Budo As Architecture

The dojo is a way of doing things, things that to the outsider, somebody watching a training session would seem odd or strange.

Things that are easily misunderstood, in that not understanding that for the past 800 or so years the movements have been keeping people alive, so the method and delivery works.

Every school has an architecture of doing things.

Phrases, words, philosophy expressed in the culture and time it was discovered and passed on, but the architecture, that of the sword is the same.

The engine that powers it is budo.

The first layer of that engine is what those not on a martial arts path would understand and recognize as *martial arts*.

The teacher demonstrating a martial arts technique or physical principal to the class, and the students practicing it together.

Model and copy it.

Corrections and adjustments are made along the way: move like this, change that, adjust this.

From the outside the transmission of the training looks academic, but it is not academic.

Budo is not academic.

There are no questions to be asked as in the *why*?

Why are we doing it?

Why do you move this way?

Why are you saying it is wrong?

Budo is not a democracy where an outcome can be changed by consensus.

It just isn’t and can’t.

It is either life or death.

What is being shown is life, and if it goes uncorrected it is death.

Explanations are not needed at this stage of training, only trust in the flow (ryu) of the school and the vow taken by the teacher to transmit it.

Thinking is anti-training at this point, trying to give form and limit from your mind which has no idea on what is going on.

Just enjoy the training and laugh along the way.

Have fun.

Laughter is the best way to learn.

Take the art serious, but don’t take yourself seriously.

The second layer of this engine powering the architecture is kuden: a secret, or ku being nine, and nine being the highest number, signaling the highest transmission.

These are short phrases, poems, spiritual words with power (kotodama) that provide an anchor point or a loci for a specific movement or experience. Something you have experienced in the transmission (ryu) and are now given a reference, something of a map to look out for in the future in training.

These kuden are secret in that to possess them without the reference of training behind them makes them either meaningless or silly.  

At this stage, just continue training and you will encounter them over time as the martial arts conditions arise.

The final layer in the architecture exists but is hard to capture in the clumsy medium of words, but here we are and I’ll do my best to capture it so those on a martial path know what to look for.

This is the stage of shinden (heart) or isshi-soden (person to person), again different schools will have different words, but the principal is the same.

This is where, through the movement, the teacher passes a feeling to the student.

This could be a physical feeling regarding a technique, it could be a feeling regarding a state of mind, but either way it is something created in that one moment between teacher and student and will never exist again.

Ichi-go ichi-e

There is a waza (skill or technique) called yama-arashi (mountain storm).

On a technical level one can watch videos on this throw and understand it, probably even replicate it, but what does it *feel* like when correctly (technically) done and with the feeling of isshi-soden?

When that throw is done, there is a feeling of floating in the moment when you are being thrown, a feeling that is disorientating and weird as one is physically in a state of not being connected to the ground or the person throwing you. The mountain storm is not the violence of the storm, but the calm that exists in the storm before the moment.

That is the feeling of the throw.

That is what the teacher is trying (!) to transmit and give to you as the student.

This architecture is the third layer as the student needs to have the technical ability first, the kuden reference points second, and from that the final point can be experienced (yugen).

In every training session these three layers, bound by an architecture exist- can you see them?

If I am sounding harsh it is only because I care about you.