Requirements for those Becoming Martial Artists
Shidoshi Ken Harding
Many people strive to be bugeisha, or martial artists. After many years of hard training, one can come to realize that there are five important characteristics that are necessary in the pursuit of bugei. Like the legs of a table, each point is essential for the achievement of the warrior heart. If one of these aspects is missing in a person, he or she can still train and grow in ability and understanding, but the way to ultimate attainment is blocked. If someone has few or none of these traits, then there is little point in pursuing the martial arts. The world is filled with people who only pretend to be martial artists, who have fooled themselves and fooled others into believing something that is not true.
It is important to enter into bujutsu training with all or most of these five qualities, but it is equally important to realize that no one enters training as a complete, fully developed individual. Some portion of these qualities are required to begin sincere training, but the over time their strength will be increased from the training itself.
What are these qualities? The first is self-honesty. This must come first. When you are completely honest about yourself, you know your own weaknesses, the things about yourself that you must improve. Do not harbor illusions about your skill. Do not overrate or underrate your own abilities. You must know your own limitations— and the times when you must avoid danger. You must even seek out the weak points of the martial art you have been practicing. If your martial art is not truly useful in modern times, you should abandon it for something that is practical. Only if you are honest can you steer a true course of action. Lack of self-honesty is extremely dangerous, and can easily lead to death. Self-honesty is not limited to physical skill only, but also in personal character. The martial arts will become a mirror which you hold up to yourself— a mirror like a finely polished blade, which is used to cut away the imperfections of one’s own self. You then realize you yourself are the blade, forged from the fires of budo training, and sharpened through the constant honing of self-purification. You wield yourself as if you are your own sword. It is the never ending struggle, the eternal battle, where you are your only foe. But the only way this process works is with self-honesty.The second aspect is humility. This is important for many reasons. One reason is because the trait of self-honesty is a humbling force. If you lack the humility to face up to your own weaknesses and mistakes, then you cannot continue the training process. The most common reason people quit training is that when they realize how little they know about budo, and how ineffective they are, they lack the humility to handle that realization. They forget that’s why they began training in the first place— to learn to do things that they cannot yet do. No one likes it pointed out to them that they don’t know and can’t do— but that’s the process of training. The first step in the journey is to admit that we don’t know, and can’t do, and we must work very hard to understand.
Another important reason for humility is simple survival. Realizing that combat situations— not just military conflicts, but barroom brawls as well— are potentially life-threatening, you must develop your humility in order to live a long life. Choose your battles carefully. Engage in combat only when there is no other real choice— and then win at all costs. This also is important. I am not talking about being humble because you are very weak, but being strong enough to be humble, being wise while still retaining the power to be extremely dangerous.
The third trait is discipline. Many people think that martial arts training will give them discipline, but this is not true. You must have it already. If you don’t have any in the beginning, then you aren’t going to get any from the training. If you begin training and lack discipline, then you will soon quit. Discipline is required to keep showing up day after day, and to keep submitting yourself to painful and difficult experiences. Discipline is not something that someone else can give you— it is something you give yourself. With work, it may be increased over time; but there must be a seed of discipline within you from the beginning.
The fourth characteristic is intelligence. It is impossible to rise to a high level of skill in the martial arts without the ability to properly understand what is being shown. It simply cannot be understood without a sharp mind that absorbs and understands what the eyes see. Martial arts are also known as Martial Science. Musashi calls them so. Budo Taijutsu rises out of extreme complexity to being purely simple and natural. You must be able to get past the extreme complexity, to get to where it is naturally simple. Normal people off the street cannot understand it. Our techniques do not resemble anything most people have done before, and our principles are notideas that most people think of naturally. If you don’t think that you are a genius, don’t worry. You can still succeed. Work very hard at trying to understand what is being shown. Concentrate in every moment. Develop your mind. But intelligence is nothing by itself— for even if you are very intelligent you still cannot advance without the other four traits.
The fifth is bravery. Again, you must have at least a seed of bravery to walk into a dojo for the first time; but to be a martial artist, you must develop true bravery. True bravery is built up through repeated exposure to dangerous and painful training situations, and by gradually increasing the level of realism of your personal training. If you raise the level of realism too much too soon, then courage fails. True bravery is developed to its full potential over time. It is necessary to have ‘guts’ in order to perform the techniques that we do, and necessary to take action in moments of extreme danger. If you have doubts about your level of guts, then keep training. That is the key. Train for ten years, and you will be as brave as you need to be.
These five traits, as I have described them, are absolutely necessary. They are the least that you need. Without these traits, people pretend to be martial artists, but in reality are only criminals that cause problems to society; or sportsmen who will die because they do not understand real combat; or artsy esoterics, who also do not understand true combat because they are not honest with themselves, and are nothing but toothless tigers. These types do not have the bugeisha no kokoro, or Heart of the Warrior.
Remember also that even though we have talked about discipline, humility and the rest, you should enjoy your training. It should not feel like a chore. It should fulfill a part of your existence that nothing else can. It should make you complete. Train with a happy, joyous heart. Let your training take you away from daily worries. Feel your training increasing your personal power and competence. If you have been training for a couple of years, you know what I am referring to— you are not the same person as when you began. Enjoy the benefits of your training: the confidence, the improved physical control, the strengthening of the mind. Pay attention to these things. These and other benefits can offset the occasional frustration that comes with training. Realize that the frustration makes you stronger and better.An Analogy
Sometimes students express the concern of knowing what a particular attack will be, so that they can deal with it when the time comes. These concerns usually come in the form of a question like this: How will I know how he is going to punch, so that I know where to block?
The answer, though simple, is hardly satisfying. The answer is: you just will.
To explain further, I will use the following analogy. Consider a hockey goalie. He has an opponent coming at him, 20 feet away, who winds up and takes a slapshot. The puck, a thick, heavy disk of hard rubber, comes rocketing at the goalie in excess of a hundred miles an hour— much faster than any punch, even faster than they eye can follow.
How does the goalie “know” where to reach out his glove, or his stick, or his skate, in order to block the shot? It seems impossible, and yet we’ve all seen it: a goalie reaching out and catching a puck, or deflecting it with his skate.
The answer is that he just “knows”. Through constant, repeated exposure to the experience, long practice sessions of blocking shots, he begins to recognize the target area by how the shooter delivers the shot. The goalie begins to “see” what cannot be seen.
The same is true of a tennis player, adapting to the movements of his or her opponent, to return a ball that is traveling over a hundred miles an hour. Reaction time is a factor, it is true, but there is something else.
In a similar way, a student of the martial arts learns to detect the attack as it is being delivered, and to respond and adapt accordingly.
The Human Condition“The ability to kill is inherent in all human beings. We are, after all, mere animals. Yet we have learned to set those animalistic tendencies aside. In a life-or-death situation, however, you must be prepared to go the distance…Sometimes, it is kill or be killed." --Masaaki Hatsumi.
Within everyone is a brutal animal, waiting for the moment to come out. Even a delicate mother can turn into a raging beast, if her child is threatened.
Humankind has not changed over the eons. If one looks at the behavior of chimpanzees, our close cousins, one can see the pattern. When one band of chimps draws too close to another troop’s territory, then there is a battle, complete with thrown rocks and swinging sticks. Imagine primitive human tribes— the situation was the same. What is the root of tribal warfare? The answer is resources. When a tribe’s resources become depleted, they move on to another area. If that area is already inhabited, there is warfare.
If your tribe grows in size, and your area can no longer offer adequate support, then you go to the next tribe’s land, and take over their crop fields, or hunting grounds, or in modern times, their gold mines or oil fields. Your tribe marches in, kills the people living there, and moves in. You may invent excuses such as Divine Guidance or Manifest Destiny, but that cannot hide for long what you have done. It is the way the world has been developed.
The struggle for land and/or resources is the major cause of human conflict. It can be seen throughout history in Europe, Asia, American, and in the Middle East.
The tragic events of September 11th are simply an outcome of that age-old struggle. There are two groups of people fighting over one piece of land. The attacks have caused all of us to reconsider many things: the level of security in our nation, our own level of personal security and readiness. The lesson is clear: complacency equals death.
Have you become complacent? Too relaxed and confident in your personal security? Any one of us could have been on one of those four airplanes that were destroyed. In fact, I nearly was. One week before the attack, I and others were training in Washington D.C., just a couple of miles from the Pentagon. We all flew on planes right in that area. I know that I would have acted, but how about YOU?
What would you have done if you had been placed in a terrorist situation? Think about that for a moment. Would you have felt a surge of confidence and power, seizing upon your adversary’s weaknesses? Or would you have been frozen by fear and uncertainty? Or are you just not sure how you would have reacted?
What will it take for you to feel the kind of warrior power that you want to attain? How much training will you need to undergo? What kind of training? And what about the training of the mind? Are you neglecting that most important point?
What can you do today to make yourself more prepared? Shake off any complacency— know your situation at all times. No one is invulnerable. There are always moments when you can be attacked. Just as you move in certain ways to guard your openings when you practice bujutsu techniques, so you also guard yourself in life. It is the same. And this is perhaps one of the most important teachings of all.