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My Past Way of Budo and Other Essays

Mikoto Masahilo Nakazono

232 pages. Paperback. Including sound charts. ISBN 9783943519594. Bilingual edition: English, Deutsch

www.kototamabooks.com
Kototama Books, USA

Since childhood, I had excellent Budo teachers. They all explained that competitive practice, fighting or winning in relation to another, was the wrong way, and that the object was to conquer one’s own weak or negative mind. That’s why I never practiced with the idea of self-defense. Self-defense doesn’t exist if we refuse to fight with others. That is its real meaning. It sounds better to say “self-defense” instead of “fighting” but it’s the same thing. Getting over the fighting mind is what Budo is all about. To do this, we must cleanse our mind of all its negative aspects in order to allow the morality and judgment of a clean mirror. This is the true way of Budo exercise. The state of having a clean mirror is called mei-kyou and means to grasp the mirror of life; Yata or Iota. It’s a mind that is tranquil, undisturbed by a wave or ripple, so that all phenomena are reflected with perfect clarity and can be judged accordingly.

Extract

At the source of all fighting minds, there is love; the inner desire to return to the one source. Physical life, WI, is trying to synchronize with I, the source or spirit, and return to following the order I-WI. I and WI are two sides of the same thing, the essential substance, the human being itself, creating the activity of the four dimensions, U, O, A, and E, through physical life. When this activity is out of order, instead of harmonizing, it manifests as the fighting mind. Our capacities are completely distinct and different from one another; U - the five physical senses, O - memory or intelligence, A - emotion, and E - judgment. If we cannot stand on I-WI, the self, which orders these four dimensions, we aren’t able to judge what we have grasped. We cannot realize what is correct.

Without grasping I-WI, life-will and life-power, our highest judgment, E, cannot be freely expressed. Without the mirror of the Life Principle, words and actions become fragmented; truth is a word instead of a reality. The current of the last eight thousand years, our present scientific-material civilization, is now coming to a close. We should all return to the Life way of our ancestors, bringing their gift with us. We must return to our own soul, the native land which is the life principle of Kototama-Futomani. This means standing in I-WI, our substance, and looking at universal phenomena. If, from there, we review our material civilization in its totality, the direction of today’s society and its institutions would automatically undergo great changes.

When I talk this way, I feel I am making it too difficult for many Budo practicants but I’ll continue a little further. My instructors taught me that Budo is neither theory nor intelligence; it must be grasped. They didn’t mean an intellectual understanding. If you grasp it, the real movement begins. If what we talk about so nicely cannot be expressed in our physical movement or actions, we may have synthesized what others have told us but this is not Budo. Creating theory or making rationalizations is a study, not Budo. For example, if we try to explain what pain is to someone who has never felt it, using scientific, aesthetic, or religious descriptions, etc., no matter how thorough our explanation is, we can never really convey it. Explanations can create an understanding but not the experience. To experience pain, the body must be struck or cut; there is no other way. To grasp the self or to guide others this way through Budo is a similar situation. We must proceed this way until we arrive at the final objective which is the perfection of humanity.

In the beginning, physical strength, U, and technique, O, are being guided toward the world of spirit. Budo is, therefore, one of the most important ways in traditional education for perfecting the self, meaning to enter the world of complete freedom. Freedom is happiness, getting past all the limitations of sadness, fear, etc. Everyone knows this intellectually but cannot reach that state of being. Why? It is because no one can get beyond the physical sense experiences, a narrow world where freedom can never be found.