Endangered Theses
“By nature people are similar. By training they become vastly different.” – Confucius. We cultivate our natural talents, or we lose them.
Martial Arts Ideas
This is Your Art
There is a limit to force. There is a limit to power. There is a limit to harm. There is no limit to mastery: in a life, a dojo, a community, or in the world.
Power
You have power. You are training. Your power is increasing.
You are training. Your power is increasing. More power does not mean more happiness. Power can be used well or badly. Power can be used to help or destroy.
Training Vs. The Culture of Death
From time to time the spirit of killing people and taking their stuff crashes like a wave over nations. We respond.
Training the Body, Training the Mind
Whatever our motives and goals for our training may be, we train karate because we get a good feeling from it. It is not that training is comfortable or pleasurable or easy. But from day one we have an ideal to strive for and we feel good about taking steps to reach our ideal. It …
Karate and Nuclear War
In the historical perspective, a key factor of a nation being able to enjoy a healthy growth has been to maintain culture in one hand and martial arts in the other hand. That is, maintaining both of the above was critical in governing a nation. – Shoshin Nagamine
Sirens at Night
We train. Because we cannot predict when we will face a powerful, devious enemy. Or what it will take to prevail.
Loyalty and Integrity
John Boyd and Musashi Miyamoto did not triumph in their quest for mastery by seeking approval from strangers. They trained diligently, relentlessly, seeking knowledge everywhere and anywhere they could find it, tested it thoroughly and applied it assiduously.
Tied Up Right Now
…we flow through postures to meet changing conditions. Like the course of a river, or a rope in the air. In this sense there are no postures…
Burning Books
If we treat the kata as fetishes, as objects possessing magic powers, as if they could confer mastery on their own, just by knowing them, then they fail in their purpose.
Too Fast To See
The use of instant reversals and deceptive maneuver, what Boyd called fast transients, is a staple of the combative technique of throwing and grappling arts. This essential tactic is built in to all of our karate techniques. It has not been fully grasped.
Urgency in True Karate Dō
From my book True Karate Dō: The time to decide what your life is worth is now. If you wait it will be too late. The world is changing. Everyone knows it. We try to stay on familiar ground. We try to orient like we always have. We hope the world we knew will come back. …
Farm Raised or Wild
One difference between the natural world and the virtual world is that in the natural world you are somewhere. You can be there and do something. You can stay where you are, or go somewhere else. That may be obvious. But it may not be obvious that in the virtual world you are never anywhere. …
Apocalypse, Wow!
Walking home, late at night, you hear something behind you. A sound, unexpected, out of place. Pulling up to your house, in the driveway, in the dark. Something looks wrong. The window shade never looks half-open like that. Or the front door is not quite closed. Someone you know well says something, casually, that seems …
Is “Nothing” Sacred?
Miyamoto Musashi lived in turbulent times. He sharpened his sword-fighting skills at the great battle of Sekigahara, in sixty duels and ceaseless training for single combat. Later, living alone in a cave, he wrote the Book of Five Rings. His story is legendary. His example of the traditional virtues of courage, skill and integrity retold in novels …