Dojo Devotion

The conversation after class was light and casual as we all sat around trying to cool down from the August heat.

Discussion about the techniques from the evening, conversations about recent movies, swords, and dinner plans after class.

My attention bounced around among them.

One of the discussion among a small group of students was why there were practicing in the dojo, what brought them to the dojo.

Self-defense.

Learning the sword.

Meditation.

Something to do on Wednesday nights, like bowling.

I immediately shot up from where I was laying down on the dojo floor and had to listen to what I was hearing, as if somehow I was personally insulted.

Something to do on a Wednesday night?

I let the statement roll over me a bit.

Why did it offend me?

This place was sacred, holy ground, this movement divine, a transmission from warriors who survived the impossible.

It did offend me.

But should it have?

If they kept on showing up at the dojo, practiced with discipline, and conducted themselves by the rules of the dojo, did I really have a place to judge them.

I could turn it back on myself, and probably find a student or two in the dojo who considered my reasons for being here outdated, archaic, and rather silly.

That could also true.

I then began to think about the different personalities that stepped through the dojo doors through the years, mentally categorizing an filtering them and for the most part if broken down as follows.

Many were current or former military or law enforcement, as they both saw and needed the movement of the dojo to assist with their responsibility, or in a few cases to return home alive.

I didn’t fit in this category.

The next group were intellectuals and high IQ types where the movement was a puzzle to be solved and variations were to be categorized.

I was a smart guy but hardly a physics, math, or PhD type.

We had quite a few fantasy LARPERS who were interested in swords, as in actually learning how to use one.

I could understand that, as swords were cool, and I enjoyed that aspect of the training, but that seemed to take the training in a direction it was never intended for.

Then there were the cultural types, guys who wanted to be from that time and era, who could point out the tradition on map and quote you ever kata, pattern, and form.

I knew most of the forms by memory through repetition, but even I had to read and look up a few during practice at times.

And then there were the guys from that statement that got my attention.

They were here because it was just something to do during the week,

So why was I here?

Because the moment that I walked in the dojo I knew without reservation this is the place I needed to be.