As I no longer practice a Japanese martial art, but strive for the same ends through distance running and Taijiquan, I call what I do "Budo with a small 'b'."
Over at The Budo Bum, there was a very good article about just exactly what Budo really is. An excerpt is below. The full post can be read here.
What
we do in the dojo needs to be real. It’s budo, not sport or
athletics or some kind of game. We are practicing the serious art of
controlled violence. This an art where mistakes have consequences. As
Ellis Amdur points out so well in his essay The
Real Importance Of Reishiki In Koryu,
even the little things are critical. Even in arts that don’t seem
to have any direct application in the 21st century such as naginata
or kenjutsu have to be treated as real or the true value and lessons
that the art has to teach are lost. What does it mean though, for
budo to be “real”?
For budo to remain real, and not devolve into rhythmic gymnastics, a mindless dance or a meaningless competition, we have to remember what it is we are training ourselves for; at the most basic level, real budo training treats life seriously.
Proper
keiko
constantly
reminds you how serious it is, even in the little things. All those
nit-picky little requirements about how a bokken
or
other weapon is handled, about never stepping over weapons and how
you interact with everyone in the dojo
all
reflect that seriousness. Weapons, whether they are shinken
(live
blades) or wooden practice pieces, are treated with full regard for
the damage they can do. Wooden practice weapons are handled just like
the real thing, because you don’t want to have sloppy or careless
habits when handling the real thing.
Live
blades are merciless. They don’t forgive mistakes anymore than a
firearm does. For all the care I take, I’ve still cut myself a
couple of times. Those were just shallow cuts that reminded me what I
do is very serious, even when we’re not actively doing kata. Those
nitpicky teachers insisting that there is only one proper way to
handle your weapons and that even wooden swords should always be
treated like they are live are not being pedantic. They know how much
damage the weapons can do and do not want you to learn the hard way.
Humans
are liable to distraction and hurry. If we always do something the
same way, it becomes an unconscious habit and the way we do things
even when we are distracted. If you start out with a bokken
or
iaito
and
always handle it like a shinken,
then you will handle the shinken
properly
when your teacher hands it to you. When I started iai, I did so with
an iaito. A couple of years later we had a new student
join the dojo who didn’t have his own iaito yet. While he was
waiting for his iaito to arrive, Takada Sensei walked over to me one
day, undid his sageo, took his shinken
out
of his obi,
handed it to me and said “Give your iaito to him and you practice
with this until his iaito arrives.” Sensei didn’t give me any
special instruction about how to handle his shinken,
he just handed it to me and went on teaching the new student. Sensei
was confident that I had absorbed the lessons about proper weapons
handling from training correctly with the iaito.
Takada
Sensei was confident that his teaching had prepared me to handle a
shinken
without
giving me any additional warnings. The kata teaching method works
well. I handled Sensei’s shinken
the
same way I handled my iaito
and
didn’t have any issues with it. The proper technique was ingrained
to the point of unconscious competence and came forth from my hands
naturally and easily.
Even
when it is not shinken
shobu,
budo must be treated with the seriousness of a shinken.
We
train seriously with wood and bamboo weapons so that when the moment
comes and we find ourselves holding the real thing, when it’s not
kata but life, the right things happen without conscious effort. The
little things are the big things.
No comments:
Post a Comment