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嵐 Arashi: Don’t Get Caught in Your Own Storm

From Bujinkan Santa Monica by Bujinkan Santa Monica

when it rains in HK, photo by rocksee
I read a curious poem this morning in a story from Saigyō.
The Japanese poet Saigyō (1118-1190) was a Buddhist monk and lived most of his life as a traveling mendicant and hermit. His poems often relate the tension he felt between renunciatory Buddhist ideals and his love of natural beauty.
In the story I read this morning, he was caught in a rainstorm during his travels through Osaka. He tried to take shelter at a brothel. Yet he was turned away by a prostitute. But this was no ordinary prostitute. In the legend, she was an incarnation of the Bodhisattva Fugen who symbolizes meditation and practice. Knowing this, Saigyō was frustrated that someone so enlightened would  force him back out into the rain. He wrote:

How difficult I suppose,
    to reject
This world of ours.
    And yet you begrudge me
        a temporary stay.

In his frustration, Saigyō could get angry at this teacher in disguise and miss an important lesson. Do you ever get angry at your teachers? What happens after the storm fades?

I have been angry at my teachers. Or at least, thought they were wrong about something. The worst is when someone shows me something about myself I do not wish to see.

In Bujinkan training I have seen many students get angry. I have seen them quit training over it. I have had my own students angry at me. And Hatsumi Sensei has had many critics and ex students who got stuck on some point of contention.

When we get angry at our teachers, an inflection point occurs where learning stops cold. Or, if we are ready, learning explodes forward from that point to even greater understanding.

Anger at teachers happens for many reasons:
  • The teacher is flat wrong or in error.
  • You think teacher is wrong even though he is right.
  • You want your teacher to be wrong because you don't like what he is showing you.
  • You don't feel acknowledged for how well you are doing.
  • Your teacher focuses only on how badly you are doing.
  • You don't like the way a teacher runs his class or handles other students.
  • Your teacher sets a bad example.
  • The teacher fails at something.
  • What the teacher is teaching doesn't match your view of reality.
  • The teacher reflects something in you that you don't wish to see.
If you get angry at your teacher, first look at these reasons and decide what they say about YOU before you dismiss the teaching. And then, if you still think your teacher is bad, you should try to consider your history with them. Is it a history based on trust and respect? Has the teacher taught you well in the past, and is there hope of learning and growing more in the future?

For Saigyō, the prostitute in his poem responded in this way,

Having heard you were one
    who rejected this world,
My thought is only this:
    Do not stop your mind
        in this temporary stay.

A deep lesson if Saigyō was ready to hear it. Admittedly difficult to hear in the middle of a rainstorm. But the most profound lessons often show up when we are most uncomfortable.

The rainstorm symbolizes something temporary that will not last. In Japanese there is a play on words: a rainstorm - 嵐 arashi, but it will not stay あらじ araji.

For us Bujinkan students, in our training, this means we can't let our minds stop or get stuck on technique. But also, don't get stuck on points of disagreement with teachers. If you stop to argue you might miss the learning that never stops. Keep going.

It doesn't matter if you think your teacher is wrong, because your only teacher is yourself. 


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Fudōshin 不動心 or Fudōshin 浮動心 Floating Heart?

From Bujinkan Santa Monica by Bujinkan Santa Monica

photo by London looks
I was talking with Paul Masse about recent events in Japan. We were contemplating the appropriate "safe" distance from these disasters. Hatsumi Sensei often suggests to us that we evade by the width of a piece of paper. He gives us this image as a hint to take a small evasion, or, just as much space as needed. I have even heard him say that it should be the width of air. Now that seems risky for sure!

But there is another way to evade that isn't evading. And Sensei does this but it is not easy to see. To open our eyes let's look at one example from nature and one from Hatsumi Sensei.

While talking with Paul, I was reminded of a different kind of distance from a favorite poem. I shared this idea with Paul and he seemed to enjoy the feeling of it:
The Little Duck -----  By Donald C. Babcock
Now we are ready to look at something pretty special.
It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf.
No, it isn’t a gull.
A gull always has a raucous touch about him.
This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells.
He isn’t cold, and he is thinking things over.
There is a big heaving in the Atlantic,
And he is part of it.
He looks a bit like a mandarin, or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.
But he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher.
He has poise, however, which is what philosophers must have.
He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic.
Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is.
And neither do you.
But he realizes it.
And what does he do, I ask you. He sits down in it.
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity—which it is.
That is religion, and the duck has it.
He has made himself a part of the boundless, be easing himself into it just where it
touches him.
Paul said this is like Fudōshin 不動心. Which is often translated as "immovable heart." But another reading of it could be Fudōshin 浮動心 "Floating Heart."

Well we had our conversation about The Little Duck a couple of weeks ago, and today I came across Hatsumi Sensei suggesting what seems to be the same kind of distance for muto dori:
Understanding muto as "Like a boat floating on water." Whether the waves are gentle or rough, it is good. Hicho no ken (the sword of the flying bird). Regard the opponent's attack as natural. This is Niten Itto, Niten Ichi-ryu. Board the floating boat, and stop the attack. The boat's motion prevents the opponent from moving freely.
I am humbled at this connection that appeared today. And it opened up some ideas for me that I have felt in Hatsumi Sensei's classes but been unable to get my mind around. I can't wait to explore this feeling in class tonight!


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我無し Ware Nashi: No More Us

From Bujinkan Santa Monica by Bujinkan Santa Monica

Desi being shy.
My dog Desiree died this week after being part of my family for almost 18 years. Although not unexpected, I definitely feel her absence. As I sit with this feeling, I am glad for the heart found in our training.

Hatsumi Sensei said that Takamatsu Sensei gave him a calligraphy which read 我無し ware nashi or "no self." But there is another reading of that concept which can give us a different strategy in combat or life. And since this is a martial arts of distance, we can find a very intimate distance when erasing the self.

Something sensei often repeats is that there is no difference between attacker and defender. So one reading of 我無し ware nashi is "no opponent" or "no enemy"... no we or no us. No separation. How do we get that distance? Sensei explained this once in a class at Ayase,
"In training you have to understand the opponent's heart. If you don't read his heart, if you only read your own heart and do your own technique on him, you will lose. You have to be able to read his heart and match it. This distance is heart distance."
If you reverse the kanji for 我無し ware nashi, you get 無我 muga. This is one of the core ideas of Buddhism which is "No I" or Anātman. This is selflessness;  self-effacement;  self-renunciation or anatman (no-self, the Buddhist concept that in nothing does there exist an inherent self, soul, or ego).

In this old poem we can feel the intimacy of 我無し ware nashi. In 1025 Fujiwara no Nagaie wrote this after his wife died in childbirth,

Morotomo ni
Nagameshi hito mo
Ware mo nashi
Yado ni wa hitori
Tsuki ya sumuran

She who watched with me-
Ah, we stood side by side-
And I too am gone;
Now it is the moon alone
Whose shining fills our home.

I feel this loss of self in a very personal way this week. Strange feeling kinship with a Japanese courtier from 1025.


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Happo Tenchi: Ten Directions of Truth

From Bujinkan Santa Monica by Bujinkan Santa Monica

Photo by ePi.Longo
In all ten directions of the universe,
there is only one truth.
When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.
What can ever be lost?  What can be attained?
If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time.
If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us.
Look: this ball in my pocket:
can you see how priceless it is?
Ryōkan Taigu (良寛大愚)


There is nothing wise I can add to the beautiful poetry above.  Just that, I find my inspiration from many sources.  I am constantly amazed at how these inspirations in martial arts and life mirror each other.
Who has heard Hatsumi Sensei utter similar ideas?


Ryōkan Taigu (良寛大愚)  1758-1831, Japanese Zen Master, hermit, calligrapher, and poet; his name means "Goodly Tolerance."  Another Buddhist name that he took for himself means "Great Fool."  Ryokan is one of the most beloved figures in Japanese Literature, and is especially known for his kindness and his love of children and animals; he even used to take the lice out of his robe, sun them on a piece of paper on the veranda, then carefully put them back into his robe.  He used to smile continually, and people he visited felt "as if spring had come on a dark winter's day." 

His most famous haiku was written after a thief had broken into his hut and stolen his few simple possessions:
The thief left it behind:
the moon
at my window. 


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