Here at the frontier, the leaves fall like rain. Although my neighbors are all barbarians, and you, you are a thousand miles away, there are still two cups at my table.


Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

~ Wu-men ~


Sunday, January 29, 2012

Beginning Anew

Another excellent article at the Classical Budoka. An excerpt is below. The whole article may be read here. Martial arts isn't about organizations or styles, but the people who study, teach and practice them.


For several years, I didn’t have any formal connections to any iaido organization. Since the death of my main iai teacher in Japan several years ago, things got weird real fast in the home dojo, and the local kendo/iaido group that my club once happily worked with also got weird on us. Nobody wanted us all of a sudden.

For several years, I felt cast adrift. There was so much more left to learn in my iai system. Friends offered ideas to help me out of my dilemma and even opportunities to join their systems, but I was never quite satisfied with their solutions until this past December. I got back together with a fellow student of my iai teacher. He had an advanced degree, faced the same problems, and found his own solutions.

2 comments:

walt said...

"One has to have the flexibility of mind and spirit..."

Good point, to tie off his interesting account. Life does have a way of nudging (or booting) one into new lines of work, and study.

When I was younger, it was all about "body"; now it's broader/deeper, and equally about breath, mind, energy, spirit.

Good article, Rick!

Rick Matz said...

It was a great post by the Classical Budoka.