Ura

[Kokoro777]

Its often said that Iaido has vital spiritual/psychological/mental and historical components to it and indeed without these facets, the art becomes 'meaningless' and nothing more than a physical exercise. Indeed some books on Iaido will devote chapters to the these ideas and again emphasis their importance in training. But, in the few years of training I've had, nobody has ever mentioned any of these subjects. Nothing at all.

So do any of you ever hear your sensei talking of the spiritual/psychological/mental and historical during your training? If so, what sorts of things do they talk about and do you feel it enhances your training? If this doesn't happen, is it because we Westerners are a bit embarrassed talking about such things or are we, perhaps, incapable of understanding them? Or am I completely missing something? Is it simply never made explicit and the experience is whats important and not the intellectual? But if this is the case, how will this 'heritage' be transferred into the future? Do you have any thoughts on this apparent hole in our education?

[willszenith]

interesting post. I can only speak from my own practice. the philosphy , etc perhaps comes when a deeper understanding of iai occurs, I guess for some it may never occur, how many times have you returned to mae with a new insight or a new layer exsposed? the philosphy is also a personal thing , somethings you can be told, but not fully understood until you experience it , but then ive never met anyone with all the answers. As with technique you are resposible also for your own personal development and that doesnt mean holding a bokken in the garden. It means studying in a historical sense ( I did a uni course on jap military history) , resesrching the language , ettiqutte, and to a degree letting in a culture but not let it consume and blind you.

Oh and also lots of floor time.

A difficult thing to answer this, I wouldnt feel ok repeating things said or done on a forum out of respect for my teacher(s) but it isnt a secret you just have to look harder i guess...

Regards

[Peter West]

This is not an academic study where you can turn to chapter 23, read paragraph 5 and do exercise 3, then you know it. It is a lifelong journey of discovery. If you have a teacher that understands these aspects, then when you are ready that teacher can help you to find them in yourself. It depends on your potential and your relation sip with your teacher, and who your teacher is. Ultimately you might, once you've discovered them, find them to be more ordinary than you expect, but that is because you have reached the point where you can recognise them.

But generally, in the dojo we only practice the way of reaching that point, which is why it is called a dojo. Out of the dojo, if you have that relationship with your teacher you might receive more.

[dillon]

I'm of the opinion that budo gets over mystified into some kind of surrogate for religion or philosophy. Nevertheless, the lessons can extend beyond the dojo into general life and make practitioners more competent people in general.

To me the practice of iaido, beyond learning how to handle a sword, makes me more aware of my place in the physical world: how my body moves, things on my body (sword, gi, etc.) and things I might bump into around me. Outside the dojo I've learned not to barge through doors because someone might get smashed behind it, to look, then think, then do rather than to do, then see, then think. Here in Japan I guess people are so used to being over crowded that they tend to tune other people out and bump into each other a lot. It makes me wish more of them would take up an art like iaido simply to learn to not suddenly veer their bicycle across the sidewalk without looking.

In short, the way I see it, iaido is like a defensive driving course one can apply to general life. But aside from using Buddhist metaphors or some koryu preserving shinto rituals, I perhaps wouldn't try to hamfist too much into it.

But what do I know?

[Kim Taylor]

"there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" said Hamlet, while Siddhartha taught us that while life is suffering, there is a way out which involves meditation.

And that is a sufficient sermon in my opinion. The brain is the source of pain and thoughts are the source of emotional suffering. A solution must involve treating the cause, rather than adding to the symptoms.

When I started my martial arts practice it was a part of a massive amount of reading and thinking and even obtaining a minor in philosophy, I knew all the dates, all the terms, all the various schools of thought and could demonstrate wonderful dominance over others in that book learning. None of the book learning helped, in fact it just made me argue with those who got something wrong. I sermonized all the time but somehow telling other folks how to live their lives didn't make their life, or mine, any better. Now I just smile and nod when folks tell me how to be happy, or what is best for them or for me or for everyone. That makes me feel better for not getting into conflict, and it must make them feel better because they stop talking to me about it. I am reminded of one fellow I know who can quote chapter and verse of obscure philosophy at me and I'm sure he is never wrong about it, but he's an ass who causes no end of trouble around himself, while making himself miserable at the same time. None of that learning has done him a bit of good, it's just so much craving for things, in his case, data.

Over the years I've forgotten all of that book stuff, if I want to know it, there's Wikipedia where thousands of bright young things argue infinitely over angels and heads of pins. In fact, I was out at a cafe this morning and popped onto the internet to find that Shakespeare quote up there... what a wonderful bit of technology that lets me let go of so much. Now there's room in my head for knowing who Brittney is dating this week without worrying about what fell out of the other side of my head.

These days I mostly just swing the sword and teach my students how to swing the sword better than they were swinging it yesterday. While I do occasionally slip into what they call "rant mode", as I did yesterday when I went on for a while about the kata kaeshaku and what it means today, I try to keep my mouth shut. The best sermon in iaido practice is to swing the sword.

All of which is a trick of course, it really does make no difference at all whether or not you're good at iaido since your average punk on the street with a gun will blow your head off, as the modern fighters are fond of telling us, and your sword is going to be at home when your MMA expert does the ground and pound on you. All those years of swinging the sword. Wasted, just wasted.

Consider what you're doing in an iaido class. Give it 10 or 12 years if it appeals to you at all (and it doesn't appeal to many). If after that time you still feel that you need sermons during the class, go back to church, it will probably do you more good than swinging a sword.

Me, I'll continue to try and perfect something that can't be perfected, I'll continue to enjoy all the impositions and committee-led changes to seitei, all the struggling with koryu iai and kenjutsu to try and work out from the inside of the kata what I should be looking for on the outside. All the while, for each hour of my life I spend doing that, I'll have saved myself an hour of fuss and bother thinking that I should be reading a new book or listening to a new holy man just in case they have the secret formula to make me happy.

Let's face it, we do iaido and the other budo because the spiritual teachers aren't allowed to preach at us.

Kim.

[Rennis]

So do any of you ever hear your sensei talking of the spiritual/psychological/mental and historical during your training? If so, what sorts of things do they talk about and do you feel it enhances your training? If this doesn't happen, is it because we Westerners are a bit embarrassed talking about such things or are we, perhaps, incapable of understanding them? Or am I completely missing something? Is it simply never made explicit and the experience is whats important and not the intellectual? But if this is the case, how will this 'heritage' be transferred into the future? Do you have any thoughts on this apparent hole in our education?

Here in Japan it is varies greatly dojo to dojo. Even within the ryuha I am a member of it varies radically and in many dojo you won't hear much on these topics. With that said, all the sensei I have decided to develop good relationships with over the year here cover these sorts of topics regularly. My original sensei would have me stay at his house on weekends when I went to train and post keiko events would always involve some of us going out for dinner and talking about these things for a few hours, then going back to sensei's home/dojo and continuing to talk about them until the ween hours of the morning. During keiko they came up as well when relevant, but the post keiko meetings were basically considered part of the training so to speak. Another menkyo kaiden level sensei I had a very good relationship with ALWAYS included the philosophical/spiritual and historical details with nearly everything he taught. He was also very big on the fact that this information was rapidly becoming lost so he put special emphasis on it. We still have a good relationship, but he is now in his 90's and sadly has retired from teaching. The sensei I ended up settling on in the end with is working on going through the densho of our ryu together with me so again there is no shortage of this sort of material. On the renmei side of things, the teacher I happen to train with also puts a huge emphasis on these, basically 50/50 with the technical side of training.

With that said, I think that my experience is not really the norm and many of the dojo I have visited, know or have friends training in get next to none of this kind of information, even within our own ryu. In the case of many of the bigger ryu, the ugly truth of the matter is that a great deal of the sensei out there simply don't know much ryu specific information beyond the technical side of things. This it not a knock against said teachers by any means, but simply that they never were taught such things, so how could they possibly pass it on?

[DCPan]

Its often said that Iaido has vital spiritual/psychological/mental and historical components to it and indeed without these facets, the art becomes 'meaningless' and nothing more than a physical exercise.

I don't know about spiritual, but I'd read the bit about "saho".

http://books.google.com/books?id=QFl...page&q&f=false

[Peter West]

Has anyone ever mentioned
Seme?
Zanshin?
Kime?
Kigurai?
Mushin?
Fudoshin?

[Kokoro777]

Here in Japan it is varies greatly dojo to dojo....Another menkyo kaiden level sensei I had a very good relationship with ALWAYS included the philosophical/spiritual and historical details with nearly everything he taught. He was also very big on the fact that this information was rapidly becoming lost so he put special emphasis on it

I suspected this might be the case to an extent from my experience in Karate. Under instruction from UK-trained instructors, it was all about technique with perhaps the odd comment about kata being ' very important'. But under a Japanese-trained instructor, there were always little snippets of information and stories and 'this is derived for this and that' during the training sessions which is part of the reason we loved seminars taught by Japanese-trained instructors. But as you say, Rennis, if these stories aren't relayed to us, how can we learn from and indeed perpetuate them? Could this seeming lack of knowledge be what is holding non-Japanese-trained instructors back from the soaring heights of hachidan?

Perhaps gaining this knowledge and applying it to Iaido is something we need to do ourselves by personal reading or practise in other arts (Zen or Mikkyo for example), modifying it, if required, to Iai? After all, most of the 'karate tales' I heard came from the classical Japanese martial arts so this is almost generic background that can be applied to other arts. We do have access to books by the likes of Lowry et al. that contain this kind of information. Its somewhat ironic that the spiritual/philosophical/moral/historical detail I read from Karate books and could apply to an art like Iai probably had there origins in the classical martial arts!

[Kokoro777]

Has anyone ever mentioned
Seme?
Zanshin?
Kime?
Kigurai?
Mushin?
Fudoshin?

Yes to seme, kime and mushin, the others I've only really read about (originally in your book!).

[birch]

To Kokoro: Here is interresting article from Inaba sensei (aikido). It could help you. What does you give the hard training some budo?

[chidokan]

iai = 1/3 technique, 1/3 etiquette, 1/3 spirit.
You can get technique easily by hard practise. The other two are really about how you want to present yourself to others....So really the question is what do you think is the 'perfect example of a human being?', and do you wish to become this 'ideal person'. We all have failings, and 'iai philosophy' helps me overcome mine, I hope. (I'd be perfect if I wasn't so modest.... )

Iwata sensei used to read a lot, on just about any subject. He would also favourably comment about, say, top baseball players who used their body well, tell little stories about his sensei, and how a couple of them would help another who was overly fond of sake, and so on. This would take place AFTER practise, where he insisted on a session set aside for questions that we wanted to ask but were not technique related... Everything he did was aimed at perfecting himself and helping others to do the same.
To misquote a little, "iaido is my way of life, Iaijutsu is my practical time spent in the dojo"... Studying hard at EVERYTHING is the answer.

[Andy_Watson]

Really nice responses to this question. Personally I don't want people preaching their take on philosophy at me especially being a raging atheist and thereby being naturally sceptical.

I believe a teacher provides guided discovery for the student. By attempting to reveal to the student their own spiritual awakening they are robbing the student of the opportunity to have that moment for themselves.

I think the teaching of ethics and morals has value and most intelligent people can tell the difference between "valuable" ethical teachings and that which borders on the bull.

For me the spiritual/psychological learning comes from hard training, in-depth study and always being ready to drop what you have achieved and start all over again. One thing that did stick with me was the book Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and specifically the revelation of what magic actually was. I won't spoil it if anyone hasn't already read it but a few characters in the book get glimpses of magic's true nature and it kind of turns out to be a whole world simpler than what all the magicians thought it was. This for me was the most important thread of the story. I feel this has some parallel with what we discover about all this Ura stuff in martial arts.

Anyway, that's me...

[dillon]

I couldn't agree more with Andy.

I would like to add that if we take the term "philosophy" in its pedestrian sense (a set of answers) rather than its academic sense (ways of asking questions), then by default we're all receiving a minimum set of "philosophy" from Japanese culture as woven into our daily practices. I prefer to use the academic sense of the word (e.g. philosophy is something we have to rigorously investigate for ourselves and also shouldn't be confused with spirituality, mysticism or religion) and call what we automatically receive from budo as training (cultural, physical, technical, etc.).

[Peter West]

Indeed, Andy, Dillon, I agree.
Old writings, and especially in old translations, tend to use vocabulary slightly differently to modern day text. Combine that with the source often coming from a society that has a greater belief (back then) in the spiritual and religious, then it is easy to think that budo is spiritual. However if you look at contemporary European scientific publications (c16 Century), they often refer to God, the divine, etc. It is clearly not necessary to be Christian in order to fully understand the writings of those scientists, though one needs to understand the religious zeitgeist if one wishes to understand why those people made these references. So it is with Budo. It is not necessary to be Buddhist or Shinto to understand Budo, though one would need to understand the religious background of the society in which it was conceived to understand why it was written and described in those terms back then.

To express the problem in other terms; it is necessary to distinguish between the mysterious and the mystical.