Coming up on a weekend of intense training, I find myself in focus.
Not so many words, many experimentations in my own attitude.
I have been doing budo since I was 19 years old. I wanted to study when I was about 13, but my parents just laughed at me. In any case, good teachers of classical arts, were in short supply in Austin, TX when I was 13.
I will be 43 this year (2011). The Japanese sword was, and has always been, my first love (after lightsabers of course).
My study of SMR Jodo, is to me, like a study of the opposition. It's a fond, interested study, and I love the depth and range of the art. Like Heinlein, I believe that specialization, is for insects.
If I had not met the people I have met, who were also interested in this art involving four feet of oak dowel, I might not have found such an interest.
Interesting people, generate interest.
I know that my own presence, as a native sword devotee, improves the practice of the poor sods stuck with me.
I have spent my entire adult life, studying three-foot razor blades, and various types of physical conflict.
In all honesty, it has made me a far more chilled-out person, than many who have not explored the concept in the depths I have.
There is no place, like the training place.
Three feet of razor steel, hone a person to a place of simple honesty, simply because of the difficulty of properly using the instrument.
If you are in the right place, all movements are both bold and minimal.
There are no gestures.. no movement means nothing.
Everything is culturally, ryuha, family, group correct.
There are no individual movements.
Everything you do, every movement you make, tells people who your influences are.
Everything else is an accident, until you make it Work.
Shu.
Ha.
Ri.
This is Japanese Budo.
It is a puzzle, for the Westerner, of embodiment.
To become so completely spacious and empty, to embody this culture so far from our own, in everything from language, to culture, to strategy, requires an effort from the practicioner, which much come from their very soul.
This is, if I understand, true of native Japanese, as well.
For myself, orphaned on several different continental areas at once, I shall strive for curiosity.
That is the lesson I am carrying with me, along with as much empty space as I can bring with me, to learn more.
Not so many words, many experimentations in my own attitude.
I have been doing budo since I was 19 years old. I wanted to study when I was about 13, but my parents just laughed at me. In any case, good teachers of classical arts, were in short supply in Austin, TX when I was 13.
I will be 43 this year (2011). The Japanese sword was, and has always been, my first love (after lightsabers of course).
My study of SMR Jodo, is to me, like a study of the opposition. It's a fond, interested study, and I love the depth and range of the art. Like Heinlein, I believe that specialization, is for insects.
If I had not met the people I have met, who were also interested in this art involving four feet of oak dowel, I might not have found such an interest.
Interesting people, generate interest.
I know that my own presence, as a native sword devotee, improves the practice of the poor sods stuck with me.
I have spent my entire adult life, studying three-foot razor blades, and various types of physical conflict.
In all honesty, it has made me a far more chilled-out person, than many who have not explored the concept in the depths I have.
There is no place, like the training place.
Three feet of razor steel, hone a person to a place of simple honesty, simply because of the difficulty of properly using the instrument.
If you are in the right place, all movements are both bold and minimal.
There are no gestures.. no movement means nothing.
Everything is culturally, ryuha, family, group correct.
There are no individual movements.
Everything you do, every movement you make, tells people who your influences are.
Everything else is an accident, until you make it Work.
Shu.
Ha.
Ri.
This is Japanese Budo.
It is a puzzle, for the Westerner, of embodiment.
To become so completely spacious and empty, to embody this culture so far from our own, in everything from language, to culture, to strategy, requires an effort from the practicioner, which much come from their very soul.
This is, if I understand, true of native Japanese, as well.
For myself, orphaned on several different continental areas at once, I shall strive for curiosity.
That is the lesson I am carrying with me, along with as much empty space as I can bring with me, to learn more.
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