What a busy month April was! And here it is MAY already. Sheesh.

Wood and Steel III was great! Ohmi Sensei is a marvelous teacher and a wonderful person.

The event itself went well despite a somewhat small turnout, but the folks who did show up were enthusiastic and energetic.

My only complaint about the whole affair was a very simple, very minor misunderstanding with a local weekly newspaper, Nuvo Newsweekly. Nuvo refused to publish an item advertising the event in their community calendar.

The calendar editor, I believe, simply misunderstood the nature of the event and what we were trying to do. We had some discussion, but I found her resistant to hearing what I had to say. I confess, I got a little perturbed (shouldn't have, it was really a very, very minor thing) and I probably mouthed off a bit much.

I'm convinced that she saw it was a 'martial arts' event, and having little or no background in what budo is all about, had visions of sweaty guys in silk pajamas grunting and smacking each other around (or something similar lifted from any bad martial arts movie of your choice). I'm also convinced that she could not or would not see past that vision.

I have to blame the media, and in the end the martial arts community itself. Not her individually, not Nuvo. The incident made me stop and think about what it IS we're doing and what folks THINK we do.

At the very core, it may not be opera, but it IS culture, baby.

Budo isn't about leaping and hacking and smacking and screaming. It's about preserving something precious. If it were just fighting, we could strap on some mitts and mouthpieces and just go duke it out.

There's something more than that, but the world at large just doesn't get it.

Somebody commented after class one night that what I was teaching was as much history as it was technique. I never looked at it that way, really, but had to admit that it was true.

What IS budo? Budo is part of bujutsu. Bujutsu is, very simply put, martial arts. Budo is a facet of bujutsu, I think. And largely, vice-versa.

Bu = martial/warrior-related and do = path/way. Pretty simple, that. Martial way. At the root, budo is the teaching of organized violence. Someone, somewhen, survived combat and taught what he knew to others. Those teachings became systematized (usually during times of peace, no time for such things in war), and thus bujutsu was born.

Over the years, the warriors who used such arts to survive found that living at the point of a sword had (despite the obvious drawbacks) certain spiritual and psychological effects.

I've recently reread _Koryu Budo_, edited by Diane Skoss. Great book. It is on the recommended/required reading list for members of The Dojo, by the way. There is a chapter toward the end of the book by Ellis Amdur, an Araki Ryu and Toda Ryu practitioner.

One statement sticks out for me (paraphrased): It is entirely possible to find enlightenment on the field of battle, even with your hands covered in blood.

Budo, then, can be a means of enlightenment, a forge upon which we can temper the spirit and polish the mind. It is also about developing certain archaic warrior skills that enabled folks to survive combat. Budo is also potentially lethal.

And, budo, to me, is also about peering deep into the mindset of another culture. Into the life and art and class and rank and social structure of the samurai. The bones of that thing we're examining are the techniques of budo, the flesh is the philosophy, the heart is the spirit and mind of the warrior class of old Japan.

Along the way, we learn some things that ARE applicable to self defense, since the art and tradition we study is based on the personal combative skills of the samurai.

One thing I find interesting and slightly distressing, however, is the fact that the Japanese themselves are simply not as interested as they used to be. I read somewhere (can't verify this, I fear) that more Westerners are studying budo than Japanese!

By treading this path ('Do' in budo, of course, means path or Way), we are helping preserve a piece of culture, or history, that might otherwise die out in a few more generations.

Our friend, Peter Boylan is a fine example of this. He's one of a scant handful of folks studying a particular sword art, Shinto Hatakage Ryu. Most of the four or five students are Westerners and they discovered the art sort of by accident. If they had not found the teacher and pestered him to teach them, he could very likely have been the last person to practice Shinto Hatakage Ryu, ever.

Some aspects of budo, notably the more visible aspects -- the competition, the fighting, the self defense -- will probably do quite well. But the less sexy bits, the details, the why and the guts of the arts simply aren't found in most dojo, there or here.

So MUCH of what we do is really sort of an anthropology lesson. Why do we bow the way we do? Why is the shomen in the dojo special? Why do that hand have to be there when nothing else is happening? Why do we wear simple hakama and keikogi instead of some flashy, patch-covered, neon-colored fashion creation?

All of these little lessons, if explored, will offer insight into the culture of the budo, into the mindset of those who created the arts, who lived or died by the budo they practiced.

So. What happened that weekend with Ohmi Sensei?

Surface: A bunch of people dressed up in funny costumes and swung sharp pointy things and sticks, occasionally at each other.

Inside looking out: We practiced the Jikiden lineage of Eishin Ryu iai and a bit of ZenKen seitei jo.

Deeper: We probed elements of an archaic culture, dissecting certain ritual behaviors of the warrior class of that culture and examining the root connection between ritualized violence and spiritual growth.

And it was a great lot of FUN. Pics are developed and should be scanned and posted soon.

More later!

... cg