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.
A Controversy
There is more than one controversial idea in True Karate Dō.
I do not seek to be controversial. But there are some unexamined assumptions which have misled people, and which should be challenged.
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. […]
Groundbreaking New Book
“One of the best books I’ve read in years, inviting and compelling… A splendid achievement.”
— Philip Zaleski, Editor, The Best Spiritual Writing series
New Murals
Beautiful and inspiring new murals on the dojo wall – painted by Tarleton Brooks, black belt instructor at Mountain Karate. For a close look at these and other dojo art, visit our Art page. Post by Jeff Brooks, author of the influential book True Karate Dō, instructor of Yamabayashi Ryu at Mountain Karate, Saluda, NC
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 […]
Karate as Life Skill
Our karate is for everyone who wants to do it. Not just for a few competitors, not just for unusual people who are dedicating their lives to the pursuit of a martial arts ideal. We do have some amazing athletes in our style. We have a few who are dedicated practitioners, aspiring at a very […]
Surrounded
We generally train using a single-combat model. That is a challenge. Size matters. So do skill, speed, determination and defiance. To engage multiple opponents, to be outnumbered and surrounded, is much harder. We can’t just figure we will know what to do. It is possible to take an advantageous position, moving to stack the opponents, […]
Self-Defense in Fading Light
People debate the right to self-defense. In some places people can be charged criminally if they use a gun in self-defense, even in their own home, against an armed home invader or robber. Business owners and employees have been charged with felony violations for using deadly force in self-defense, even after they have been attacked […]
Training In the Shadow of Science
Because of the advances in science and technology more people are able to be more ignorant about more things now than at any time in history. This is a stunning achievement. It is not because of science, which, like guns or butter, has no agency of its own. It is because of what people have […]
Empty Hand vs. Drugs
What we do is the opposite of addiction. We move forward, like a river. We continue, following our course, with purpose. We change. We meet obstacles, we adapt, we move on. Sometimes our course is smooth and clear, and then maybe with no warning, narrows, cascades, cataract, whitewater. We deal with it. We continue. Our […]
Making History
They say the modern world is in an advanced stage of decline. We don’t need to decline with it. We are not helplessly riding an arc of history. History is not a thing. History is what people do. We can think in accord with accepted norms or contrary to them. Or neither: we can make […]