Black best testing followed an extended period of sustained-focus and endurance training, including kata, breaking, partner practice and kumite.
Congratulations to all who participated and successfully completed the training and testing!
For those whose testing is coming up in the weeks and months ahead, as welll as everyone involved in today’s event, there is no doubt, as you experienced, that all your dedication and hard work is paying off. At this time it may be useful to remember this:
We will encounter obstacles. In facing them we should consider their significance as well as their presence. We may take them as guidance. Some need to be confronted directly, surmounted or eliminated. Some can be circumvented or changed. Some represent negative attractors which engage our will but distract us from our purpose. Then we need to reflect on what our aims are, and what actions contribute to their fulfillment, and which, because they do not, we can forgo. If our goals are worldly there will be no end to them and no satisfaction from them. If our goals are wholesome and transcend the boundaries of the world, its temptations, threats and illusions, then we can wholeheartedly pursue them and further our progress, even when they are difficult, or when they are easy. That is the critical point to examine, and on the basis of which we can make good judgments. What happens in training, at work and at home, matters more than what happens in worlds of the imagination.
Keep up the good work!
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Post copyright © 2025 Jeffrey Brooks, MountainKarateNC.com, Yamabayashi Ryu, Mountain Karate Dojo, in the mountains of western NC.
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read True Karate Dō by Jeffrey Brooks
“One of the best books I’ve read in years, inviting and compelling. Jeff Brooks moves effortlessly from martial arts to Buddhism to consciousness studies, self-transformation, and related fields in this wide-ranging and Illuminating study that has much to offer both novice explorers and veteran practitioners. A splendid achievement.”— Philip Zaleski, Editor, The Best Spiritual Writing series
Many congratulations to all the students who tested and participated in the 2025 Black Belt Testing!