In the WTSDA, we have what are called the “14 Attitudes”, fourteen sayings that are used to help focus the student in their training. The fourteenth attitude states, ”Cleanliness is required after training. Keep yourself and your surroundings clean” (Shin, p.57). Many of the other 14 attitudes deal either with the inward focus of the practitioner, such as keeping a regular practice schedule or ensuring they know the curriculum, or with their interaction with others, such as following instructions and respecting seniors. This last one, however, curiously focuses the practitioner on their surroundings and their outward appearance. By placing this attitude as the last one, I believe Grandmaster Shin held cleanliness in supreme importance to one’s martial experience and practice.
I am by no means a neat freak; when I was younger I would tend to have two piles of clothes: the clean pile and the dirty pile. It wasn’t until I got dressers for my apartment when I actually started to organize my clothes and have a hamper for used or dirty clothing. When I got my condo I upgraded to a full dresser and walk-in closet, and the organization of my clothing in turn also became (slightly) more sophisticated. As I became more organized, I found out where I was coming short throughout the week: I had enough underwear to cover the week, but for some reason I would run out of clean socks on Wednesday! I have enough karate t-shirts to wear one a day for almost the entire year, but for some reason I only have a single plain white shirt to wear with my dress blues (which I need to rectify soon). This is showing that there is a level of organization I have yet to attain in order to address these pressing needs in my life. There were many times in my life where I thought to myself, “oh I left this in this pile, it’ll be there later”, and when I went to look in that pile later that very thing I was looking for was missing! I am still working on getting this “organized chaos” part of my life less chaotic and more orderly.
If your life is cluttered or disorganized, these can distract and pull your attention away from what can matter most: your training, your tasks at work, and your life essentials. It can be very easy to become lax and say, “I’ll take care of that later”, but trust me when I say you will pay for it on the back end. A clean home can also help with having a more productive rest after training; when the first thing you think when you come home is, ”I need to pick this up, I need to clean this, I’ll have to take care of that, etc.” then your mind remains in a heightened or alerted state which would make it more difficult to come down from and relax. As Grandmaster Shin says, ”The Tang Soo Do warrior always strives for perfecting the self and the environment through physical, mental, and emotional cleanliness…” (Shin, p.57).
References:
Shin, Jae Chul Traditional Tang Soo Do – Volume I – The Essence
