From New Products from Budo Shop Store by New Products from Budo Shop Store
Read MoreYear: 2012
Bujinkan Nanadan 七段: The Bull Transcended
From Bujinkan Santa Monica by Michael Glenn
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The Ox Transcended, digital c-print photograph by Andrew Binkley |
If you haven't read my other posts in this series, please check them out. You may find them useful no matter what your rank is:
Bujinkan Shodan 初段: Searching for the Bull
Bujinkan Nidan 弐段: Discovering the Footprints
Bujinkan Sandan 参段: Perceiving the Bull
Bujinkan Yondan 四段: Catching the Bull
Bujinkan Godan 五段: Taming the Bull
Bujinkan Rokudan 六段: Riding the Bull Home
On reaching seventh dan we may find that we have forgotten the ox. What does it mean to forget the Ox?
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Woodblock print by 德力富吉郎 Tokuriki Tomikichirō |
忘牛存人 The Bull Transcended
Astride the bull, I reach home.
I am serene. The bull too can rest.
The dawn has come. In blissful repose,
Within my thatched dwelling
I have abandoned the whip and ropes
We made it home. Comfortable in our own taijutsu and in our dojo, whatever ambitions we had attached to training or rank are abandoned. We no longer attempt to manipulate training to serve the purpose of our ego.
Through all the stages of finding, following, catching, taming, and riding the ox, we have been seeking the true essential nature of training and of ourselves. If this process was pursued with pure intent, the self that was doing the seeking falls away. It disappears little by little until it is gone. What you are left with is only the essential, true training.
Even better than this, you may enter into another dimension of training where the true self doesn't even make an appearance at all. This is often symbolized in Japanese art and poetry as the pure white moonlight moving apart the clouds until there are no longer clouds and the whole world is bathed in this purity. This aspect of training becomes pure experience and is beyond words. Only direct experience remains.
And, your consciousness remains, observing. The bull is gone but through your direct experience all that is left is you observing and feeling. There clouds may gather again.
At this point in training we may start to wonder at how pointless all of the work we did up till now has been. All of the exercises, all of the kata, all of the drills… they feel like useless effort in the face of the pure moonlight. With this direct experience of the essence of training, everything else is a distraction.
People sometimes find themselves in the dojo going through the motions. Observing their movement and the movement of others and feeling like it is wasted effort. It is amusing to find your body repeating whatever the class is working on, while your heart is not in it. Or it feels pointless.
It feels like once you have grasped the essential nature of training, there is nothing left to do. You realize that what you were seeking in training is within you already, but also without. You stop looking and it is everywhere. All the secrets are made known.
So with nothing left to do, what is the point of training?
The fabric of training itself is the students and the art. Just like the stream is also water, or stars are also night sky- so students are their study. You observe this relationship: uke and tori; teacher and student; training and dojo; body and gi; hands and bokken. As you notice these things, you realize you are not them and they are not you. But you are part of this fabric.
This dreamlike quality of training can carry you for a long time. Even though you no longer need the whip and the halter, or the tools and exercises of the dojo, you are left observing these. In your reverie, you are still tied to those experiences.
Next we go even further to Bujinkan Hachidan 八段: Both Bull and Self Transcended
Tachi bokken "2"
From Paart Budo Buki by buki stolar
This is the second tachi bokken slightly better, with few details on the saya and kashira, still under development,third should be fully faithful to original copy of the Tachi sword.
For now, enjoy the pictures, and all other possible questions or orders, please contact me via e-mail, because it will be three more tachi bokken AVAILABLE.
… Read More
Regarding the Ranks
From TENRYU by jorgevaccaro
Regarding the Bujinkan Ranks
By Sôke Masaaki Hatsumi.
DVD HIMON BUJIN DEN
必問 武神 伝
There are off course, levels, ranks and casts everywhere.
I believe this cast of zones is important for human existance in earth.
I feel this things are necessary for those who adapt. The creation of a territory is also what adapts on each individual. I believe that is not something that produces an impediment, but also what is free. This is some matter to understand on each position. Those who not have this strenght and aim to high, will certainly fail.
On my 5th Dan test, there’s an attack from behind. This is the beginning of the Kihon Happo. Please this means that you must understand the Happo and the Juppo. This is what is called Juppo Sessho no jutsu. You don’t know where an opponent may come. You don’t know what kind of dissaster will come and from where.
You must be able to deal with things when they come from certain way, and it’s not just a question of protecting from a blow from behind – Please know about Juppo Sessho no jutsu and Kihon Happo. The ways in that Kihon Happo can be applied on this kinds of situations, are the tipe of things that are though on 5th dan. The test isn’t about just try to avoid an attack from behind.
Three people are bound to propose someone for the 10th dan. This in a sence, is Sanshin No Kata. This is the meaning of Sanshin no Kata that I’ve mentioned before. A person cannot become a 10dan without 3 people as sponsors.
There are individual differences on people, that’s why there are ranks until the 15th dan -This isn’t a question of ryuha-
I’ve created the ranks of 15dan, off course, with the meaning that people can take notice that they are in fact human beings. You could say that is to leave the abode.
Read MoreRelativity
From TENRYU by jorgevaccaro
As many of you may know, the teachings of Sôke during 2001, where focused in Gyokko Ryû and Daisho. Inside Gyokko Ryû Sensei Hatsumi tought the concepts of IN/YO (opposite polarities) applied to the In Ryoku 引力 concepts (gravity force, attraction),Jû Ryoku 重力 (gravity), Ji Ryoku Sen 磁力線 (magnetic force line) among others.
Last night, we had a wonderful class with Sōke. Outside of the Dojo, the wind and the rain blew strongly in Taifu 台風 way, inside of the dojo the wind of the Bufu kept us moving from the hands of Sōke, while he shared with his Kuden the theory of relativity of Einstein 相対性理论, applied to Taijutsu. During the class, as Sôke showed techniques with Katana, Daisho, Kodachi and long weapons (Bo), he explaines the importance of moving freely taking advantage the skillness of being able to use any weapon, even firearms. Throughout the enlightening skills of Sôke, while Uke fell naturally over the sword, that was naturally unsheathed by letting if fall down (In ryoku), he started to introduce us into the theory of relativity of Einstein, Everything happens so fast in the Dojo when Soke teaches, but at the same time seems very slow and hard to understand.
The escencial idea, of vital point (Kaname) of the theory of relativity, is for example that two observers that move relatively side by side with different speed, (if the difference is much minor than the speed of light, it’s not appreciable), often will have different measures of the time (time frames) and space (distance – maai) to describe the same series of events. That is, the perception of space (kukan) and the time depend of the state of movement (Taijutsu) of the observer or its relative to the observer. However, despite of the relativeness of space and time, there’s a more sutile form of physic invariance, as the content of the physical laws will be the same for both observers. This last thing means that, despite that the observers differ on the result of concrete measures of temporary and space magnitudes, they’ll find that the equations that relate physical magnitudes have the same form, with independence of his state of movement. This last fact is known as principle of covariance.
I feel that beyond what’s relative on each observer and the variance of perceptions, we can all find a vital point (Kaname要) that can connect us to the escense of Budo, even though there are infinite changes (Banpen) and if the Mushin mind is kept, the escencial point appears by itself. Maybe that’s the Gokui of martial arts, though if we try to understand it, it’ll loose it’s escense.
Soke said, The Kaname can be understood, or it cannot be understood, it’s simple”
Bufu ikkan Banpen Kaname !!!
Christian
