for love and money

This post is written to answer a question submitted by a reader posing a conflict between the spiritual nature of Taekwondo and the business aspects of running a dojang.

I will post the email in its entirety, and then I will address specific parts of the email. Here is the suggestion/requests I received:

“Please make a post advising people who are conflicted between fully immersing themselves into the spiritual, lifelong journey side of Taekwondo, and the contradicting fact that it is a real business where sometimes the money and the client-owner relationship become all too disturbingly real. Even if it’s not a mcdojang, all schools remain part of the commercial industry. Comment on how you know, with 100% certainty, whether the relationship you have with the dojang owner is swayed by the fiscal issues at all. When thoughts of either being a cherished student or a rent contribution creep in? And, once you are certain that you are more of one than the other, how can you be so sure? Or if it does not matter and yet you still feel it does, or if you place a great value on an honest mutual relationship, how do you deal with the turmoil within when it arises? Decisions. A solid post on this would help many people, those in the midst of distinguishing between what is real and what is portrayed. As always, thank you.

—Jake”

Firstly, Jake, thanks for reading and for caring enough to engage in this way. My first thought is that perhaps you are the one who should write the post! You seem to have a lot of thoughts on it.

My second thought is that if the question is for yourself, it is worded in an interesting, albeit somewhat detached and academic, fashion. Perhaps my thoughts on the form of your request are not so relevant, though, in the end. It is a good topic, and I hope you’ll forgive my scrutiny of the questions posed. I’m not done with that scrutiny, and I think examining the presuppositions in your wording will give us good opportunity to expand on the topic.

For example, although you see a contradiction between the spiritual, life-long journey one undertakes when training in martial arts and the fact that it is a business for the teacher and dojang owner…I do not.

Does the fact that a grocer profits from the selling of her produce contradict the full belly you get after eating a meal cooked from those vegetables? Does the profit a clothes store makes from selling you garments contradict the good feeling you get from wearing those clothes? Does the profit contradict the function of those clothes? Not at all. These are two separate things. And the dojang owner, the grocer, the vendor: they need to make a living. And we want them to, especially if we highly value what they offer us. I know I want my dojang to be doing well, financially, because this means we can have a good space to work out in, as well as regularly replaced heavy bags and dummies and kicking pads.

“Comment on how you know, with 100% certainty, whether the relationship you have with the dojang owner is swayed by the fiscal issues at all.”

I know very little in this life with 100% certainty. And I can’t be sure what you mean by “swayed,” so I’m not sure how to answer this. The sentence begins by asking me—in very specific terms—to be “100% sure” of something, ultimately, quite vague. This renders the question unanswerable in its current form.

And this is probably a good time to add that I’m not expert at assessing such things anyway. I’m one person, with his experience in training at two different dojangs, over a period of almost three years (if we skip the break I took between training periods.) Then…I wonder if I really need my relationship with the dojang owner to be 100% separate from what I pay them to attend. Wouldn’t 92% separation be enough? Would 84% be acceptable? Why not?

I guess, ultimately, I don’t expect any two things in life are wholly unrelated. Whether it is the way a friend speaks to me and the lunch they ate earlier, or if it is my relationship with the proprietor of a business and the dues I pay them (especially not those two things!). This may not be as concrete and satisfactory an answer you were looking for…and if not, feel free to comment further below and fine tune your question. I’ll do my best to respond in a helpful way. I don’t want to guess at what I think you mean…but if you asked me something far more blunt than what you have—for example, “how do you know that your teacher’s care for your progress is genuine or if they only pretend to care about you when in fact they see you purely as a paycheck?”—I could answer more bluntly in kind. I think, in looking over your questions, it becomes difficult to answer satisfactorily because of the form they take. You avoid personal and subjective phrasing that springs out of your own experience or is obviously shaped by personal questions, but in doing so and aiming for a more academic and removed phrasing, end up in a vague, undefined space.

“… When thoughts of either being a cherished student or a rent contribution creep in?”

So, for the sake of clarity, I’m going to distill your comment above as “let us assume that in the course of training, a person has doubts as to how genuine their relationship with their instructor is. What can she or he do to determine how grounded these doubts are in reality?” (If this rephrasing is merely semantics to your mind, I thank you for bearing with me as I put your words into a shape I can deal with in the name of paying respect to the intent I glean from them.)

To this, I can answer: check your gut. But first, check your head.

a) Do you carry some romantic notion that the owner of a business should go poor for you? Or that your need to receive their goods is more important than any other consideration?

b) Do you feel the only true teacher of a martial art is already rich, and so will not have the same needs as other people to make a living?

c) Do you feel that profit sullies the instruction of martial arts?

Answering these questions for yourself will help you know ahead of time what type of teacher to look for. But if you think that a dojang owner should not be allowed to make a living or make a profit, you are going to have a hard time finding a dojang to join.

If you want more mundane advice (and you hardly need to come here for that), I’d say shop around. Check prices. And then make sure to stop by each place and feel out the vibe. And the method of teaching. Do you like it? Does the price make sense in terms of the space and condition of the gear and pads? I have my own checkboxes when I scope out a dojang. I want the owner and primary teacher to be Korean (or of the culture they teach from). I want a broader scope than pure combat training; I want the spiritual/philosophical angle to be sincere and everpresent. I want the owner of a dojang to be at least 5th degree black belt. But even a 3rd Dan could conceivably run a superb dojang. And even those criteria don’t address the spine that runs through your questions: this dilemma posed between profit and martial arts teaching.

For example, your words pose an either/or situation between being a “cherished student,” OR being a “rent contribution.” But can you not be a cherished student because you bring passion, work hard, and improve the aura and functionality of the dojang AND because you pay dues which help the dojang to thrive? I do not see a dilemma there, personally. After all, it would be hard to cherish a patron of your business if they stopped paying you! No matter how spiritual a life your teacher lives, if they run a business, they have expenses. And unless they live in a yurt on someone else’s land and hitchhike into the city each day, they need to make a profit at it.

“And, once you are certain that you are more of one than the other, how can you be so sure?”

To be honest, at the end of your email I get a little confused by the wording. I am not trying to mock your writing, but for example, to the sentence above I can only answer that if you are certain…well, that’s how you are sure! Because being certain is being sure.

So let me sum up, and not try to understand or specifically answer any more of the email, because the remaining parts feel both contradictory and vague, in turns. Let me try to address what I sense is the crux of your entire question, and also underline the points I’ve been trying to make as I go. Forgive me for making some assumptions, or offering distillations of your words that you did not directly state. I do this in the name of most thoroughly addressing what I take to be the core of your questions; the dilemma you carry in your perception of what a dojang is and what martial arts are. And I would start by saying this “turmoil” you speak of seems to me, to be rooted in a fantastic (as in fantasy-based) notion of how martial arts could be taught and undertaken in the country I live in. I think I’ve taken on that idea enough by now, though. It is the illusion that simply because martial arts can offer us a beautiful and spiritual experience, money ought not to be made on the instruction of same. How to deal with that turmoil, you ask. I say: deconstruct the fallacious idea, and the resultant feelings will decay. Unless we are talking about hardwired responses to biological needs, our emotions rise as a result of thought structures they are dependent upon.

I am, I remind you, only answering from my limited experience. If I had attended ten dojangs, and sampled a variety of teaching methods and relationships and business styles, I might have a more complete, more universal view on your questions. If I had a bad experience where I felt a person was faking everything and only trying to get rich from teaching martial arts, I’d probably be seething and have a lot to say about such charlatans. (I chuckle, thinking of trying to get rich from running a dojang. It doesn’t seem the smartest route to wealth.) But I haven’t had that experience.

So I don’t pretend that this is something you could print in a manual to All Who Seek Instruction in Martial Arts. I can only offer my experience. And if, in my experience, I ever felt my instructors were insincere in what they were teaching, or that greed shaped the comments they made to me, I’d not attend their dojang.

Additionally, I’d ask the prospective martial arts student: if you are getting a good product, what does it matter to you that the person offering it wants to make money on it? What you want is a good product. If you have that, it should be worth paying for. Right?

It is true that in my current dojang, the owner always tries to work with money problems. If you need gear but are broke, he will often let you run a tab to pay it off. If you fall behind a month or two on dues, you may pay a small late fee, but nobody is kicking you out. I have plenty of signals that tell me this man values the relationships he has formed, and that the martial art is of intense value to him, as is the proper teaching of this art (although 40-something years of practice should tell us all we need to know). Signals that are obvious such as the ones I just listed. But also more nuanced signs, and those are ones you have to trust your own belly to pick up on.

But even if he were less lenient on money matters, I’d not necessarily see that as troublesome. People need to feed themselves. If we want to focus on greedy, harmful elements of society, we could look to the health industry. How dare people be deprived of dental care because they can’t pay? How dare our hospitals and doctors charge phenomenal prices to heal us? How dare we accept a society where those with money can comfortably treat their every sickness, while the poor sicken and die from treatable disease? These are true travesties. Martial arts? That is not a necessity. It is more of an extra.

If you really want to condition yourself and learn martial arts, you can find black belts and befriend them. Even without a dojang, a 1st degree black belt is qualified to show a novice basic technique. Barter something simple with them for but 15 minutes of their time. Ask them to show you the form of some basic kicks and then go home and practice them on your own. Hundreds of times. Thousands of times. You can check in with them from time to time and get pointers or more fine tuning; barter more goods or services, or pay a small fee—one you are both comfortable with. You can work on your aerobic conditioning at home. You can improve your technique over time. You can practice simple self-defense moves. But if you want to attend a dojang, wear belts, wear doboks, make faster progress, and gain the benefit of experience that takes a lifetime to gain (my teacher is 9th Dan), then you pay for these things. You pay for a uniform just as you pay for your own clothes. You pay dues to help cover rent of the space you practice in just as you pay for a parking space every month that your car occupies. And you pay your teacher for their time and experience just as you’d pay any teacher.

While there is always overlap to different degrees, people may have different priorities for training. Some people see martial arts as a spiritual and physical project, and they embrace it with great passion, working toward a series of goals independent of the belts they wear. Some come more to socialize, to take part in the dojang community. Some embark on journeys to overcome fears. Some want to lose weight in an interesting way. Some want to be seen as a martial artist, and are mostly caught up in artifice and prestige. Your reasons will determine what kind of martial artist you are, despite what amount you pay. And if you get what you need out of training, then you are a satisfied customer. It is not my business what kind of martial artist you are, really. And it is not my business how well a dojang owner does, financially, as long as I am not exploited. And if you don’t know whether or not you are being exploited by someone, you will have problems in all areas of life and a dojang will be the least of your worries.

My dojang community is an enriching one. We do not just train together. We talk together outside of class. We share rides places. We eat out together. We party together. We hike mountains together. We share a true respect for our master. These are the things I want from my dojang.

Perhaps I can’t answer anything with 100% finality or sureness. But really, that has to come from the student. Not from me, but from you. Do you feel cherished? Are you improving? Are you gaining something from training where you train? If so, is it worth what you pay?

If yes, stay. If no, go. It really is that simple.