Essays
2026
23 Feb The split second
2025
Mastering Jiu-jitsu
(Credit: Adapted from George Leonard’s Mastery, 1992, pp 6-17, replacing the original tennis example with jiu-jitsu. This is a tribute to Leonard's philosophy, intended for the BJJ community to enjoy.)
Say you are in fairly good shape but by no means a highly conditioned skilled athlete. You have played around with movement sports such as badminton and basketball, which involve hand-eye coordination, and you’ve done some combat sports, but not much — which might be a good thing. Now you’ve found a jiu-jitsu teacher with a good reputation of grounding fighters in the fundamentals, and you’ve committed yourself to three classes per week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You're on the path to mastery.
It starts with baby steps. The teacher shows you how to break a fall — he has you squat low, tuck your chin, roll onto a curved back, and slap the mat with palms at a forty-five degree angle. He explains why it is important. He then paints an image of someone sitting on top of you, and proceeds with showing bridging and shrimping. He shows you how to plant your feet correctly, and how to move your shoulders and hips together as a unit. He fusses about the inside position with your elbows. He makes corrections, gives encouragement. You feel terribly clumsy and disjointed. You have to think to keep the parts of your body synchronized, and thinking gets in the way of graceful, spontaneous movement.
You find yourself becoming impatient. You were hoping to get exercise, but this practice doesn’t give you enough even to break a sweat. You want to dominate people, but your teacher says you shouldn't even be thinking about that at this stage. You're the type of person who cares a lot about results, and you seem to be getting hardly any results at all. The practice just goes on and on: make frames, make grips, get the inside position, bridge and shrimp, create space, take space, retain guard — you seem to be getting exactly nowhere.
Then, after about five weeks of frustration, a light goes on. The various components of basic attacks and escapes begin to come together, almost as if your muscles know what they should do; you don’t have to think about every little thing. In your conscious awareness, you're hitting moves faster and smoother. You start to grasp that jiu-jitsu techniques are absolute, they work regardless of who applies them. Now you have even connected some dots from the previous classes. You feel the itch to start competing.
No chance. Until now your teacher has been handing positions to you. You haven’t reached those positions on your own. But now you’re going to have to learn guard passing. You will learn new frames and new grips, and how to move correctly to get past a guard. Again, you feel clumsy, disjointed. You’re dismayed to find that you’re losing some of what you’d gained. Just before you’re ready to call it quits, you stop getting worse. But you’re not getting any better either. Days and weeks pass with no apparent progress. There you are on that damned plateau.
You realize you came to jiu-jitsu not only to get exercise but also to look good, to roll with your friends, to beat your friends. You decide to have a talk with your teacher. How long, you ask, will it take you to master this thing?
Your instructor responds. “Do you mean how long would it take for you to automatically get into good positions and hit submissions?”
“Yes.”
He pauses. It’s a question he always dreads but gets asked a lot. “Well, for someone like you, who starts jiu-jitsu as an adult, if you participate an hour three times a week, it would take, on average, five years.”
Five years! Your heart sank.
“It's going to be a lot of drilling and rolling but you will have to stay consistent in class. Of course, if you’re particularly motivated, it could be less than that.”
You decide to try another question. “How long will it be before I can roll competitively?”
“Competitively? That’s a loaded term.”
“I mean rolling to beat a friend.”
“I would say you could probably start finding submissions in about six months. But you shouldn’t roll with winning as a major consideration until you have reasonable control of defense and escapes, guard passing and retention, and moving through positions. And that would be about a year or a year and a half.”
Another bitter dose of reality.
The teacher goes on to explain. The problem with jiu-jitsu isn’t that you have moves and attacks, and you have to master all of that, but also that your opponent has moves and attacks. It's physical chess. A lot of practice time on the mat is spent getting smashed. A roll with darker belts lasts only about a minute or two. But trying to beat a friend really comes down to who makes a silly mistake first, like exposing the neck or extending an arm. You don’t get much practice. What you really need is repetitions of techniques under fairly controlled circumstances at every step along the way: posture, footwork, takedowns, guard passing, pinning positions, controlling positions, setups, finishing mechanics, leglocks, strategy. And even before these: defense and escapes. And the process is generally incremental. You can’t skip stages. You can’t really work on strategy, for example, until you’ve got controlling positions pretty well under control. With the introduction of each new stage, you’re going to have to start thinking again, which means things will temporarily fall apart.
The truth begins to sink in. Going for mastery in this sport isn't going to bring you the quick rewards you had hoped for. There’s a seemingly endless road ahead of you with numerous setbacks along the way and — most important — plenty of time on the plateau, where long hours of diligent practice gain you no apparent progress at all. Not a happy situation for one who is goal-oriented.
You realize that you have a decision to make at some point along the journey, if not now. You’re tempted to drop jiu-jitsu and go out looking for another, easier sport. Or you might try twice as hard, insist on extra lessons, practice day and night. Or you could quit classes and take whatever you’ve learnt to the mat and just have fun with your friends who don’t roll much better than you. Of course, you could also do what your teacher suggests, and stay on the long road to mastery. What will you choose?
***
The Mastery Curve
There’s really no way around it. Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it.
***
To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so — and this is the inexorable fact of the journey — you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere.
Source: Leonard, George. Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment. New York: Plume/Penguin, 1992.
The split-second
1. All growth is a leap in the dark [1]
I had left the soft sand for the cliffs. I suppose there is something about men and high ground. Goa, June of 2024.
I stood near the edge, wind tugging at my clothes as the waves crashed below. From here, the world opened up - an uninterrupted horizon, the crescent beach to the right, and dark cliffs trailing off to the left. Maximum visibility.
Almost perfect - if not for one skinny tree. This vegetation had sprung out from the mud in the gulley between my rock and the edge boulder, its branches thrusting into view, messing up the calm - like sitting down at a restaurant to find the last person's crumbs still on the table. Only past this intruder, was the ideal vantage point.
A jump was brewing.
The big round faces of the rocks, five or six feet apart, made the gap. Landing in the gulley would have been terrible – I could tumble down about 30 meters. The space offered no run-up.
And there was the ultimate risk of shame, of becoming a laughing stock. An epic view after an epic jump, or an epic trip to the hospital?
The gap was jumpable.
My split second moment arrived where I had to choose courage.
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I remember this day well because I never attempted the jump. My confident version would have leapt it, lapped it and laughed.
***
2. Akāliko
Akāliko is a Pali word meaning timeless, immediate, or unconditioned by time.
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I had come across a podcast discussing the split second - a tiny moment within a moment, where we know that what we are about to do isn’t loving, isn’t nourishing, yet we do it anyways [2].
We are all familiar with these moments.
To be clear, this isn’t a conversation about instant vs delayed gratification
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These split second moments come by a few times a day, in our decisions about food, habits, work, and relationships. The essence is always the same: a single choice placed before us - between courage and cowardice, between virtue and vice, between doing what we set out to do and shying away, between winning and losing.
Too often, we choose poorly.
And without delay, in my case, a negative wave sweeps the body. A knot tightens in my gut. And if I am being honest, it rarely dissolves.
Double jeopardy, always and every time - a failed external action and an internal swell of shame.
No one may notice but the first person I have harmed is myself.
Then there are those other split seconds - the ones I wish happened more often - when I choose to be courageous, choose virtue, choose to win.
A wave follows just as quickly - of joy. I feel relieved because I saw a glimpse of what I’m made of. A soft untangling ensues.
And I must come to understand - without needing anyone to confirm it - that the first person healed is myself.
I suspect these good vibes live forever too. Just recall a moment of bravery, of action from the past, and they still uplift me.
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Dear reader, let’s wish for each other - to win more of these split-second moments. Their rewards, subtle as they may be, are timeless, immediate, and unconditioned by time.
***
3. The Jiu-jitsu split second
Scene 1
I knew what he was thinking.
Last time, I caught my coach flush with a sasae tsurikomi ashi, sending him sailing over the tatami. I had felt his stocky frame go weightless.
But now, our grips tied up just as before, I knew he’d be waiting. No chance I’ll get the same foot trip twice.
I used the same circular pull but held back the block at the ankle. As our legs repositioned, I turned my chest the opposite way, stepped in and hit the osoto gari for a takedown.
It all happened in a split second: I recognised the problem, saw the solution, made the decision - and the body executed before the chance was gone.
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To be sure, my coach still wipes the floor with me at will. But in four years of jiu-jitsu, this split second decision stands out for me.
Scene 2
Winning was one move away. The gym’s blue-belt title was there for whoever scored first.
My lungs burned. My arms were spent. My vision blurred. I was startled by how loud my own breath was. Some hand-fighting later, my split second moment came.
I saw the winning sequence. I felt it. All I needed to do was squeeze the trigger. But I was shy, and the moment passed. In the dying seconds of the round my opponent scored.
Not skills, not stamina, not fear, I lost the match to inaction.
***
What is the split-second moment?
Time slows down. The split second moment isn’t a blur, but a moment of clarity. The noise falls silent. You see the path clearly. But the favourable result isn’t free – it's a fight, playing out inside your mind.
The moment isn't one of helplessness. It’s the opposite – you have full control of the outcome. It is as if the world pauses to ask for your permission. You hesitate, you lose. But I have realised that only good lies ahead if you act boldly.
*****
Notes
[1] Originally quoted by Henry Miller, I read Ryan Holiday’s version in the book ‘Courage is calling.'
[2] Youtube video titled ‘Weight Loss Expert: Losing Weight Is a Spiritual Process (Disguised as Fitness),’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chHeOFby-AA
Left vs Right done differently
I couldn’t explain to a leftie why I disagree with lefties.
I had argued that same-sex couples destroy the traditional family unit. Whereas she demanded that a traditional family unit includes same-sex couples.
On the question of procreation, traditionally understood to be the main purpose of marriage, she argued that same-sex couples want children too.
I could follow her path, line by line, but the destination felt wrong. We stopped here that day and I started preparing.
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I have repurposed this essay 381 times. Ultimately, the left vs right debate is fraught with paradoxes [1]. And after months of overthinking, these four ideas kept surfacing on why we see the world so differently.
Note: I have used terms loosely - this is not a defining comparison of ideologies.
1. Our moral reasoning is post hoc [2]
That we reason after we already know which way we want to go. That whether one leans left or right, the preference usually comes first, followed by a search for supporting evidence.
Confirmation bias comes easy. From there, it is my tribe versus yours, whatever the policies.
I read how the left and right don’t and won’t understand each other. If those are set in stone, then there is no way to explain to a leftie why I disagree with lefties. The essay ends here.
However, assuming some dialogue is still possible, I bring up the post hoc reasoning first, acknowledging our natural inclination toward partisanship. This is a necessary reality check.
2. Cyclical history vs linear-unidirectional history
Do empires rise and fall? Does history repeat itself? Or does society marches in a single direction towards progression?
The cyclical model means that we are moving towards or away from a high point. Its supporters cling to the traditions from that high point - such as hierarchy, order, tradition. Whereas the linear model views history as a climb toward a future ideal, pushing for radical change, particularly in the development of human rights.
I contend that the political left-right spectrum mirrors the divide between linear and cyclical views of history. The right looks back to preserve a golden age, while the left looks forward to engineer one. Therefore, it is not merely a matter of tradition vs change or old vs new, it isn’t just a clash over policy, but a fundamental disagreement over the shape of time itself.
I think that an appreciation of such an ontological difference may make the other party appear less bonkers.
3. The question of tradition vs change/progress
Tradition provides a sense of belonging and identity, but risks stagnation and tyranny; change drives growth and progress but can disrupt the social order. Although left vs right split is not identical to change vs tradition, the historical and ideological overlap is why these sides often disagree.
Most people appreciate tradition; it's more than just the old way; it's a survival strategy developed over generations to manage physical, social, and cultural risks. By nature, tradition lasts, it's resilient, persistent. The contention is when a tradition is at odds with human rights.
Human rights are meant for everyone everywhere, and they should take priority over cultural rights in case of conflict. However, because our sense of morality is deeply shaped by our specific cultures, which vary around the world, this universality does not hold. It is a constant challenge to agree on a single set of rights that applies to everyone.
To be sure, the goal of progress is rarely total destruction, though it may feel that way to the traditionalist. Conversely, the goal of tradition is stability, though it may feel like stagnation to the reformer.
Circling back to whether or not same sex-couples form a traditional family unit, at its heart, its about whether to honor traditions or change them. And while change inevitably happens, the essence of a tradition is its permanence [3].
Do you lock the gates before you sleep?
Security—whether of family, community, or property—demands a baseline of pessimism. Caution is the job description. To prevent lapses, security providers overprepare and overspend. They understand that deterrence is built on the enemy's fear of consequences.
Stronger borders
Lethal (read brutal) policing
Massive or disproportional response
I contend that the act of providing security is inherently a conservative function; regardless of our leanings, we all become conservative when we lock our doors.
However, the left’s focus on social justice and welfare often necessitates a trade-off that loosens security. Whereas conservatives, who see themselves as guardians of life and property, apply the same high alert security mindset to the preservation of tradition.
Closing
Years ago, my compass pointed left. When ‘post-truth’ became Oxford Dictionaries word of the year 2016, I too was persuaded. But after a while, I grew suspicious of the constant virtue-signaling.
Watching the complexities of the modern world unfold, I question the view that every new generation is naturally superior to the last.
Now, what excites me is mastering the self. And traditions and wisdom of the past seem to bring me closer to one thing that I actually want - clarity.
Do same-sex couples form a traditional family unit? If I side with the left, the destination still feels wrong.
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Notes
[1] Some modern political paradoxes that puzzles the mind: multiculturalism but also universal values, more individual liberty but also more collective responsibility, more freedom of choice but also larger government control for welfare, the gender-equality paradox. On the right, small government but also a strong state, free market but also protectionism, individual freedom but also social conservatism.
[2] From Johnathan Haidt’s work
[3] A sentiment I first read in ‘Tradition – Constancy Is More Important than Change’ by Gergely Szilvay, Hungarian Conservative, 2021
Jiu-jitsu therapy
I’ll never forget the day when I heard my father telling someone on the phone that I do Kung-fu. Under any sensible criteria, nobody seeks a combat sport that requires you to keep T. rex arms. I didn’t.
But jiu-jitsu is found by accident.
We exchange pleasantries by asking how the knee is doing. Your friends are people who have choked you. But it’s undeniable that the time spent on the mats is full of laughs.
This essay won’t describe a Kimura. And persuasion is a different matter. Instead, this is an exploration on why I find jiu-jitsu therapeutic.
Let’s start with a question - Why are humans the dominant species?
Intelligence. Speech. Cooperation.
Now throw your hands in the mix. Literally. Human hands can push, pull, scoop and carry. We make strong grips, soft grips, precision grips. We manipulate objects. We use tools. We drive. We dress ourselves. Animals don’t.
The ability to use our hands (the palms, thumbs and fingers) in wildly different ways is a key factor that elevates humans to the top. To be clear, the mind is all powerful. But it is the skillful use of our hands that helps bring ideas and visions to life.
The hands become an extension of the mind - an extraordinary tool for exercising brain power. Books, paintings, buildings, machines, the internet, almost all important inventions have come by when the hands have kept up with the head. So my suspicion is simple, that brainy things have a touch of the hand.
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Many combat athletes agree that jiu-jitsu feels more cerebral. I believe it is so because we have more ways of using the hands. More positions, more attacks, more escapes, more transitions, more details - in essence, we have more ways of fighting in jiu-jitsu.
Once the fight hits the ground, in many ways our legs or feet become two additional hands as we maneuver our body over the opponent. And if two hands makes you human, then doesn’t four make you superhuman?
When I roll on the mats, I am fully and truly in the moment. No dwelling in the past or daydreaming about the future. The task is clear and present. Plus, the endorphin high after? Now that’s pure therapy.
“To train in BJJ is to continually drown—or, rather, to be drowned, in sudden and ingenious ways—and to be taught, again and again, how to swim,” says Sam Harris in his 2012 essay titled The pleasures of drowning.
I am also obsessed by the fact that jiu-jitsu translates to gentle art.
We didn't start the fire
Part 1 - Questions
This Billy Joel song came out when he was 40. It consists of 119 references to major events around the world from 1949 to 1989. Now and then, I consider writing of subsequent events. After all, my year of birth picks up from where he left off.
I hope to include a good mix of events. Sadly, wars and armed conflicts are part of the mix.
Is it really an exaggeration to say that over half the world is fighting?
One source lists 42 ongoing wars and armed conflicts globally (World Population Review 2024). Another source monitors around 110 of them, of which 45 are in the Middle East and North Africa alone (Geneva Academy 2024). Some benefit from better media coverage than others.
This essay will not cover warfare. I won’t look into the geopolitical narratives of war, rebellion or intervention, nor the rationales of power and control. I feel there is something more elusive at play that sets the stage for conflict.
To be sure, the importance and benefits of culture cannot be overstated. There is no civilization without culture. It is from which all meanings come. If we were to abandon culture, we would go back to living in caves.
However, since I have become somewhat politically and culturally conscious, it seems to me that culture is inextricably linked to conflict. Differences in cultural values and beliefs seem to put people at odds with each other. There always seems to be 'them versus us,' not only in conversations among lawmakers, commentators and activists, but even around the dinner table.
My deliberations about conflict and culture have led me to a series of questions. Before I present them, I attempt to give a working definition for culture and briefly introduce Galtung’s triangle of violence.
Culture and Cultural Violence
[Disclaimer: Culture is a vast subject. It has many sub-fields of study, including those that critique it. There are many definitions of culture. And I try to keep it simple to begin this informal philosophical inquiry. It is also important to state that a strict academic treatment is beyond the scope of this essay.]
Culture is peculiar to humans. Its basic function is expansion and security of life. Early humans acted on instinct, but over time, they developed learned behaviors determined by survival. These evolved to patterns, handed down through generations, and finally to a system of things and events beyond senses alone (Britannica 2024).
To put it simply, culture is a shared way of life for a group of people. It includes common beliefs, values, behaviours and assumptions. It also includes a shared model of thinking, feeling, reacting and problem solving. There is also the unfamiliar culture problem, because individuals cannot accurately perceive, interpret, explain and predict the behaviour of people from different cultural backgrounds (PSU 2023).
Not only that all humans are cultural beings by virtue of being raised in them, but culture yields a massive influence on personality. Britannica quotes "Culture is stronger than life and stronger than death” highlighting practices of celibacy in some cultures and the ritualistic suicide by disembowelment (seppuku or hara-kiri).
I am changing gears here. Johan Galtung, sometimes referred to as the ‘father of peace studies,’ gave the triangle of violence which enumerated three types of violence: direct, structural and cultural (JSTOR 1969, 1990). Direct violence is physical violence or direct abuse. This violence is more visible and the perpetrators and victims are generally known.
Structural violence is that which is built into the social, economic or political structures. For example inequality between groups or discrimination against a particular group. This form of indirect violence is often less visible.
And finally, cultural violence, which refers to the existence of dominant norms so deeply rooted in a given culture that it makes direct violence and structural violence seem natural or acceptable. Cultural violence includes certain features or aspects of culture, and not entire cultures, that can be used to legitimize or justify violence. Culture has many domains: for example religion, ideology, language, art, economics and sciences. And cultural violence can be present in any or all of them. This type of violence is very difficult to identify.
The three types work together and reinforce each other. I encourage readers to think of examples for each type of violence from the past or present.
Before moving to the next section, some of the ideas are worth repeating: that culture has evolved into a system beyond senses alone; that culture has a powerful influence on humans; that there is the problem of unfamiliar culture; that cultural violence are those values and beliefs so integral to a given culture that makes violence acceptable; and that of the three types, cultural violence is the most elusive.
In the beginning I alluded to a possible link between cultures and conflicts. I argue that cultural violence is that link, and therefore, it is the primary theme of this essay.
Now the questions that eat me
Cultural diversity is a reality.
That there are cultural differences, is also a reality.
Do reasonably peaceful people exist in all cultures? Yes, with certainty. Unfortunately, the peaceful majority aren’t causing the conflicts.
Let’s nuance the question a bit - do violent people exist in peaceful cultures? The answer is not so straightforward. Do peaceful cultures exist? Is there even one that is a hundred percent peaceful? And if there are such cultures that are close to being peaceful, how big or relevant are they?
Why do cultures survive?
A culture must fight external influences to prevent its extinction. It survives by ensuring that its subscribers continue to grow. It survives by reproducing itself through generations. A culture survives by protecting itself.
It’s important to develop the last point - protection from whom? Other cultures? And will a culture survive if there are not those who would die to protect it? Will a culture survive if there are not those who would kill to protect it? And if such people do not exist, will a culture survive at all? And is the need to protect itself the gateway for cultural violence?
Is culture both a refuge (for insiders) and a tyranny (for the unwanted)?
A culture emphasizes its importance. A culture is designed to stay relevant. They compete with each other. If war is the continuation of politics, I wonder what is the continuation of culture. If two cultures are different, will it not always be “them versus us”? And as long as a culture exists, is cultural violence not a means to an end? Can culture exist without cultural violence?
On coexistence - can someone respect all cultures equally? Can someone respect all cultures and respect all of humanity at the same time? Can humanism trump all cultures? Can any culture respect all of humanity equally? Is it possible for someone to follow a particular religion while considering people from other faiths as its equal? To be clear, treating all cultures with equality is not the same as cultures treating each other as their equal.
In graduate school, once in a lecture, we played with the idea that ethnic origin is the source of all differences, that ethnicity precedes any culture. Now if the root cause for conflict is buried in ethnicity, then who the hell knows how they came to be. Needless to say that various cultures differ with respect to the beliefs concerning the origin of our species.
Cultural violence is deadlier than it seems. And I wonder, is this the fire we didn't start? As the song goes - It was always burning, since the world’s been turning. To fight the fire surely means to contain cultural violence.
To end with a small positive, I believe those who explore different cultures are the real changemakers. Those who don’t are part of the problem. Galtung discussed cultural peace, which aims to be the opposite of cultural violence, as an area for further research. However, I feel it is crucial to understand the nature of culture itself. And that can mean welcoming paradoxes in our lives. Examining culture may lead us to confront questions about human nature itself - on how we are all capable of love, as well as enmity. If you break down the iceberg of culture, you get more icebergs.
So who really did start the fire? Or are humans designed to never find out?
Part 2 of this essay will feature freshest, original answers from contributors of the Permeate magazine.