Do you have a good connection?

En no kirinai

has been one of the important teaching of Sensei at Daikomyo sai and ever since then in is classes at the Honbu or in Ayase. Do not severe the connexion so that you can reach a different level in your ability.

As I told my students in December:

“During last daikomyo sai, Sensei asked us to not severe the connexion (en no kirinai) between uke and tori and within their mutual environment. This is only possible when reaching the mushin state of action where kûkan becomes a reality. Like photons and stardust colliding in space, their encounter reveals the intention and allows the body to flow in a natural manner”.

Since then I also understood that this connexion should not be severed within our own self.  The connexion within ourself, our opponent(s), and our environment is vital to our survival. Not only can we react to the ever changing situation but we become able to stop thinking. To quote sensei‘s:

“if I do not know what I’m going to do next how do you want uke to be able to decipher my future movements?”

This thinking and not thinking thing is the key to understand the Shu Ha Ri (see previous articles) as by not thinking you become permeable to the multiple informations received by your 6 senses (the regular 5 + Shiki – consciousness). Failure is created by thinking and analysing wrongly a situation because our attention is mainly focused on a few parameters only instead of encompassing the whole.

This ability will then allow us to reach the  mushin state. As I wrote many years ago:

 If earth does not think; if water  does not think; if fire does not think; if wind does not think;  and if emptiness does not think, then why do YOU think?

I will explain in detail one day this  idea of photons and stardust but for now we only have to understand that photons do not think (as far as we know); that stardust do not think (as far as we know) and that they are totally invisible from an external observer until they collide on one another. The techniques are the same, you do not want to do anything, you react to  a complex set of parameters without analysing (i.e. without thinking).

You are connected, you are one, you are zero.

Author: kumablog

I share here on a regular basis my thoughts about the Bujinkan martial arts, training in Japan and all over the world, and View all posts by kumablog