From The Magick & The Mundane » Bujinkan by Shawn Gray

Thanks to everyone who has continued to prod me to continue writing this blog! Life gets busy, and it’s always easy to find other things to do, but … here we go again. :)  (Yes, I promise I will eventually get to the end of this story! (Does it really have an end? Not sure about that one…) )

Last time I wrote a little bit about Karate training in Kumamoto and Kendo training in Hiroshima. Chitose Soke and Fujiwara Sensei were both amazing gentlemen who I’d learned a lot from in the short time I’d spent with them. In Part II, I wrote about my Karate training in Fukuyama with Kanao Sensei, who I continued to visit every weekend for training. In November 1990, he’d used his connections at the Fukuyama Post Office to make me “Postmaster-for-a-day” and weaseled me into being the poster-gaijin. A local TV station and 3 local newspapers came to cover the event. I discovered the old newspaper clippings in my closet and thought it would be fun to post them. :)

By the time May 1991 came around, it was time to wrap up my time in Japan and head back to Canada. After many heartfelt goodbyes to the good friends I’d met, I got on the plane back to small-town New Brunswick and back to college. I flew from Narita to L.A. and then to Eastern Canada from there. My bags weren’t as eager to get back to Canada right away, and decided they wanted to go to Brazil from L.A. instead of back home with me. It was 2 weeks before I got my luggage back – and, thankfully, all of my Kendo gear was still intact. :)

I worked summer jobs landscaping and mowing lawns to pay for the coming semester at college. The year in Japan had taught me a lot – and one of the things that it had taught me was that I didn’t want to me a missionary. The missionary that I’d been assigned to work with in Japan was so uncultured and racist that it had turned me off completely. I decided to do one more semester at the small Christian college I’d spent 2 years at before going to Japan, and then head to the opposite side of the country to a bigger university with more options when that was finished. But before starting the fall semester, I was interested to see what Karate training would be like at my home Karate club after having spent nearly a year training in Japan. I made a habit of arriving early to class so that I could work on the material that I’d learned from Kanao Sensei before the class started. Not long after I’d been back, while I was reviewing one of the Kata I’d learned in Japan, a senior member of the club approached me and asked me where I’d learned it. When I told him, he requested that I not tell or show anyone else in the club what I was doing. You see, I was still a brown belt, and apparently what I was working on was 3rd-degree black belt material in Canada. Woooo. Wouldn’t want to upset anyone with that now, would we? Wooooo. I rolled my eyes and agreed to keep it quiet. I practiced that material at home in the backyard from then on – along with the Kendo bokken kata that I’d learned from Fujiwara Sensei.

The summer came and went, and I found myself back in the dormitory at college. I roomed with my best friend Jack, who had a habit of sleeping in. I had a remedy to help him with that – it was a bamboo shinai training sword that I’d brought back from Japan with me. It seems one’s shins can only take so much before one prefers to get out of bed. :) Oh well, at least it got him to chapel some of the time. Chapel attendance was mandatory. (Yes, it was a college, not a kindergarten.) By this time I’d been promoted to Shodan (1st degree black belt) in Karate, and started a training club at the college, hoping that it might help people with fitness and discipline, and help me to remember the material that I’d been working on as well. I have a feeling that it fizzled out shortly after I left. Rooming with Jack did have its perks though. Jack was a bit of a computer whiz, and had his computer hooked up via a 2800-baud modem (or something like that) to the phone line. A full four years before Internet service started to really take off in Canada, I saw a picture of a naked woman appear on the computer screen. Slowly, ever so slowly, one slowly-inching pixel-line at a time. I forget just how long it took the image to finish loading, but once it was completed, I wondered if maybe there was something to this computer-network thing after all. It was October, 1991. Nobody knew what a Facebook was. And luckily, none of the faculty found out about the image on the screen, or I might have been demerited, suspended, punished – or just sent straight to hell. :)

Anyway, that semester passed pretty quick, and I was off to Vancouver, 5,000km away on the other side of the country. Although I’d been dumbfounded at the size of Tokyo (around 25 million), Vancouver was still pretty big by Canadian standards, at around one-tenth that size. Still pretty daunting for someone from a town of 3,600. I knew no-one in the city, and found myself in a youth hostel trying to find an apartment and a job before my money ran out. I had no idea what the city was like, and made a quick, desperate decision to rent a place that I went to look at one night. It was furnished. Pretty shoddily, but it was furnished. The first night I slept there I heard a huge crash right behind the wall of my room at about 4:30am. I discovered that my building was literally right next to the port and there was a freight rail line that ran right behind the building. Two train sections had bumped together to connect them, which is what had made the crashing sound. The next morning, I walked out into the sunshine and found myself dodging used condoms and needles on the sidewalk. Apparently Commercial and Hastings wasn’t the best place to be living. I found a job at a local Japanese tourist gift shop while waiting for the summer semester of the Canadian Summer Institute of Linguistics to start. It took me about 20 minutes to walk to work, and on the way I’d regularly be propositioned by drug dealers and prostitutes. After I’d been there a couple of months, a Vietnamese gang broke into a place up the street and killed 4 people to burgle their house. I decided I should probably look at finding a better place to live. Around that time, I read a newspaper article stating that women between age 20-25 who lived in the few-block radius I lived in were 25% more likely to die of homicide or drug overdose than anywhere else in Canada. I accelerated my new home search and found a place in New Westminster. I didn’t see a prostitute there for a full 2 weeks, so it seemed like a much better place to live.

During this time, I was of course looking for a Bujinkan dojo to train in. I figured a city like Vancouver must have a Bujinkan training group, and I found what I was looking for – a seminar advertisement – at “Golden Arrow Martial Arts Supply.” I was ecstatic – finally a real, legitimate Bujinkan dojo. I called the number listed and made plans to attend the seminar, which was held at a school gymnasium in White Rock, just south of Vancouver. I got the bus out to White Rock and was happy to participate. There were a lot of differences from what I was used to. The group hadn’t been going that long, so most of the students were still fairly junior. I’d been doing martial arts quite seriously now for over seven years and had recently come back from a pretty full-on experience in Japan. But when I looked at the kind of things that were being shown, I was intrigued and could see that this would be a very interesting art once one developed a bit of skill at it. I began to train with the instructor in his regular classes, continuing my Karate training in parallel for the first few months. I had committed a number of years to Karate now, and didn’t want to put it aside lightly.

I was approaching my Nidan (2nd Dan) grading in Karate, which was a pretty big deal. Grades work differently in Karate than in the Bujinkan. The two top people in my Karate style in Canada were both Japanese gentlemen – one was 7-Dan and one was 6-Dan. These were considered very senior ranks in our style, so even a 2-Dan wasn’t anything to sneeze at. But I was becoming disenchanted with the Karate training. I found the local instructor in Vancouver to be unnecessarily stern and overly formal, much more so than the Japanese instructors I’d trained with in Japan. I was forbidden to cross-train in anything else, even though the Soke (grandmaster) in Japan had encouraged me to train in Judo and Kendo in parallel to my Karate training. The training itself was very much geared towards winning points in tournaments, and they were strict about the contact rules – that is, you could easily get disqualified for hitting too hard. Our instructor would pair us up and have one person hold a pencil upright between his thumb and index finger. You had to hit the pencil and whip your hand back without knocking the pencil over – that would indicate that the strike was too hard and would result in a tournament penalty. It really seemed like nonsense to me, and this made it a bit easier to make the final decision to put down my Karate black belt and step out of my white uniform, and step into a black Bujinkan uniform and put on a white Bujinkan belt.

All the while I continued to dream of going back to Japan after completing my university studies. I was now enrolled at Trinity Western University (just outside Vancouver) working towards a BA degree in Intercultural Religious Studies with a Concentration in Linguistics. But most relevant to this particular story, perhaps, is that I was now training in a legitimate Bujinkan dojo that was connected to the Bujinkan headquarters in Japan. I found out that the Hombu Dojo in Japan was in a place called Noda – not Iga where I had gone looking for Hatsumi Sensei a year and a half before. The two places are actually about 500 kilometers apart. I had been way off. Next time I could get back to Japan, I’d be sure to be at the right place.

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From TENRYU by jorgevaccaro

For the learning process of this secret, there is an initiation ceremony through the sixth sense, allowing the student to learn this strange technique. The student, dressed in white clothes, sitting motionless in an open room. The Master, like a shadow, without making any noise, attacks the student with a sword, as a floating boat. If the student dodges the sword, he got the secret, but if not, then that was it. There is a similarity between this and the artist who destroys his new work if he didn`t like it.

One day I was sitting in my master’s room when he told me: “wait here with your eyes closed, and do not open them, no matter what happens”, I relaxed and felt him leave the room. Suddenly, I made a side roll after I felt certain presence and I saw a shadow as if my body was splitted in half. Then I made a forward ukemi, after I felt that my head flew away. When I returned to Shizen Fudoza, I opened my eyes when I heard his voice said: “well done; you may open your eyes”. Then I say Takamatsu Sensei standing with a sword on his right hand. Being incredibly steady, I realized that this was the spiritual technique through the sixth sense. Then I received the sword of my master. Later on I was told that this was “Juji Giri Mumei no Itto”.

 A year before Takamatsu Sensei died, he told me, “I let the Martial Arts in your hands.” Nine years since he died, and I’ve been training hard, and lately, I can say that this is the true Budo. By the way, in the test for Godan in the Bujinkan Dojo, I attack with determination from behind the student who is sitting, with his eyes closed. If he dodges, he passes. This is the beginning. Not only dodge an attack from behind. Sometimes you have to know  the other side of the world. In human relations, the person you trust could betray you someday. Even then, you can realize the value of peace with this training. It is just a deception to cultivate only the sense , that will allow you to dodge an attack from behind. This kind of mentality creates a distance between you and the truth of life, and ruins it. That kind of mentality is the cancer to correct the growing. In this sense Juji Giri Mumei no Itto, is the operation to remove the cancer in the early stages. It can also be taken as one should stop teaching the person should not be taught.

 When you teach many students, some kind of sense is important. Buddha taught ten followers, but one failed.

One of the 12 apostles of Christ, was a rebel.

Even a relationship between the Master and student, has a flaw. The relation between teachers and students, in a modern school system is bad. In these situations, the most important principle endures: Learn the mind of true Martial Arts.

When you pass the test for Godan, the way of training will necessarily change. Changes to a invisible training; incomprehensible training. I teach students who have been training for over 20 years, but only cordially. It could be the instruction  of incomprehensibly strange techniques for them. They understand it, but they can`t do it. Apparently they may understand, but really don`t understand. Thus, the strange techniques start breathing . It’s ACCEPTABLE for me, if they don`t understand, because I am teaching incomprehensible techniques. If they understood, they would be Superman. They will improve, because they do not understand.

One day, one of my more graduated students, came up to me and said: “I heard out there, that there`s  a technique that allows us to throw the opponent without touching. – “I decided to try and teach this,  avoinding my students from getting hurt. I, along with the student and four other students, went to a place that had a video camera. Nine eyes are staring. “Forward” “Yes sir.” One passes to the other. My student, flew over me and fell. A few minutes later, he got up with blood coming out of his mouth. “Understand?” “No sir.” The “rest of you understand?” “No Sensei, but we believe that we will, when we see the video.” “You won´t understand,” I told them. We watched the video, but none of the students could capture the moment in his eyes. This is a Martial Art. It is impossible to learn the stranges techniques taking photos and writing. Another way of looking at this is that if you show your techniques in a makimono and it is stolen, doesn´t matter. This is the essence of Martial Art. Take pictures or write, is useless. No other way to study under the teaching of a Master and do what he says.

In the opportunity of publish this book, I present for your information, the book that Takamatsu Sensei had taught me. As a rule of this Ryu, it is forbiten to write down. Because if you write, the depth of its essence ends. The Martial Arts will be the secret without limitations. That is, to write this book, it is against my will. Even if I write the explanation for a future study, nobody truly learn. As Takamatsu Sensei said, “learn through hard training.”

A year before his dead, Takamatsu Sensei told me: “now you are a good Martial Artist. I have been rewarded the favors of my Masters”

I was half in doubt. I thought you could master the essence of a martial art, a few years after being taught. Since Master died, I’ve been wondering for nine years, and now I decided to publish this book. One day, I talked to a driver who lived in the U.S., that the expression of the Martial Arts, through writing, was like a sheet with musical staves. Martial Art has grown from unlimited space of zero, which was kept on paper. Even if the computer was developed to store all the information, I couldn´t figure zero. Even if it did, they could not put pressure on foreign techniques of zero without reaching the stage of constant power of Martial Arts. The Martial Artist’s dream is to live there.

Soke Masaaki Hatsumi

 

Book Hiden Togakure Ryu Ninpo

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From TENRYU by jorgevaccaro

CHIKARA O NUKU

力を抜く

During the classes on friday and sunday  (23/25 -11- 2012) Sôke was pointing out the aspect of working with the fingers, reminding us that this part was one of the themes of 2012, In every moment highlighted that techniques must be done without strength. In a form of joking, reminded us that 15 dan are getting old and we’re going to loose physical strength, but that wasn’t his intention to tell us, but that it came by divine inspiration.

Sôke has been taken different Uke ans showing us that force is really unnessesary. Relaxing the muscles (Chikara o Nuku 力を抜く) and executing the techniques withouth forcem is made by a contraction and then relaxation. This is known as Chikara o Ireru & Chikara o nuku 力を入れる, 力を抜く. Chikara o Ireru is contracting, using the muscular force.

Moving the muscle requires strength and intention, and in the case of martial arts tecniques, this  can be perceived by the adversary. Managing to relax and not showing intention, is something vital in the path of the martial artist.

The idea of being able to use a sword without force (Katana o Nuku 刀を抜く) since yesteryear was one of the targets that masters wanted to achieve. Kokoro o Nuku 心を抜く, not forcing the mind nor the heart, is a key point to the Mushin 無心. Leaving the mind without intention, without the intelect and racionalization ruling us, can allow receiving the Shinden 心伝 from the master.

The techniques without force, mind without effort, was the escense to achieve the Shinden, highlighted Soke in one of his clases. Showing techniques without strength, Sôke achieves the misterious power of colapsing bodies and minds of his attackers. Without intention, adapting to each person in their different attacksm controls without expectation, even leaving the sword unsheathe and cut without harshness. This is a clear example of Katana o Nuku.

The connection (Tsunageru 繋げる) was highlighted on this past classes, not just from Tori and Uke, but also in “everything”, Soke said “everything is connected”.

Confusedly, we’ve tried to understand the wise words of Sôke, among them that the techniques must not depend from time and velocity. This two aspects don’t pertain to tecniques. Yukkuri…taking your time, going slowly. Sôke always highlights it, “Yukkuri” and gives us examples like music and spaces within each note.

In the interpretation of some of the things that Sôke was saying, I feel that time could be an illusion.  That is, past time (Kako 過去), the future ( Mirai 未来), coexist in the very instant of present ( Genzai 現在) of technique. Budo has no time, but happens in several dimensions at the same time.

Nuite Kudasai !! relax please….. let us enjoy life and Budo a little more.

Christian Petroccello

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From TENRYU by jorgevaccaro

3 Years ago, Sôke Hatsumi Masaaki sent me a beautiful painting that says: “Mature Fruit, Full Moon”

From time to time, I read the letters again and I behold Soke’s paintings. My feeling is that time shows in out path, if the maturation is at it’s right moment to taste the present at it’s maximum. Just like the moon comes only in a day at it’s full figure, likewise the fruit gets eaten when it has the right time of maturation. You can eat lots of fruits, but only when one it’s on it’s right time of maturity, is when the most tastefull it is. You can look at the moon all the month, but the day that it is full is when it’s beauty is at it’s maximum flow.

Running  after the effort ot others, o trying to live the experiences of others, is a futile race. Many want to fly and yet have not learned to walk. Running after the foreign effort might keep them away from the own escense. Playing with the children of others does not make you a father unless you gave birth your own children, nor wanting the students of other teachers make you a good master.

Looking always the light of the moon, may not let you see where you’re standing. Having gluttony for the fruits, might no let you appreciate the light of the moon. The moon and the fruit are connected as Budo and Life.

Sôke once shared a precious teaching during the Alicante Taikai: “Forget the meaning of why you practice, don’t think about it. Though the martial arts have a sole purpose and is at the end of the life to find truth, finding God. Only at the end of life, in the last instant, will happen everything you’ve done, what you’ve lived”.

 

Bufu Ikkan

Christian P.

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From TENRYU by jorgevaccaro

REI

“In what’s immutable, there’s existence;

In what’s immutable, there’s No existence”

Lao Tzu

Budo must be an example of life, but not of great heroic acts nor magnificent spiritual gestures, but of simple and daily acts of ofering, gratefulness, protect, caring and being, which to my understanding mark us on a human basis.

Rei 例 means practice, habit, custom, example, ilustration. Being able to give the example of constant practice is part of the escense of Budô, thus one must keep    individual training and learning   without an aparent goal, so this way may leave a print of existence to those who come behind.

Continuing self training and follow the teachings of a master, are fundamental to not get lost in the illusion of the path. In time, the master is aparent, as is the path and the teaching, but they are mostly needed, because they keep connected with one another like a misterious red thread that bonds the pinkie fingers of every people.

To be always thankful also connects us with REI 礼, that in this case means to be thankful. This Rei, must be a real expression of gratitude in a humble degree, by lowing the head on a reverence. In Japan, the sence of. Reverence towards the elderly, the teachers, those who help or by example the clients, are acts of showing respect by lowing the head lower than theirs. This is also a part of the Reigi 礼儀 (behavior manners, courtesy acts).

The Path is apparent, but being able to give the example of moving forward without a real path is the escense of Budo. Believe of an ccomplished path and believe that one can be the path, is just an illusion.

To my understanding, the path relies on Mu 無, so then we can say that one of the Kaname of Budo, is the Mudo  無道 (http://tenryuden.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/budo-mudo/) However, is the Mudo no Kaname is an illusion,   Kaname 要    is an non existential point, that only manifests itself by the fact of expressing it over the space. Even though we believe that the Kukan no Kaname is the escential point on the space, we all know that within the Kikan there’s only emptyness, so it’s impossible to find a point of support, a rotation point of even an escential point from within. The mind creates it only by the fact of needing a point of support , a way where it can sustain itself, to not get lost in MU.

Sôke talks to us about Rei 例

“It is said that the martial forms are shown through the daily life and behaviour. That is, through costumes and humanity”.

In the daily life, the present life, is the only real thing we have, but from within, it’s an existential echo from the actions from the past, our own and our ancestors. They only manifest in the apparent path, but is only an illusion for the ego to have the security from where to stand.

In the Zen Budhism we can find the text about the cuestions to the mastern Nansen, which they come from the Nara period.

Nansen was interrogated by Joshu ¿What is the Path? to what Nansen responded: “Your ordinary mind is the path”, Joshu then said: “¿Can you find it?”. To what Nansed said, “Just the you try to find it, It’ll fade away”, Later on Joshu asked “If you can’t find it, How can you know that it is the path ?” Nanses said “The path does not depend on knowing or not knowing. Knowing is confussion, not knowing is to be cheated. If you really were to find the path of no doubt, is like a great void. How can you force this to adapt the categories of confirmation of negotiation?

 

We can say, that REI 例 are the costumes, practices and habits that we acquire throughout the keiko, achieving the humbleness of being thankful  (Rei 礼) to the existence of the ancestors and teachers.

Following the no path, in the individual transformation in REI 零, in which case means “cero, nothing”, and this is the escential part that cannot be understood. Being “Cero”, is submerging the conscience in the No conscience of the “no existence”, to what we can call Mu 無.

Sôke says;

“If you can’t understand, this is normal because is Ninjutsu. If you could undersand, if wouldn’t be Ninjutsu”

Si then our called existential ans spiritual essence REI 霊 (espíritu)”, comes fro the no understanding and the no path. The more we want to use our intellect, the further we are from the true experience. The experience comes from the constant practice inside, and out of the tatami. Inside of the tatami with our Gi moving us and improving the physical techniques, achieving knowledge through distance, the space and time with hundreds of skills, outside of the tatami moving us without the Gi and improving our habilites of generosity, kindness, patience, tolerance, giving and protecting, observing and learning, hearing and caring. All this applied to family, work and society are the instruments that mark our “humanity”.

Inside, as outside of the Dojo, we must also cultivate the ming in the no existence to turne it in the No Mind  (mushin 無心). That is, the existence exists, and the no existence also exists, both are connected.

According to a famous martial arts teacher from the Edo period; Yagyu Manuneori:

“In a moment of existence, a Tsuki is thrown to the existense. In a moment of no existence, a Tsuki is thrown to the no existence. Equally, without expecting the existence, there’s an attack thrown to the existence. In that sense, it is said that the existence is existence, and the no existence is also existence”.

Christian

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