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BUDO: A LOVE AFFAIR

As I sat on the bench that offered a view of the dojo floor, I reflected on the nature of this thing we call Budo.  Truth is I can’t remember a time when I did not sit on the bench and reflect just before taking the floor.  Seems I have always done this.  Can’t imagine a life that did not include this ritual.  And I swear I still get that feeling every time I bow at the edge of that wooden floor—a deeply quiet humility—a clenching of the heart—and a child-like wonderment of being in the presence of something much larger than me.  Here I have found a sacred retreat from a brutish, uncaring world with its clap-trap of problems all banging behind me on the pavement of life.  I have found the path of my heart.

I read somewhere once that the word DOJO came from a Sanskrit root that meant Place of Enlightenment.  Hell, I’ll go with that, and the research to prove its veracity be damned.  Place of Enlightenment.  For me however, the dojo isn’t just a place—it is an extraordinarily special miracle of living…right.  And I can find it most anywhere—in most anything.  It is in my heart and mind, and sometimes my body tags along, and finds it too.  The dojo offers me a path.  And I have trod this path with reverence.  And as I walked down the floor to the dressing room tonight, I was filled with that familiar excitement of casting about my search earnestly on the path of my heart—the path of Budo.

I would forward that more than anything, the dojo for me is an amalgam—and an embodiment of my sensei and sempai—those who have gone on this path before me, and those brothers and sisters following this path with me.  These people know me better than my own family.  They have seen me both weak and strong, powerful and powerless, righteous and full of shit.  Beyond the comfortable metaphors, we have all literally shared our sweat and blood.  Blood brothers—sisters.  Blood and bone, sinew and tendon.  Mind, body, spirit.

The three jewels of Budo include: 1) The teachings; 2) The teacher; and, 3) The Budo family.  When I first met my teacher, I  saw a man who smiled with his whole body and was easy to laugh.  Although he had retired from the Corps some time before, one could still see the Marine Gunnery Sergeant who had seen and done everything and more.  The man exuded a gentleness that was more comforting than soft.  Simply, he was a caring teacher.  And he had faith only in the dojo floor.  I grew to love that old man.  And I grew to understand his unflagging belief in the floor.

When I first came to the dojo, I had always been my own man.  I had never had jobs where I was not a leadership figure.  I had rarely ever had a boss.  And when I did, I would never recognize it as so.  Jim Clifton, CEO of the Gallup Organization once said that I was the only executive he had worked with who was totally unmanageable.  After Gallup, and a two-year battle with a would-be boss in Connecticut, I again and forever since found myself to be…. capo di tutti capi.

Most people don’t realize how hard it is to be the boss.  Nor do they understand that usually, the boss is the boss only because he or she is willing to do the jobs that no one else wants to do.  There are necessary jobs to be done in an enterprise, and some are too scary, too risky, too hard, too time consuming, require too much sacrifice, and are just too everything for most people to do.  The boss does those jobs.  And that was the epitome of who I was when I first walked onto the dojo floor those many years ago.  And I could not believe how good it felt to finally….submit.

I was a junior, and boy Howdy did that feel good.  I reveled in being told what to do, which was strange since outside the dojo I would allow NO ONE to tell me what to do.  I volunteered for the hardest or ugliest of jobs.  I remember laying in water of questionable purity while fixing the toilet in the women’s bathroom.  I was light hearted and full of Budo’s light as my teacher looked in and smiled down at me. 

“How you feelin’?” he asked with a wide smile.

“Perfect!” I replied as waste water dripped into and from my hair.

“Hold onto that!”

It was then I began to change from the inside, out.  I found patience.  I found humility.  I found the true wonder that was the path of my heart.  And it was Budo.  And I tread that path and was willing to submit as is becoming of a junior, because my teacher and my seniors were all ….with me on that same path.

Despite we are diverse in background, and that we each live in our own skin, our living dojo consistently exhibits compassion and caring.  A personal case in point…. 

After more than a quarter-century of marriage and a heart-breaking divorce, my life came quite completely undone.  I remember wondering how I could feel so bad without actually….dying.  And after the cacophony of my trials and tribulations was silenced, and there was only a deathly quiet, all I had left was….the dojo and my path of Budo.

I remember the pain-filled nights when I was unable to find sleep at home.  I would drive down to the dojo.  There, in the dark I would rei onto the floor and methodically roll up my gi pants into a pillow of sorts, bound by my obi.  I would lay down on a corner of the Judo mat, rest my head on my gi-pants pillow, cover myself with my gi top as a blanket, and fall asleep.

And every one of my sempai offered company, condolences, dinner and movie invites.  And everyone had the wisdom to keep their advice to themselves.  But they truly cared about me.  Wanted to keep me occupied.  I especially remember the call I got from one senior yudansha—seemingly the dojo curmudgeon—who announced he was coming over to drink with me.  We laughed and shared Budo stories late into the night as we medicated ourselves with whiskey.  A true Budo Brother. 

But there is more than the sum of the sensei and sempai—more than the dojo when studying the nature of Budo.  There is our intent and the creative act itself.  The bridge between genetic memory and spiritual growth.  That AH-HA! moment found in the now of kata.  Or the smile of a sweaty face at the spiritual reward of a good punch.  Divine bio-feedback from a Shugyo.  Moving Zen.  Budo.

The way I see it, the dojo is my sanctuary, the sempai the body of the parish, and the sensei is the priest that leads us in the sacraments of kata.  Each kata—is sacredly performed in a mandala (embusen) and is made up of purposeful body movement, kiai and….intent.  It is not a bare coincidence that our Kihon Kata—the basics of our sacramental practice of Budo is found in a trinity….the three battles….Sanchin.

Buddhists have 108 defilements or sins of humankind, and the Dharma of Buddha offers a game plan to leave that crap behind.  Christians are replete with sins and sinning.  Christians have original sin, mortal sins and deadly sins!  Of course, there are more than enough sins found in Islam and the Hindus can account for our numerous earthly hungers.  Even the primitive religions of the Amazon and Africa have offending acts—sin of sorts, and so they find a release from complicity in such acts through ingesting the Ayahuasca or having the Bhang blown up their noses.  The Native Americans sought release from human limitation through both theogenic sacraments like peyote or through the mortification of flesh as in the Sun Dance. 

Organized religions are in the business of identifying sin, human frailties, and weakness—and keeping track of all that.  Religion generally offers ways to become absolved from that sin by touching some spiritual bases.  Oftentimes religion puts the touch on you, too, and money or services change hands.  The genius of religion is that given the nature of humankind, we’ll need absolution as long as we are alive and free to willfully….sin again. 

Now all of that is important stuff.  However, religion is not in the business of offering a path toward sanctification or enlightenment.  If such a true path were offered, religion would find itself….out of business.  There’s no money in Saints—just sinners.  And there’s nothing to sell someone who has found it all.

Unlike organized religions, Budo doesn’t focus on the nature of sin or even human limitation so much as it offers a means to find release from the tethers of the every day, and a means to attain a powerful spiritual union.  Perhaps that is why Budo is my religious surrogate.  Budo, if it were to be compared to a religion would be more like the primitive religions—the kata and the Shugyo of repetitive physical acts like the peyote, ayahuasca, bhang.  Or perhaps closer, Budo offers the same transcendence of being as found through the mortification-of-flesh in the Lakota Sun Dance.  Physical pain is facilitated and then transcended….along with everything else.

In organized religion, the baddie is Satan, Lucifer, Shaiten or the Devil.  The Devil is at the bottom of everything that is bad, feels good or is just plain too easy.  Religion does battle with devils and demons and recruits Bodhisaatvas, angels and saints to come to the aid of we humans as we find ourselves in the comfortable clutches of evil—straying from the dogma that, while fulfilling for the zealot, is not that liberating if you want to have fun.

Now I believe in good and evil—I surely do.  I’ve seen and been a goodly part of both.  But, I think religion misses the true struggle.  A third-party demon is too easy.  If we are to see the face of our true devil, we need only to look in the mirror.  And that is why there’s always a mirror on many shrines, butsudans and on the dojo’s shinji.  We are the enemy.  We must defeat ourselves in order to be sanctified in the Budo spirit.  For my money, it was the self that the Essene, John washed from Jeshua in the Tigris River. 

And we lock ourselves within our own prisons.  Some of us seek release.  Some even seek such release, whether they know it or not, through the sweat they leave on the dojo floor.  When I first walked on the floor, I already knew how to fight.  Having run at least forty miles a week for twenty years, I already had a good plan to stay in shape.  So why did I walk onto the floor? 

To cast about my search earnestly.  Because I could hear whispers that it was there I would find the path of my heart.  And it was there that I found and fell in love with….Budo.

Regardless if it is our performance of Esoteric Buddhism’s Mikkyo, the practice of zazen, the mantra of TM, the Misogi of Shinto, the asanas and pranyamic breathing of yoga, the Bharata Natyam dance with Shiva….or the Kata of Sanchin—it is the biology that is where it starts.

Almost every religious tradition has ceremony that beget a sacred biology.  Many religious ceremonies are based on a triad—three elements—a spiritual alchemy that successfully places the practitioner in a state of UNION—divine or cosmic consciousness.  Of particular importance to understanding how Budo fits within all this is to study the ceremonies endemic to the religions from whence came the martial arts—the ceremony of Budo.

The odyssey of Budo started in the Indus Valley perhaps five or six thousand years ago.  The path of Buddhism—the religion de jour of Budo—started there, as well.  Perhaps the oldest martial art still extant today is the Indian art of Kalarippayat.  Kalarippayat sprung from the Vajramukti (Sanskrit: Thunderbolt Fist) tradition of ancient India.  Historical Indian art includes numerous renderings of this martial tradition—strikes, blocks—even ritualized patterns or forms performed by adherents and observed under the stern glare of a teacher.  Kalarippayat, as a martial art, also includes elements and practices familiar to modern-day Budo-ka: A form of Mokso—meditation—starts the Kalarippayat class, followed by stretching and calisthenics that appear similar to yogic asana.  Then, the students practice their dance-like forms—founded in the ceremonial dance of India— Bharata Natyam—the sacred dance of Shiva.  The forms of Kalarippayat are practiced until the students are exhausted, and experience the emptiness that all Budo-ka are familiar with after hard training.

The ceremonial dance, or Nata of early India share many principles with Kalarippayat—most important being the use of sound (mantra), hand and body positions (mudra), and the performance of the Nata within a spiritual pattern (mandala).

Buddhism sprung from this Indian tradition around 500 BCE.  The Buddha was Siddhārtha Gautama—an evolved prince, high in the caste system of ancient India who found his enlightenment under the Bo tree after decades of ascetic training.  Buddhism, and its arcane practices (mantra, mudra and mandala) then found its way north and into Tibet where its esoteric core of practice was colored by the endemic tribal religions to form Tibetan Buddhism. 

Esoteric Buddhism possibly found its way to China quite early, as in 250 AD, Chinese physician Hua ‘To utilized a dance-like practice to gather spiritual energy and promote physical strength and health.  His spiritual dance was called The Five Animals Frolic (Budo-ka note: The Five Animals….). 

Also, Esoteric Buddhism had already realized an ages-old practice in China long before its teachings were transmitted to Japanese priest Kukai Daisho in the ninth century AD.  Kukai Daisho took the esoteric Buddhist practices of China to Koyasan, Japan where they formed the basis of the Shingon sect of Buddhism—the Buddhism of choice by many samurai in feudal Japan.

In about 500 AD an Indian priest named Bodhidharma (China: Da or Ta Mo – Japan: Daruma) is thought to have traveled to China and introduced the Emperor of China to Buddhism.  Bodhidharma had modified the esoteric Buddhism of his teacher and created a form of Buddhism that we now call Zen (Cha’an).  Just as Zen sometimes frustrates would-be practitioners today, it apparently frustrated the hell out of the Emperor of China some sixteen hundred years ago.  When asked what he could teach the Emperor, Bodhidharma supposedly replied, “I can teach you nothing.”  Well, that didn’t sit well with the Emperor, who had little time for Zen Koans, and Bodhidharma was given the bum’s rush. 

It was then that he is said to have gone to the Shaolin Temple.  It was supposedly at the Shaolin Temple that Bodhidharma instructed the monks in esoteric practice, including the Shipa Lohan Shou (18 hand movements of the enlightened ones).  The basis of the Shipa Lohan Shou included….mudra (18 hand movements) performed in a pattern (mandala) and while chanting (mantra).  Familiar?

All this to say that Indian ceremonial practice evolved into an esoteric form of Buddhism that found its way to Tibet, China and eventually Japan—following the same path traveled by the martial arts of Budo.  Not only does Budo share the distribution of Indus-Valley-based religious practice….it even shares the same triad of practice.  The ceremonial use of mudra, mantra and mandala is consistent throughout the development of numerous religions (including Christianity).  And in all of these ceremonial practices, one uses the spiritual trinity to….find union….become enlightened….pick a word….

And so, too, with kata, one can arrive at a similar state of grace through repetitive practice on the dojo floor. It has happened to many of us, at one time or another—that being one while performing our kata. Additionally, kata, for many, is seen as a form of shugyo—which is defined by martial-arts historian and writer, Charles C. Goodin as, “The austere practice of body-mind transcendence (where) one enters a state of enlightenment.”  The most common form of shugyo is seated meditation or zazen, yet many ascribe to the notion that kata and/or all elements of any martial art can be practiced as a form of shugyo. Many koryu kata are often referred to as Moving Zen.

In his book KARATE, by Zenko Heshiki-Sensei, the author reflects on kata as being a form of shugyo that will carry the practitioner to a higher state of consciousness: “Through the years of practice the trained body will become spiritual, a concentration of all the physical and psychic forces is needed. This is the general attitude of the Oriental people approaching any art . . . It is the aim of every artist to achieve such a state of mind, so that he no longer has to rely on the techniques he has learned, but transcends into the realm of nature and lives completely in tune with the whole of Nature and the truth of the whole.”

As well, Chojun Miyagi, the founder of Goju Ryu Karate-do, cites in an article (Bunka Okinawa Vol. 3 No. 6, August 15, 1942) how to achieve the ecstasy of Sanchin. Miyagi writes: “Tanden (a point a couple of inches below the navel), the back of the head and the buttocks are three focus points on which you have to concentrate your attention during Sanchin exercise. Brief instructions are the following: Tuck your chin in. Lift the back of your head high. Focus on Tanden (a point a couple of inches below the navel) to charge with the energy. Your buttocks should be tucked in. These three focus points are not originally separated from each other, but have inseparable relationship. In addition to them, there is another focus point: the middle point between the eyebrows. You stand straight firmly with stable stance of feet, and hands positioned properly, breathing harmoniously, then you can feel Sanchin ecstasy. I have heard that principles of Zen and other sitting meditations are the same as Sanchin. ” 

In constructing the Human Genome, geneticists identified a complex called vesicular monoamine transporter-2.  VMAT-2 codes to produce specific mid-brain neuro-chemicals.  This genetic structure has been referred to as the God Gene.  Many contemplative practices have been proven to stimulate the neurochemical production of this God Gene which, in turn, produces a Nirvana footprint in the mid brain.  When VMAT-2 produces its neural martini, our spatial brain center ceases to fire—goes quiet—and constructs like time and space disappear like morning mist. 

Essentially, through the stimulation of contemplative practice, our brain releases us from all spatial confines.  Contemplative practices also trigger the release of mesolimbic dopamine in the mid-brain’s pleasure center.  Transcend space and time, and feel really good while doing so.  Hell, sign me up and call it Nirvana.  That’s where Budo can get you, too.

It would be quite impressive if the essence of Budo stopped just at the biology of it all.  It does not. 

Wrap the biology of Budo in eons of cultural development, and tie a bow on it that is the compassion of our teachers and sempai, and fire it with your own creative intent….and then you get close to understanding the power and promise of it all. 

The Jewish Rabi and theologian Martin Buber stated, “Words are prisons,” and he was right.  Consider then these words as only fingers pointing to the moon.  Sure as hell do not confuse these words with the moon.

The mindful practice of Budo can be a sacred ceremony.  It can be a ceremony of life found in the breath and flow of energy through points of light within us all.  It is the intent of the mind in creating a release, and loss of everything so that we may find….everything.  It is the ebb and flow of compassion and energy as we work and sweat with our sempai at the feet of our teachers to form a family of compassionate warriors.  Then, strangely, everything of Budo seems to become a sacred act and life itself becomes….a sacred dance.

  Salama