Ura

[Durandal]

Don't misundertand i'm aware that we are practicing schools with great historical and cultural value, but something is disturbing and I still can't explain it.


(And i would love to be introduced to sadô)

[teflon tengu]

If we are not trained to perform fast, if we don't know how to be fast and relax, when the moment comes, we will fail.

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I couldn't disagree more. Once you practice enough, so the techniques get commited to your muscle memory, you should be able to naturally adjust to the speed of the opponents attack. Even if you've only ever practiced the technique slow or moderately fast.

[Kim Taylor]

Don't misundertand i'm aware that we are practicing schools with great historical and cultural value, but something is disturbing and I still can't explain it.

Went back over your last few posts, yes we are training to be good at kata, to have no openings, to swing for openings, to be good at cutting people with swords. If we don't take this seriously we won't be studying seriously, it's the core of our practice. But the core of sado is not to make a good cup of chai, and the core of ikebana is not to make a nice bunch of flowers.

It's what beginners have to get beyond, and if they don't they one day realize they can make a damned nice flower arrangement and who needs all this politics any more? so they are gone.

The contradiction between "learning how to kill" and not being trained to kill is your koan. Part of the answer is to think what training to kill really looks like.

Kim.

[Durandal]

I know that sado is not only about making about a cup of tea but i prefer when the tea is good, mainly if i had been waiting for 3 hours waiting in seiza till the full ceremony ends

I also love my school and wont leave it for anything, I start to realize what's behind our katas, only pieces at the moment, but that's great. Wonderful people taught me the interest of making only the basics through unfinite repetitions this summer. (thus I don't care if other students learn more kata, i still do my basics better than them )

[Peter West]

Do is mitchi, a road or path. You all know this in your intellectual thinking, but what does it mean? I would suggest that the study you are doing is the omote, the entrance into the study that "do" , the ura, is about. You should never leave the meaning of the omote behind, but in this sense, those who pass through the gate of ikebana, or chado, of kyudo, of kendo all pass through different gates from the same city into the same scary wilderness, as it were. It is the nature of where the training leads that is the issue here. Of course making a flower arrangement will never be the same as cutting an enemy with a sword, but what you explore in yourself by total dedication to the study is the point. Anything less than total dedication to the study will probably leave you still pondering the characteristics of the gate, and comparing their differences. To go beyond the gate takes more commitment and courage than most of us are aware is possible, certainly more than many are prepared to give. It is only since I began training every day that I began to realise the truth of this. Every day when I begin my practice I am aware of, and increasingly so, the wonderful place this meditation leads to, and at the same time am daunted by the vast expanse of ignorance that is opening up before me.

[Kendoka]

Those are things that you should research and train yourself in. One day, when you feel ready.