Author: kumablog

Each time I return from Japan I keep thinking on the many things and ideas that sensei has given us during his classes. This is some kind of ritual that has developed into a necessary step for me to go further.

During one of his recent class Hatsumi sensei was saying: “I do not teach you death, I teach you Life”. But what is Life? Thinkers and philosophers have been dwelling on the subject for centuries and even though their conclusions are all interesting, what good is it for us poor budôka lost on this bujinkan path? To understand where we stand and discover how to handle this question we have to define “Life” according to our budô practice. Life is not death. Death is the easy way as once you are dead the physical life is no more the problem. Actually from a limited perspective death is the simplest solution but to develop our potential and become a bujin, a true human being we have to stay and build a life that is worth it.

The theme of this year, rokkon shôjô, gives us a hint. To be alive is to be happy but how to reach this happiness? Happiness is a positive state of mind that overwhelms us whatever hardship we endure. A climber on a new mountain path is often facing new challenges that push his abilities to their limits. Even if the climbing is tough and difficult, the happiness he encounters when reaching the summit is total. Actually the harder the path, the more happiness it generates. When things are easy we are pleased, when they are hard to get success makes us happy. When you learn a new movement in a class it takes time to reach this ETL (cf. previous articles on this blog). At first we are so wrong that it looks that we will never make it correctly. But after hard work and many mistakes we find the solution. We are finally happy like the climber on the summit (and if we can duplicate the movement we get even happier). Commitment to success is the key to happiness and as Saint Exupery wrote it, the most important part on the path is not the final destination but the many obstacles we had to overcome to get to the end.

Success is not given (and sometimes not achievable) but it triggers all our strength to reach it. Humans can do everything they want as long as they really try hard enough. Limiting our dreams to a dream state is wrong and the bujinkan leads us to understand that. You are what you want to be and not what the others want you to be. I see this like the blue pill and the red pill in the movie “the Matrix”. The bujinkan is the pill that breaks our illusions and gives us another choice for our lives.

So Life is about being yourself, leaving the omote and unfolding the ura. The tools we have to develop this ura are called: responsibility, courage, commitment, honesty.

Responsibility: You are responsible for your actions, always. You’d better accept it now because Life is about being “face value” and responsible. Responsibility is not taught at school or to put it better is not exactly what we are taught at school. Our educational system is mainly based on not doing things (don’t touch, don’t do this, don’t smoke, don’t drink). The power of the “don’ts” have shaped our behaviors year after year until we feel “happy” living within the norms of Society. This is not being responsible on the contrary it is blending with the common accepted life defined by others that keeps us in a “child state” during our whole life. This “sheep life” is a “cheap life”. The day you pushed the door of the dôjô is the day you have decided to be in charge of yourself and live your own life. Being responsible is the first step towards adulthood. But this requires a lot of courage.

Courage: We have to develop courage in all our actions. Courage is not something you can learn in a book it is something you build with time within yourself. It implies that you stop limiting yourself. One interesting thing about our self limitations (I cannot, I do not know, it is impossible, it’s too hard) is that you will always reach them. We are afraid of what we do not know so we create limitations to stay in the realm of the things we know. Courage is the opposite, it is going where we never went before and discovering new sensations (kankaku) and learning from new experiences. Fears are made by Society and the bujinkan helps us in many ways to push our limits and face our deepest fears and become better humans. Fear is a security attitude towards the unknown where courage is to adapt to the things that are unknown to us and for which we do not have ready-made answers. Courage is important but it requires a lot of commitment.

Commitment: Without commitment nothing can be achieved. Attending the classes in your dôjô twice a week is not commitment it is a routine! Commitment is the willingness to be the best amongst your peers. One of my favorite motto is primus inter pares or “first amongst your peers”. Being the first is ego if it is a personal decision but when the group recognizes you as the best and choses you as their leader, no one is unhappy. In the old days the chief of the tribe was the one chosen within the group to lead them to a better life. Leaders were chosen not imposed. The quality of your commitment to yourself and to your training is the foundation of your success. Whatever you want to achieve in your life requires true commitment, after all it is only between you and you and no one is going to walk the path for you. Your sensei is not going back from where he stands far away on the path to carry you on his back, you will have to walk on your own; he is a guide not a driver. Life is based on being committed and from the quality of your commitment depends your success. Being the first amongst your peers requires a strong commitment and strong values. From those many values, honesty is the one that matters the most.

Honesty: Cheating your way through life is a short vision, short term process. Be true to yourself and to others in life as in the dôjô you cannot cheat the others very long on your real value. Many high rank teachers in the bujinkan cheat their students on their technical abilities and often turns to some “spiritual esoteric path” to avoid facing the truth of their emptiness. If you have to be honest with others the main point is to be honest to yourself because you will be living with you for the rest of your life. Cheating others is not nice but cheating yourself  is wrong and stupid. Honesty is to be aware of who you are and where you stand; this is the starting point of your life as a true human being. Knowing what you are and who you are you can define the path to excellence in order to live a happy life.

Life is being able to read between the lines as sensei often says and about understanding that whatever you want you have the power within you to obtain it. Honesty gives you the starting point; commitment allows you to go further; courage pushes your limits; and the sense of responsibility makes you shine and recognized by your peers as the primus inter pares.

You can be who you want to be; do what you want to do; achieve all your dreams; and become a bujin, a true human being!

One day you have decided willingly to choose this difficult path, so now it is up to you to bloom or not. Hatsumi sensei doesn’t teach death, he teaches Life.

So, ura (red pill) or omote (blue pill)?

Be happy!

In order to make myself clear I did a chart representing the exponential curve for the Error Tolerance Level (ETL). It helps to understand better what I tried to explain with my words.

In the diagram:

the abscissa (X) represents the number of repetitions (from 1 to 1000) and

the ordinate Y) represents the EL in percent (from 0% to 100%).

The more we repeat the movement and the smaller the EL. We strive for the perfect movement but we know that we will never reach it as perfection is of divine essence. Our goal is to reach an acceptable level of error that does not change the outcome of the fight, this is the ETL oe error tolerance level.

It is like the time paradox of the arrow shot at the target and never reaching it in Zeno’s problem (cf. Plato, Aristotle, Zeno). To the mathematician mind we will never reach the perfect movement; but to the warrior mind it is good enough.

Often in the dôjô and in life we want things to be so perfect that we don’t do them. The bujinkan is teaching us to act instead of thinking. Remember Watzlawick in “Munchausen pigtail” writing that action must precede reflection (thinking).

This is a path of action we have taken by entering a bujinkan dôjô not an intellectual one.

Don’t forget it (but don’t think too much about it).

Flexibility of the mind is what gives us access to the power of our imagination and creativity.

As we all know the direct links existing between body & mind, some of us might find it easier to become first flexible in their body and then move up to the mind.

Flexibility is a natural state of mind and an ability acquired by the body. Training the body towards flexibility will help you get the same benefits with your brain.

Remember that nagare doesn’t think…

Friday night class with sensei was good as usual. Not so many people were there (less than 50) and we had enough space to apply the tachi kumiuchi feeling with the bô. Once again if you want to study bô jutsu or any of the long weapons, it is better to come to Japan when not so many people are there and summer seems to be the best option.

Sensei asked me to do a technique as he usually did. Opening the class is always a privilege but it is every time more difficult. In the past when he would ask me for a technique I was nearly in panic and the result was not very good even though he would always find something to do with it. Then over the years my confidence built in and I went through various stages: showing something worth it; doing it good; looking good; etc. At one point I was not scared any more of making mistakes. That was the first major evolution. Then as I am coming every four months my goal as to show him that I benefited from his lessons and evolved in my taijutsu.

Recently as I said  it became more difficult as my objective now is to be in adequacy with the theme of the year and to give him a movement where his kaitatsu imagination would unleash to help us go deeper in the theme of the year. As I attend around five classes each time I come to Japan the first class is easy but the following ones are so close from one another that I have to focus more on what he has been doing and what has been said in order to learn more from him.

A class with sensei is a mix of many things and often the things is saying bear more importance than the movements he is doing. Too many people come to Japan to do what they already know. This should be avoided at all costs! We do not come to do what we know but to discover new ways of doing the things we do badly. But for that we need to accept to make mistakes and to look bad. Too many egos won’t accept that.

By accepting to make mistakes during training we free ourselves from the result and discover a more natural way of behovioring in the dôjô and in life.

From this Friday class I learnt two things. First sensei was playing with the word tachi told us us that we had to stand upright in the technique and in life, once again the double meaning of jissen was obvious. Sensei used the image of the bowman pulling the string of his bow. In the technique use your shoulders to modify lightly the space between you and the opponent. Also, if you apply this you will keep your balance better and be in control of the tamashii.

The second thing that I clicked on was something I had the chance to speak with him when we had lunch in Tsukuba. I asked him if the tachi kumiuchi could be considered as the juppô sesshô of weapons and he spent the class reminding us that by saying it and by using many weapons: tantô, jutte, tachi, bô, yari and shikomi zue. The tachi has opened the last gate to natural movement as it put into motion the nagare in all our movements.

This class was also quite particular as sensei used Shiva as his uke many times. From my experience I see that as a symbol of recognition. We became direct students of sensei when we got our sakki test but when sensei is inviting you to attack this is something different. Not only are you recognized by him but also you become recognized by the whole bujinkan community. Congratulation Shiva for this new achievement in the ways of budô!

To reinforce it sensei drew a very nice makimono with a daruma to thank the Japanese consul in Bangalore.

The bujinkan through Hatsumi sensei’s guidance has really become international and we should never forget it and behave accordingly.

The bujinkan is much more than  a fighting system, it is about behaving like a true human being. Since we came here both Hatsumi sensei and Nagato sensei have been speaking about asobi, playfulness.

I remember sensei saying once that « missing a class was ok but that missing a joyful moment was wrong ». Happiness has to be found and lived when the occasion shows up.

And that was the case on Thursday night.

Noguchi sensei was born on the 6^th of August so for his last class I organized a small birthday party for him after training.

We celebrated his 68^th birthday with all the students who attended the class.

That was a true bujinkan evening.

Asobi and happiness altogether: good training in the takagi yôshin ryû and a nice b-day party.

Birthdays are occasions to gather and to know people from a different perspective.

We had brought cakes and sake and offered them to Noguchi sensei who seemed very touched by it. We all shared a little shoshu with him with a strong sense of friendship within this small buyu community.

Noguchi sensei has been the shihan who has helped me the most in my bujinkan training and I like to think that my taijutsu is the result of his many tips that he gave to me since 1990. To organize this was the least I could do as for once I was here in Japan on the good date.

When I got promoted by Hatsumi sensei to Jûdan back in 1993, the hombu dôjô didn’t exist and sensei was giving classes when people would showed up. Many times with Pedro, sensei would ask us if we would like to have some training the following day!

This is in 1993 that Hatsumi sensei asked me to train exclusively with him and Noguchi sensei.

I must admit that I was more attracted to Nagato sensei’s style in that time and that Noguchi sensei style was so far from what I considered to be my “natural movement” that I was surprised.

As always, it proved to me that sensei knew what to do with me and forcing me to train only with Noguchi sensei has been the best thing that could happen to me.

In 1997 at the DKMS, with the opening of the brand new hombu dôjô, sensei told me that from now on I could train with the shi tennô teaching there. But the four years I spent following only one teacher created the taijutsu I have today.

Noguchi sensei is an excellent budôka and a true human being and I am proud to call myself one of his students.

お目出度うご座います Omedetô Gozaimasu!

I just came back from the hombu where I gave a class on tachi and nagare. Even with AC and fans the heat inside was 39° centigrade and humidity at 55%!

I am drained. I will post later today after Noguchi sensei’s class.

Tomorrow is Noguchi sensei’s birthday, he turns 68 and still moves like a young warrior.

Omedeto!

Our last class with sensei was full of the 遊び «asobi » feeling / playfulness that Nagato sensei talked about on Monday. But sensei precised that playfulness should not lower our level of awareness, though. Being « seriously playful » is what is expected from us during training.

I opened the class with a kind of uke nagashi reaching out with the right arm to the left shoulder and back of uke in the moment of his attack. Sensei used this concept and added many weapons to it (tachi, bô). The best discovery was when sensei used a soft touch on the neck to take uke’s balance and then moved with the same hand to hook lightly the acromion hole of the left shoulder. The various information received by uke made him fall on his own each time. I was uke and it was brilliant! Powerful but soft.

In a real fight, 実戦 jissen, sensei said that you can never be prepared. Therefore you must float on top of uke’s actions to control the space and counter-attack when the opening is revealed. This idea of « you can never be prepared » is something we should always have in mind, inside and outside the dôjô (ura-omote).

Playfulness brings a state of relaxation that makes time go slower. When you are stressed you are tensed and when you are tensed you force things in a way unsuitable to the situation you are caught in. It also means that training is not the real thing and waza only a means to achieve body & mind coordination allowing you to see through things (kanroku 勘六). In this mindset your imagination (kaitatsu) is at its best and your movements, even if complex, flow naturally. Awareness is generated through self confidence that comes when you master your basics. Your body moves on its own adapting naturally to the changes in your environment.

Then, during the calligraphy session sensei wrote gekokujô 下克上 for me. Gekokujô is a period of Japanese history, during the warring state period and the Ônin war. It is the end of the Muromachi period. At that time small daimyô tried to take over the power of the main daimyô. Translated it means: « the lower rules the higher » or « the low overcomes the high ». To use a comparison, a small tiny hole can drown a huge boat and bring her to the bottom of the sea.

Many interpretations of this concept can be found in our training and our life. In training it means that rank does not protect you from defeat. To find success you have to develop luck. When you are lucky you can reach asobi. You can also experience gekokujô when the newly promoted high ranks try to impose their newly acquired power to those around them. From one week to another they become arrogant and disrespectful. And in life we see it when youngsters try to impose their lack of understanding and experience to their elders. In the « Republica » Plato speaks about a similar thing (book 7?). I don’t recall the exact words but it is something like: « when the children do not respect their parents, when the students do not respect their teachers, when the people do not respect the authority, this is the beginning of tyranny ». The best illustration is the so called cultural revolution in China under Mao Zedong.

At the end of the class I am happy to inform you that India got its first « homemade » shidôshi. Arjun passed brilliantly the test with Doug. Both, emitter and receiver did a very nice sakki. After class it was touching to see how Shiva was proud of Arjun being “his” first Indian shidôshi. I guess that Arjun will honor Hatsumi sensei and Shiva in his new dôjô of Mumbai (Bombay). This is also the proof that hard training and good transmission of sensei’s philosophy are the key to our own evolution as human beings.

The beauty of sensei’s teaching is to be found everyday more in the words and concepts he uses to develop our human abilities. His taijutsu speaks to our bodies when his words speak to our souls. Thank you sensei!

Be happy!