do in martial arts is fantastic and so spot on for me. His stuff is really worth checking out. Eckhart is a German guy who has a retreat in Scotland called the ‘The Findhorn Retreat’. He’s trying to teach people about being in the moment, being in the now, not always in the story in your head, as they say in class about next week, next year. Enjoy the now & be aware of yourself in this present moment. Let’s face it, a lot of what we do in our training in martial arts is very ‘in the moment’ producing. You know as an example, if I’ve got somebody in front of me and I say to them ‘now I’m going to crack you in the head in the next few seconds
and want you to try to block my strike’. I’ll then sometimes say to them ‘I’ll bet you’re not thinking about next week’s rent right now’. That sort of thing is very in the moment producing, cause all he’s thinking about is ‘Oh God, here it comes’. Just being in the moment some of the time in one’s day is so nice, because you’d be surprised how many people can walk along a beach in the morning & be oblivious to a beautiful sunrise because they’re so in their heads about tomorrow, the wife, the argument they’ve had, or what they’re going to do at work, when can I have a vacation. Be in the moment, enjoy it. Like when we’re in a class together, just be there. Be there, not somewhere else. Be attentive and in the now, that’s very Zen like. Anyway John, that’s kind of my philosophy with things like that. Because let’s face it, who knows what tomorrow will bring, or if we will even see tomorrow at all. ‘Now’ is all we have. But how cool is that?

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