WIE: In any practice, physical or spiritual, some would be reluctant to yield their freedom—for example the freedom to decide for themselves what they are and aren't comfortable with—to a hierarchical teaching structure. In order to achieve mastery, why do you feel it's necessary to submit yourself to a master or mentor?

Callos: My instructor's name is Ernie Reyes Sr., and I've known him for twenty-five years. We've traveled together; we've slept in the same bed; we've eaten off the same plate. We've been as close as you can be without being mates. But I never call him “Ernie”—he's always “Master.” In Korean, we use the word “Kwan Ja Nim,” which means “Master Instructor, Sir.” I call him Kwan Ja Nim Ernie because I don't need another Ernie in my life. Ernie can't get me to do what my Master Instructor can get me to do. My friends can't get me to do what this guy can get me to do.

You need somebody in your life who when they speak, you'll listen. When you're troubled, when you're having a spiritual crisis, you need to find that person who you respect enough to listen to. That relationship between junior and senior is one of the best things about Eastern culture. It doesn't have to be a martial arts instructor. It could be anybody who has fought the internal battle that is needed to come from a centered place and give decent advice. In this sense, maybe the martial arts teacher replaces some of the structure of the community that we've lost—the village wise man or the shaman who people went to for advice when they wouldn't listen to anybody else.

WIE: So it's precisely the hierarchy in your relationship with your teacher that creates a field of respect and honor and humility—a field that wouldn't be there if he were just Ernie?

Callos: That's right. And that's an Asian concept. I don't think I would have had that experience if I hadn't been in the martial arts, because a lot of times in our culture, we don't let anybody be ahead of us. I never listened to my father, but I always listened to my instructor. That's his or her power. Now, some aspects of Asian culture are just completely frigging garbage. When I was coming up as a young instructor, I was more Korean than the Koreans. I was rougher and meaner than they were; when I walked into my school, eight hundred people stood up and bowed. And I think there's a natural process of evolution as a leader where you have to let go of that kind of control. A lot of martial arts is influenced by the Japanese and by the military, and I think we have to evolve beyond the limitations of those cultures and start looking for heroes outside the martial arts community. We have to look to the Nobel Peace Prize winners or others like that to find the path, because it's not often that we're going to find spiritually evolved heroes in the martial arts.

WIE: In the name of freedom, many of us grew up rebellious, self-centered, and suspicious of structure and discipline, and more often than not, as a result, we have not done so well in our adult lives—as parents, for example.

Callos: The yin-yang symbol that Bruce Lee used isn't there by accident—you need structure and discipline, and you also need the freedom from structure that makes creativity possible. The magic of the martial arts is rooted in personal development, and as you progress, you evolve. Once you feel like you can defend yourself, for example, then that's no longer a concern. You begin to understand the free-flowing nature of movement and form and the importance of breathing and clearing your head and focusing on one thing at a time. Now, at my age and level of experience, the highest level of martial arts that I know is the ability to be spontaneous and to create on the fly and not to be hemmed in by structure. Surprise and creativity and experimentation are where it's at in my world.

Bruce Lee put up a mock gravestone in his LA studio that said, “In memory of a once fluid man crammed and distorted by the classical mess.” He felt restrained by inflexibility in the martial arts world—rigidity about the arts themselves, but also about life. Was it Lao-tzu who said that the one kind of tree that blows over in the wind is the one that's unbending? Life is about yielding and letting go, you know, blowing over and coming back up. I tell my students in the test that if your goal is to be a master martial artist, then you're really missing the mark. Because your goal should be to be an evolved human being. Being a warrior is not big enough—it's too small a piece of the pie. We often use the metaphor of the warrior in the martial arts, and I think we aspire to be warriors because we consider it to be noble. But it's much harder to be a self-actualized human being than it is to be a warrior.

WIE: But I thought the classic definition of the warrior was very positive—that to be a warrior meant to be spiritually awake and deeply centered, to fearlessly embrace life and change?

Callos: The positive dimension of being a warrior is the spiritual path that the warrior takes. When I was a kid starting out, my instructors gave us five simple concepts: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, and indomitable spirit. And the warrior's path, in a positive light, goes back to what my instructors said to me then—that I was my worst enemy. As simple and as clichéd as that sounds, it's the essence of martial arts training.

Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo, was one of the first guys to attach the word “do,” or “way,” to martial arts, making it a way of life. And the way is conquering yourself. You know, I wish it were something more complicated, some science we could apply, because that would make it a lot easier. But it really comes down to the warrior's journey. If you're looking at yourself as if you're on a journey, then there's going to be a story written. Now what will that story be? Are you Odysseus going on a quest? Are you being a victim, or are you an active participant? Are you punishing yourself for making mistakes, or do you learn from them? How fully have you embraced a sense of personal responsibility for what happens in the world?

WIE: Is there any way that you would reinterpret the path of the warrior for modern times?

Callos: I've made my life out of self-defense, and I've come to realize that the average person like me is more likely to get wiped out by relationship issues than by a physical attack. I would wager that more people will be hurt or die this year as a result of things we have done to our environment than will be hurt or killed by kicks and punches in the next decade. More than some assailant wearing a mask in an alley, it's our mediocrity we have to worry about, our acceptance of the status quo. It's our lack of awareness of what we're doing to the rest of the planet.

I heard recently that if everybody in the United States just kept their tires properly inflated, we'd save a hundred million barrels of oil in a year—as much as we'll produce by drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Now that kind of concept is what the Ultimate Black Belt Test is all about. It's about taking small things and, because of the amount of people doing them or because of the length of time you do them, having them turn into something that really makes a difference. Lao-tzu said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” And the modern path of the warrior is a spiritual quest that anybody can take.