Thoughts on Budo - NinZine 3.0

go beyond the form

Today while training in Tachi waza with a group of students I thought that maybe the whole thing about Shu Ha Ri that Hatsumi Sensei is pushing these days may have always existed but that we were not ready to understand it.

We know that Shu is learning the form, that Ha is absorbing the form and Ri is destroying the form. But we all know also that Sensei used to say: “understand? good. Play.” Now can’t we understand that as “understanding the Shu, becoming good at the Ha level and destroying it by playing with the concept more than the initial form?

I will think a little more around that and come back to you.

be happy!

From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumafr

We must train our basics to be like water; in fact we must become like seaweed. Seaweed under water is attached to the ground. Like some kind of water Tenchijin, we must become seaweed and sway without tension in the stream of life. Stop hugging hard onto things. Let go of your beliefs and mental structures and discover the true freedom of life. The Bujinkan is a tool that is to be used mainly out of the Dojo.

Hatsumi Sensei explained it once: “training in the Dojo is only a few hours per week, life is 24 hours a day”.

The more you “keep going”, the more likely you will reach this higher state of freedom you are looking for.

Here is a poem called “Seaweed”, by D.H.Lawrence explaining it perfectly:

Seaweed sways and sways and swirls

As if swaying were its form of stillness;

And it flushes against fierce rock

It slips over it as shadows do, without hurting itself