My Budo Blog New Year's Message - Reflections & Rebirth, A Humbling Journey

Well, it’s that time again.  It’s time to sit and reflect on how my Shugyo (martial path) has evolved over the last year and try to take a look ahead.  More importantly, it’s time to evaluate mistakes, successes, clues and dead ends.  Last year was quite a turbulent year for me personally and it was reflected in my own training, as well.

I began 2014 with a feeling, or more accurately, a burning need to look inside myself and ask hard questions.  These questions all surrounded one nagging theme of “why”.  Why was I training?  There were many outside influences which helped push my understanding and challenge my own purpose for training and it forced me to look at everything with fresh eyes.  I also had the fortunate opportunity to train with people who were reaching for new horizons, expanding their own understanding and weren’t afraid to break tradition in order to explore possibilities.  All of this helped me in so many ways, too many to try and explain in this blog post, and the fruits of that are still revealing things to me even today.

I made many mistakes, important mistakes, and had my own flaws openly displayed.  Seeing the holes in my own abilities and thinking was not an easy thing for me.  It isn’t easy for anybody, especially when others look to you for guidance and understanding.  But, what it did was enable me to come to terms with my own ego, my own acceptance that I, too, am still a student with SO much more to learn and SO much farther to grow.  I believe it was that humbling process, even if uncomfortable and painful, that broke me out of the rigid shell I had allowed myself to be trapped in.  All my struggles I had written about before suddenly fell away and left me with a renewed sense of purpose and direction.  I had been looking inside myself to find the answers, but I was also seeking solutions outside myself by exposing myself to so many different ways and methods that I had actually created more confusion and struggle.

I was like a ship on rough waters, throwing up sails to catch any wind that came along, and never actually following any charted course.  In that madness, there were discoveries and new experiences, but at the end of it all, I was still a ship lost at sea.

Some things that manifested during the year included moving my classes to my private dojo.  This meant training in my back yard and at a local park by my house, while I worked hard to clear out my garage, purchase and install adequate matting and create a suitable indoor training space before the winter rains would arrive.  This gave us many opportunities to train in different environments, which offered new insights into adapting techniques to meet the environment.  The other result of moving classes to my private dojo is the class size capacity.  I had to decide to cap our class size in order to prevent crowding.  This meant I had to stop actively trying to recruit new students and even turn down some interested prospects.  But, I also felt good about the folks who came with me to train when the Bujinkan Life Dojo facility closed down.  We lost a few students and gained a few.  Those who were along for the journey and left are now on to fulfilling great things in their lives and I’m happy to have walked their path with them for the time they were with me.  All things serve a greater purpose and I like to think their training, although temporary, played a key role in launching them into the new chapters in their lives.  The martial path is different for each person and not everybody devotes their entire lives to walking it, yet all are shaped and influenced by the experiences and lessons gained from walking it.

As 2014 progressed, I had the fortunate experience to train with a very skilled and knowledgeable Shihan who was here visiting from Japan (he is a California native living in Japan) and taught a weekend seminar.  That seminar and the many talks he and I shared helped clarify and solidify many wonderful things with me.  He chose me as his Uke for most of the entire seminar, much to my humble appreciation (and pain!), but in that experience I learned a great deal about the importance of the ryuha kata, why they were written the way they were written, layers of learning progression, and how one should approach study and training to unlock the secrets they contain.  Prior to this, I had convinced myself ryuha kata were dead, something to practice, but quickly discard for more “real” methods.  Yet, training with him reinforced my experiences and shift of understanding I gained from training with another incredibly skilled and knowledgeable non-Japanese Shihan who also lives in Japan, but was out here to do a seminar at our Bujinkan Life Dojo facility.  Those two events cemented really foundational truths I had already known about, but not realized just how much I needed to embody them in my own training – and in my own teaching.  I had spent too much time in my own head, too much in “Play”, and not enough in dedicated practice of things which were handed down by generations of men who had far more real experience and knowledge than even my own long training career (which is somewhere around the 30 year mark!).

The experiences of the last couple years provided a stark reality check of my deficiencies, illusions, and holes in my ability and understanding.  I knew they existed, but because I was too busy trying to patch them up with new ideas and methods, I never bothered to actually dig into “why” they were consistently there.  I was searching outside myself for answers, but the answer really existed inside.  Not to sound confusing, but the real solution that existed inside was discovered through my outside experience in training – not just any training, but training in the foundation of the very art I had devoted so much of my life.  I literally went back to the beginning and found what I needed, what existed there this whole time.  I needed to get to the point I did in order to realize I needed to go back and, when I did, suddenly everything changed and I was now on a new path.

A major part of this new path (Shugyo) was the importance of formality and structure.  I cracked open my old Tenchijin Ryaku no Maki and realized I had collected so many variations, some contradictory, and decided to try and dissect through to get to the most complete or accurate.  A good friend shared with me his copy, which is a direct translation from the original Japanese, as opposed to a translation of a translation of a translation, etc.  When I combined my new understandings gained from those visiting Shihan who taught “by the book”, I found this copy matched exactly what I had learned from them.  Then, something miraculous happened.  I began to see the patterns, the way the techniques were laid out and presented.  I began to understand a new language, not Japanese, but a kind of “budo language” that resonated into me through the details of the various kata, techniques and skill sets listed in the pages of the Tenchijin Ryaku no Maki.  Not to sound weird, but it spoke to me, filling me with an intense inspiration and hunger to dissect and absorb everything from it.  Even what I had considered the most “simple” of techniques listed suddenly became alive.  The one dimensional ink on the paper transformed into two dimensions, as I began to feel the movement and then it became three dimensional, as I felt myself drawn into it, encouraged to explore every detail, to see what was hidden by the one and two dimensional perspective.  Everything took on a newness and I had a clarity of vision I had never experienced before.

I realized I needed to stop “playing” and start digging.  I applied what I was learning into my copy of the Tenchijin Ryaku no Maki, making notes and highlighting details which were important.  My recollections of things past teachers had told me suddenly spilled onto my notes, including nuggets of wisdom and insights from training with teachers in Japan. I found a logical consistency and, when things other teachers have taught me didn’t fit this consistency, I took note of them only as consideration and something to save for later.  I never want to discard something, since I have no idea if it might reveal a new understanding down the road.  But, what I had begun to create was a structured, articulate and consistent method of training and transmission, based on sound teaching from those who I was fortunate enough to learn from.  These were not my ideas, but a carrying on of what others had taught me.

As I watched others train, I began to see similar struggles.  The very gaps and inconsistencies in my ability and understanding were being replicated in those who trusted me with their training.  That made me angry at myself!  I decided right then to devote my classes and teaching to the foundation from which I had made my new discoveries.  I was going to teach from the Ten and Chi Ryaku no Maki, which I believe to be the foundation of our taijutsu, and use ryuha kata to explore further from there.  I made the decision that I would begin to award ranking to those students who wanted to earn it and created a curriculum guide that listed out material from the Ten and Chi Ryaku no Maki for each Kyu grade up to Shodan.  If someone was going to earn their black belt from me, I was going to make sure they had skills and knowledge which were solid and reliable.  They needed to feel confident in their abilities and be able to look back and see what they have learned.  This would require commitment on my part to stick to the book, to not deviate into my own whims and explorations, but to use structured repetition and focused skill development in order to hammer in foundations which are powerful and solid.

However, I can only do so much.  The students need to put in the blood, sweat and tears to actually train enough to reach those levels.  That’s what the ranking would be for.  If someone doesn’t want to do that, it’s okay.  They can train and enjoy the experience. But, those who hold rank will have worked hard to gain it and their abilities will be proof of that.

So, looking into 2015, I see things getting down to the nitty gritty, back to basics, but with a committed passion to really honing in strong skills.  We are going to dig deep into the book, scraping away the ink to find the secrets which lie underneath the surface.  We are going to train hard, condition our bodies and sharpen our teeth.  Our foundations are going to be built strong, with a constant attention to detail.

I am reminded of the Rocky movies.  In it, he goes through great trials to become the champion.  But, then what happens?  He rests on his laurels.  He enjoys the fame.  He softens up.  The fights he does are nothing more than exhibition fights, already set up for him to “win”.  Only when another up and coming fighter, one with the “eye of the tiger”, hungry for the championship, does he suddenly realize how far back he had let himself get.  But, it was too late and he lost his championship title. 

What does he do after?  He ditches the fancy gym, all the glamor and lights, and goes back to his foundation – the old, smelly, run down gym he started in.  He goes back to being a student, listening to his old coach and recommitting himself and putting in the hard, gritty work needed to be a great fighter again.  He regains his “eye of the tiger”, defeats his opponent and regains his championship title.

That’s what I want for 2015.  I want to get that “eye of the tiger” and go back to the gritty, hard work required to be strong budoka.  It won’t be comfortable, but it will be fun.  More importantly, however, it will bring back the life hidden in the old densho, diving beyond the dried ink and into the heart of those generations who brushed those strokes onto the paper.

Hold on tightly – 2015 promises to be one wild ride!