Meditations on God

I started smoking cigarettes with a friend of mine in high school, when I was about 15 years old. Looking back, it’s difficult to say why, but I do remember when and where. We were not the “cool kids” and we didn’t think smoking would make us cool. We weren’t really all that rebellious — troublemakers, yes, but not that rebellious — so rebellion wasn’t really a major factor. It wasn’t peer pressure nor were we looking up to people who smoked, wanting to be like them. Our mothers both smoked cigarettes (secretly), but I honestly don’t think we cared that much. We were just mid-level geeks, not the bottom of the food chain, but nowhere near the top, and I think we were just bored.

All of our friends used to stay at each other’s houses on the weekends to play video games, read comic books, listen to music, and to play Dungeons & Dragons or other similar games. At night, we would sneak out and walk around the neighborhoods, just a bunch of insomniac teenagers getting into mischief, trying to kill the boredom. I was staying at my friend’s house one weekend, we snuck out, and we were hanging out at the end of his block. We always had lighters because boys like fire and there was a cigarrette on the ground (gross — I know!). We picked it up, lit it, and smoked it. It was not really an enjoyable experience. I think it involved coughing, choking, and getting dizzy. We later figured out a way to buy a pack of cigarettes and we did it again — boys are dumb, but very clever when it comes to figuring out ways to act on their stupid ideas. This time, we chain-smoked until we were sick — and that was when I became a smoker (perhaps one of the greatest single regrets of my life).

Years later, I still smoked. By this point, I was smoking about a pack of cigarettes a day. When I started doing hapkido, I either walked or took the bus to class and I would smoke while walking or waiting for the bus. I probably smelled disgusting — like a smoker — while training, but no one really mentioned it. I was really starting to enjoy hapkido training and it was starting to change me. I was happier, more focused, and I felt like my life had a little bit more purpose.

One day, I left class and I felt amazing! I was clear-headed and I felt a lightness of being that was somewhat foreign to me (Rasputin with a dark cloud over his head, remember?). All was right with the world and with me in it. If there are such things as spiritual experiences, I was having one. I was moved. Then, as I walked away from the dojang, ecstatic and uplifted, I lit up a cigarette. It all went away…

It was as if I had just found the sunlight for the first time and then, with one drag off of my smoke, a fog rolled in and engulfed me. I was back in the cave and all I could see were shadows. As I finished my cigarette, I thought to myself, “This is why I smoke. I can’t stand the brightness of my own being and I’m covering it up with cigarette smoke. I’m beating my own light down so that I don’t have to face myself, so I don’t have to see myself.” Then, I quit.

To be continued…

Written by,

Robert Van Valkenburgh, Co-Founder of Kogen Dojo & Taikyoku Mind and Body

http://kogendojo.com/

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I always enjoyed Sunday morning hapkido class led by John Gregg. As an adult, I’ve never really been a church-going man. I have nothing against church or those who attend services, but it simply has never resonated with me. The closest I’ve come to having a deep and moving spiritual-religious experience at church was when I used to cover shifts at the local Catholic church’s Perpetual Adoration Chapel. I’m not Catholic, mind you, but I have a very good friend who is. He knew I was a meditation enthusiast and he recommended the Adoration Chapel to me as a nice place to sit and be of service while doing it. It was a great experience. John Gregg’s classes had, for me, a very similar feeling to that place. They were my Sunday morning service, so to speak, a way to reset my mind and start the next week feeling clean and focused.

On Sundays in Annapolis, the buses run on a shorter, later route, only going to the major stops. I was still in my intentionally car-less stage of life and I had recently moved just far enough outside of downtown that the bus was not coming to my stop, but I was unaware of this fact until I waited and waited and waited, but no bus. I wanted… no… I needed to get to class. It was where I found my center. It was my church. I started to get agitated and I knew I was too far away to walk to class on time. This was before cell phones were as common as they are now and I didn’t have one, so I walked to the nearest payphone (Google this if you don’t know what it is) and called a taxicab (pre-Uber/Lyft days). Again, I waited and waited, but no cab. I called another and told them I was in a hurry. I waited, growing more and more impatient, and the cab finally showed up. It took me to the dojang and, by this time, I was in a foul mood. I was (almost) late and the cab cost me about ten times what the bus would have cost.

I entered the building and walked up to the second floor where the dojang was. I took off my shoes and walked inside. I bowed hastily and scurried my way across the mats to the changing room in the back, past John Gregg who was doing his morning tai chi routine, calm and focused like a stork stalking a fish from atop a rock in the middle of lake, poised, serene, and aware. I came back out, now ready for class. John, who normally stayed relatively quiet until it was time to teach, looked at me and asked, “Are you alright?” Startled, I replied quickly, “The buses don’t run where I live. I didn’t know that. I had to call a cab. I’m running late.” On and on I went. He just looked at me and let me talk. When I finally finished, he calmly said, “That explains the dark cloud that followed you in.” I paused and stepped back from myself for a moment. “I’m the problem,” I thought.

It had not occured to me until that moment that I was changing. Before hapkido, if someone saw me walking around with a dark cloud around me, they likely would not have noticed. It’s just who I was. Something had changed though. I was lightening up. I was happier. I was different. This moment of weakness was a regression and John was, whether he knew it or not, pointing out to me that I was no longer a miserable and depressed person because the “dark cloud” that followed me in that day was now unusual because I had changed. Furthermore, I didn’t want to be the dark cloud in John Gregg’s class. This was my church and, in this moment, I had desicrated it with my presence, my attitude. His relatively benign comment slapped me awake. “Get over yourself,” I thought. “It’s time for church.”

Written by,

Robert Van Valkenburgh, Co-Founder of Kogen Dojo & Taikyoku Mind and Body

http://kogendojo.com/

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When I first walked into Joe Sheya’s dojang, I was a depressed, angry young man with long hair, a full beard, and all black clothing. I imagined myself a “dark soul,” but I was really just a self-absorbed geek who wore “misunderstood and angsty” like a hair shirt. There I was all gothic and brooding, asking to learn hapkido. Luckily, my friend, who had trained with Joe for many years, had taken me there to introduce me and Joe decided to give me a chance. The thing about Joe was that, rent or no rent, money or no money, if he didn’t want to train with you, he was not going to teach you. It may have been a business, but it was always personal. You were either family or you were not welcome back. After my introduction, Joe just kind of grinned at me and invited me in to try my first class. I still don’t remember what the class entailed, but I was most likely shown the first few white belt “motions” (what Joe called hapkido techniques, most likely because that’s what Rim, his teacher who spoke very little English, called them) which I fumbled my way through. I thanked Joe for his time and said I’d like to come back to which he politely implied that he would allow that to happen.

My martial art journey started in spurts. I’d go to one class and then I would’t go back until the next week. I’d do two classes and then I’d skip a week. No one said anything to me, but one day I realized that I was being taught exactly the same techniques every time I showed up and I was not getting better at them. I couldn’t remember one from the other. I couldn’t make my body do what was being asked of it. Consistency and dedication, it occurred to me, were required if I was to make any progress at all. Discipline, I lacked. Discipline, I needed. So I doubled-down.

At this point in my life, I didn’t drive. I lived in Annapolis, MD and I took the bus where I couldn’t walk to. This was a conscious decision on my part and the time I spent living downtown is still one of my fondest memories. All these years later, I’m still really a martial arts, coffee shops, and street food kind of person. If I walked to the dojang, it took me about an hour. If I took the bus, it only took about fifteen minutes, but I still had to walk to the bus stop, wait for the bus, and then walk to the dojang from the bus stop, usually extremely early for class because late was not something I was willing to be, so the bus was about an hour total as well. It was all worth it. I started going to every single class available to me. At that time, that meant I tried to attend class Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday morning. In spite of myself, I started to get pretty good, at least relative to where I was when I started and relative to the folks who were less consistent than me.

Years later, after Joe and I became very close, he told me that he never expected me to come back after the first day, but he was glad I did. He also explained that I had a nickname in the dojang because of my long hair, beard, and my all black wardrobe. I was Rasputin and Joe let me train because I reminded him of himself when he was “younger and full of shit.” I still laugh when I think about how ridiculous I must have appeared and I’m still grateful that Joe saw past my facade and humored me long enough to call me “little brother.”

Written by,

Robert Van Valkenburgh, Co-Founder of Kogen Dojo & Taikyoku Mind and Body

http://kogendojo.com/

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Before I walked into my first hapkido dojang (Korean word for martial art training hall), I was told by a friend that there were different styles of hapkido. He put it to me plainly, “There is traditional hapkido and there is taekwondo with some joint locks and throws added to it in order to charge more money by calling it hapkido.” The latter, a hybrid of modern Korean striking arts and Japanese jujutsu derived joint-locks and throws, I was told, is the more common form of hapkido and I should avoid it. Traditional hapkido, it seems, is quite rare in both Korea and the United States, as most people simply don’t want to put in the time required to learn it. This is not a new phenomenona, as I’ve read hapkido histories stating that very few people actually learned the entire art from Choi Yong-sul, the founder. My friend explained to me that Joe Sheya’s dojang, then an affiliate of Rim’s Hapkido Association (Rim was a direct student of Choi Yong-Sul who moved here to teach hapkido in the late 70’s), was the only place I would find traditional hapkido locally. Then, I moved away, not that far away, but far enough away that getting to Joe Sheya’s dojang was inconvenient. I’d come to find out that quality is more important than convenience, but I was young.

There I was, living in limbo, between Baltimore and my hometown of Annapolis, MD. I’d moved there with my girlfriend at the time and she left me to live with her parents in Mississippi (it all worked out and that’s a whole other story). Really, I was supposed to go with her, but her absence made my heart grow fonder for the distance between us more so than for her. I digress. She left. I was sad. I needed something positive in my life and I decided to seek out a place to train hapkido. Annapolis, where Joe Sheya was, seemed too far away, so I looked around for local schools (this was before the internet was ubiquitous, so I actually had to look — like, with my eyes) and I saw a Taekwondo school with a sign that said, “HAPKIDO.” After thinking about going in for a few days, I finally got up the nerve to do it. I walked in during off hours and asked the teacher if they taught hapkido there. He was kind of shocked. Apparently, this was an unusual question, in spite of the fact that their signage clearly displayed the word hapkido in big, bold letters. He said, “Yes, but not many people do hapkido. We can schedule private lessons if you want.” I asked him what doing hapkido there was like and he explained that it involved punches, kicks, and some joint locks and throws. “Ahhhh,” I thought, “This is what my friend told me about. This is Taekwon-kido.” I thanked him for his time and told him I would come back if I wanted to commit.

A few weeks later, I moved back to Annapolis and sought out Joe Sheya.

Written by,

Robert Van Valkenburgh, Co-Founder of Kogen Dojo & Taikyoku Mind and Body

http://kogendojo.com/

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P.S. If you are dating someone and decide to move in together, but have kind of a knot in your gut about it, do yourself a favor and find a place that offers month-to-month leases. It’s worth the extra money.

My martial art journey began with a conversation. I had a good friend and mentor who had done martial arts for most of his life. He and I discussed many things, mainly philosophy, theology, and spiritual practices. I was not a religious person, but he turned me onto Taoist and Buddhist thought, mainly as a gateway to meditation and other such practices.

One day, I expressed to him that I was thinking about getting into something like yoga or tai chi. He laughed and said, “Oh no. I know you. With your personality and attitude, what you need is hapkido. Specifically, you need Joe Sheya.” I’d never heard of hapkido or Joe Sheya, so I inquired further. He explained that hapkido was a Korean martial art. I was not interested in martial arts, I told him. “Well,” he continued, “Hapkido is classified as a ‘soft’ martial art. In a soft martial art, you don’t use force against force. Instead, you use your attacker’s force and multiply that with your own in such a way that you move as a unit and he essentially throws himself. Beyond that, I think the kind of spirituality you need can be found in the hapkido dojang. Joe Sheya has been one of my greatest spiritual mentors and I think he’s just what you need. He is a force of nature.”

Little did I know at the time, but I was being set up, in the best possible way. In Joe Sheya, I was expecting some sort if ultra-spiritual, soft-spoken guru and in hapkido I was expecting to find a pacifistic system of moving meditation that would bring me into some kind of enlightened harmony with myself and the world around me. What I found in each was much different than my expectations and much better for me.

Written by,

Robert Van Valkenburgh, Co-Founder of Kogen Dojo & Taikyoku Mind and Body

http://kogendojo.com/

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