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Bujinkan Nidan 弐段: Discovering the Footprints

Michael Glenn — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:16:00 +0000

Discovering the Footprints, digital c-print photograph by Andrew Binkley

In the first post of this series, Bujinkan Shodan 初段: Searching for the Bull, I mentioned that Hatsumi Sensei describes the journey of a Bujinkan student through the Dan ranks as being akin to the Ten Oxherding pictures in Zen Buddhism. These pictures describe the seeker's journey to enlightenment.

So what does it mean to be 弐段 Nidan?

Discovering Footprints 见迹:

Woodblock print by 德力富吉郎 Tokuriki Tomikichirō

Along the riverbank under the trees,
I discover footprints.
Even under the fragrant grass,
I see his prints.
Deep in remote mountains they are found.
These traces can no more be hidden
than one's nose, looking heavenward.

This stage of training is very interesting because your eyes become open to signs everywhere. You spend as much effort in observing as you do training. You are developing the eyes to see the traces, or footprints of our art.

You begin to recognize these traces in all sorts of people and situations. You will see many previously hidden connections between kata. One technique naturally suggests another leading to 変化 henka. These kata or forms all contain the same traces.

"form is emptiness, emptiness is form."

Depending on your personality, there are two dangers: One is getting lost in the enjoyment of these 変化 henka. Another is becoming what Hatsumi Sensei calls a "technique collector."

If you are thoughtful, you notice that all of these footprints were here all along but you never noticed them before. You might wonder what else is also lying around beneath your feet that you are yet unable to see. As Hatsumi Sensei often says, "enlightenment is beneath your feet."

All of the kata begin to blend together until they seem the same. You start to connect intellectually to the idea that form is emptiness. Even though your own taijutsu rarely shows that.

Because you are finally seeing these things, and with every class you see more, you begin to feel that training more and training harder will certainly pay off. You train with new conviction that with more effort will come more results.

But this stage is also marked by an overwhelming realization that there is so much material to learn. The more you discover, the more there is. While this discovery is fun, it can also be intimidating.

And more than that, the harder you search, the more you pursue the Ox, the further away it runs. The harder you train the more the essence of the Bujinkan may elude you.

The poem above says that the "traces can no more be hidden than one's nose, looking heavenward." This suggests that the footprints if followed to their source will lead back to yourself. The 極意 gokui or essence of training can be discovered here.

Being a Nidan you will sense this, but not yet experience the 極意 Gokui directly.

In the next post we will look at Bujinkan 参段 Sandan: Perceiving the Bull

Tekken or knuckles

buki stolar — Sat, 12 May 2012 02:02:00 +0000

Dear Budo friends,

her is one more shinken tool of Ningu, or if you like one of kobudo weapon.

also made for the collection of the tools for my Dojo, the plan is make the largest collection of replica ninja tools and equipment in this part of the world.

I always try to make things better, so I make more pieces, best goes to Dojo armory, and rest you will be able to purchase if you are interested.

This kind of Tekken (some say Kaiken) because of its geometry and shapes, can be used in many ways, not only striking, but also to assist in climbing, or for something more which I will try to explain in next post.

if you think that I'm forget my wooden work here is also one wooden version of Tekken

as was shown in the Encyclopedia of Japanese Kobudo Weapons

the same but with a little patina, painted to look older

Bujinkan Shodan 初段: Searching for the Bull

Michael Glenn — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:51:00 +0000

The Search for the Ox, digital c-print photograph by Andrew Binkley

When I first studied the 十牛圖頌 ten ox herding pictures and poems, I recognized some of my own journey reflected in Bujinkan training. Maybe you will see yourself there as well.

The Ten Ox Herding pictures illustrate the stages of a Zen life in the quest toward enlightenment. In Zen the ox represents the mind which is at first wild and untamed, running from one thing to another. It is said that these stories are trying to express the inexpressible.

Hatsumi Sensei has a favorite teacup with these ten illustrations on it. As he sips his tea, he says he likes to reminisce about the "old days," and he tells us how we have the same ten stages in our journey through Budo: First dan through Tenth Dan.

This will be the first in a series of 10 posts.

Just as a man would tie to a post
A calf that should be tamed,
Even so here should one tie one's own mind
Tight to the object of mindfulness.

What does it mean to be a Shodan 初段 in the Bujinkan? Let's look at this first stage from the Oxherding perspective:

Woodblock print by 德力富吉郎 Tokuriki Tomikichirō

寻牛 The Search for the Bull

In the pasture of the world,
I endlessly push aside the tall
grasses in search of the bull.
Following unnamed rivers,
lost upon the interpenetrating
paths of distant mountains,
My strength failing and my vitality
exhausted, I cannot find the bull.
I only hear the locusts chirping
through the forest at night.

Somehow you find inspiration to start training in the Bujinkan. This may come from a feeling that you are missing something or a need to better yourself. Or maybe that your current training is lacking in some way.

This is known as 初発心 sho-hosshin or the first stirring of the heart.

This goes from first hearing about the Bujinkan all the way through learning your basics so that you start to glimpse that there is an essence to this art that lies beyond technique. These are the footprints you look for while training on the basics. You may not know where they lead, and they remain elusive.

You will be distracted by other styles and many things that are not even related to training. There is so much to absorb that your senses will be confused.

Traps at this stage are thinking you know what is good or bad training, striving to gain rank or prove something, fear that you cannot do things, and giving up the search before you know what you are searching for.

This stage is critical for finding an authentic teacher. You will find the teacher you deserve. If your mind is clouded by what you think is right, you will get a teacher who will only confirm and magnify your ill chosen path.

All of your training will be energetic and have a feeling of really going for it. You get bloody, bruised and sweaty but love the process.

You start to notice that no matter how much you train, there is always more. The Bujinkan seems to expand the more you learn. You never reach the place where you can say, "I've got this." This can lead to a time of doubt where other paths become tempting. You want to find training that you can master and the Bujinkan rarely supplies this feeling.

After your strength and spirit are drained, you wonder, what now? Where can I go from here? How can I keep training and persevere? Can I even do this?

Every visit to the dojo feels like another wasted effort to learn anything. Frustration will rule your mind.

This is a very important passage in training. Reaching this place means you are ready to begin learning. That is why Shodan is beginner's level. You may recognize you are caught in your own conditioning and seek a way out through taijutsu.

You will feel you are nearing the end of this level when you sense that the ego's efforts to capture the essence of training are not enough.

Next we look at Bujinkan Nidan 弐段: Discovering the Footprints

Budo 武道: Bloodlust, or a Path to Peace?

Michael Glenn — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:26:00 +0000

Memorial Cathedral for World Peace, Hiroshima. photo by scarletgreen

What is the point of Budo? Training in a martial art is a strange endeavor. You learn how to bruise, break, maim, and kill all in the name of peace and love for humanity. At least that's what most teachers would tell you. None ever admit to having a love for violence.

But most martial arts have their roots in violence that was either forced on them by lovers of war, or developed by those who loved war. True peace lovers would never train to do what we do, right? I don't know. I don't think it's that black and white.

武道 Budo means martial way. The character of Bu 武 is composed of three different kanji radicals two 二, shoot or spear 弋, and stop 止. So the essence of Bu is the way of stopping two people from shooting at each other or from fighting! Budo prevents or stops fighting among people. Martial arts are to promote harmony and act to stabilize society.

During the 1860's in Japan, a time marked by bloody infighting among various samurai factions, this meaning seemed lost.

For training to cut human flesh, men were forced to perform executions or to act as seconds for those condemned to commit seppuku. I guess this is how they learned to decapitate. It is said that if the trainee even grimaced or turned a little pale at the sight of the gore, he would fail the test.

They would then skewer the bloodied heads onto bamboo stakes and leave them near bridges with a note attesting to 天誅 Tenchuu or heaven's revenge.

The author Kan Shimozawa wrote about how they bragged of their bloody feats:

"Every day the men would go out and cross swords with the enemy. One corpsman claimed the blood of the man he had killed today splattered on the ridge of the adjacent house. Another said that the blood [of his victim] hadn't splattered beyond the white paneled wall. Still another boasted that the blood of the man he had cut down had reached the roof of the house."

One of the men's mistresses described their bloodlust:

"People would talk about whom they had killed today, and whom they were going to kill tomorrow. It was all so frightful."

One group of hit men even adopted the nickname 人斬 hito kiri which is like calling yourself "the beheaders".

Not all were so enamored of blood. Katsu Kaishū, founder of the Japanese navy said,

"I despise killing and have never killed a man. Take my sword for example. I used to keep it tied so tightly to the tsuba, that I couldn't draw the blade even if I had wanted to. I've always been resolved not to cut a person even if that person should cut me. I look at such a person as no more than a flea. If one lands on your shoulder, all it can do is bite a little. This causes nothing more than an itch, and has nothing to do with life."

I think that whether you have an affinity for violence and martial arts bring you some measure of peace, or you are a peace lover who wants to understand the other side, training taps into some very primal aspects of our dual natures. To be a whole complete human requires knowing the dark and light and gray.

So go ahead and learn how to bruise, break, maim, and kill… all the while embracing the understanding that our training leads us to a place of never needing to use these violent skills. If you have a good teacher they will show you the path from one to the other. Do not neglect the depths of real combat and violence with the power contained therein, nor the heights of love and peace and the great powers that arise from this stillness.

Hankyou 2008 – Kaigozan Christmas Seminar

BUDOSHOP.SE — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:39:21 +0000

Reflections of this years Bujinkan theme, Togakure-ryu ninpo taijutsu. Many people went to Japan this year and they all came together to share on this seminar.

The instructors was Paul Waserbrot, Mats Hjelm, Steven Helling, Daniel Bodin, Fredrik Markgren, Arvid Karlsson, Jens Lindstrand, Richard Maier, William Ustav.

Most of the instructions is in Swedish!

Recorded in Stockholm, Sweden December 2008

Note: Some of the instructors spoke Swedish, and others English.

This movie is available on DVD (click here!) or available as download, click button below.

100 minutes, 707 Mb for $11.99

Instructions are in SWEDISH!

Joukenhansha 条件反射: Reflex Conditioning or a Trap?

Michael Glenn — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:04:00 +0000

正拳 photo by *嘟嘟嘟*

I love it when I get to spar with a martial artist who has great conditioning. Not only is it a great test for me and what I think I know about martial arts, but I have a secret weapon in our Bujinkan taijutsu that allows me to defeat them even if they have superior conditioning. This weapon is the conditioning itself. I can use it to trap them.

In martial arts, sports, or combat training people strive to develop fast reflexes. Reflexes don't require conscious thought. In fact the action of a true reflex follows the reflex arc to create a near instantaneous response to stimuli.

This is an advantage in dangerous situations where there isn't time to think about your choices. You just pull your hand out of the fire. In our training we are not usually studying true hard-wired reflexes. Instead we are conditioning our muscles and bodies to develop responses that have proved effective in our training and in combat.

Some people call this muscle memory. Or another term is procedural memory. This is where you commit a specific action to memory by training it over and over. This repetition strengthens neural pathways allowing the brain to access these patterns more efficiently. A medical definition for this might be more like the word reflexive as opposed to reflex.

For the most part, this conditioning is useful and good. Unless you are facing a devious and thinking opponent who can turn it against you. Soke calls this 条件反射 joukenhansha which is a conditioned response. He spoke of this while talking about how you should not take ukemi. Which I wrote about here: Why Do You Take Ukemi? So How can this conditioning be turned against you?

Well a reflexive action is a habitual and unthinking behavior; or relating to or consisting of a reflex. It's the habitual and unthinking part that gets you. When I recognize these reflexive actions in your movements, whether they are offensive or defensive, I will seek to trigger them to set a trap.

It's easy to see this in action no matter the style. Test it out on any person (choose someone who will not seek revenge). Stand facing each other, but don't tell them what you are testing. No reach as fast as you can for their ear.

How do they react? People with no training at all act with pure reflex in a startle-flinch response. People who train in a specific style will reveal their training, which is reflexive. In the 1980s the US Army conducted experiments to discover that people can be startled into their favored, trained fighting stances, no matter what those stances were.

Then set a trap so that when they react with their reflexive conditioning again, you will defeat them. All you have to do is trigger that reaction by reaching for their ear. Or you can make some other feint, kyojitsu, or threatening motion.

Hatsumi Sensei says this is like Pavlov's dogs. And he says we all know how easily dogs are controlled by people. So we should not train ourselves to be conditioned like dogs. Don't design reflexive traps into your training program.

Hankyou 2007 – Kaigozan Christmas Seminar

BUDOSHOP.SE — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:36:02 +0000

Reflections of this years Bujinkan theme, Kukishin-ryu daken-taijutsu. Many people went to Japan this year and they all came together to share on this seminar.

The instructors was Mats Hjelm, Christian Spicker, Petter Swedin, Daniel Åberg, Daniel Neiberg.

Most of the instructions is in Swedish!

Recorded in Stockholm, Sweden December 2007

Note: Some of the instructors spoke Swedish, and others English.

This movie is available on DVD (click here!) or available as download, click button below.

92 minutes, 648 Mb for $11.99

Instructions are in SWEDISH!

Japan Trip April 2012 – Diary

kumafr — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:46:14 +0000

I came back yesterday from a fantastic trip and I hope you have been able to share with me the things I trained in Noda.

I have been asked in Japan why I was writing so much*. It is to share with the community some of the knowledge we get in Japan with Sôke and the shihan. I hope it will help you to wait for your next trip.

These texts* and these pictures are my attempt to give a fair image of what is happening in Japan. This is why I have added many pictures to these texts.

I took many pictures and not all are good but please see them as a training documentary. Pictures being forbidden during training, you will mainly have pictures taken before and after the class. As today someone asked me to put a link here to access the pictures uploaded on facebook during my trip you will find them below:

The first album contains the first 10 days (over 500 pict):

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3395318174028.144619.1601937800&type=3

and the second one only the last day (around 100 pict):

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3464131334314.145724.1601937800&type=3

Enjoy and comment them if you feel like it.

*All the texts in this blog were uploaded in April. If you want to read them again, click on “April 2012″ in the home page and they will appear.

Kunai shinken

buki stolar — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:28:00 +0000

My dear Buyu's I have some time to finally finish my "live" kunai, so here is some pictures for start,

later I will write something more about him, mainly blade is made of steel and the handle of an ordinary iron welded to the blade, thereby prevent cracking handle when I throw kunai or when is use as leverage for breaking.

Hankyou 2006 – Kaigozan Christmas Seminar

BUDOSHOP.SE — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:38:08 +0000

Reflections of this years Bujinkan theme, Shindenfudo-ryu kosshijutsu. Many people went to Japan this year and they all came together to share on this seminar.

The instructors was Fredrik Markgren, Arvid Karlsson, Maria Eneroth, Patrik Johansson, Mats Hjelm, Roger Mattsson, Kent T, Daniel Bodin.

Most of the instructions is in Swedish!

Recorded in Stockholm, Sweden December 2006

Note: Some of the instructors spoke Swedish, and others English.

This movie is available on DVD (click here!) or available as download, click button below.

125 minutes, 889 Mb for $11.99

Instructions are in SWEDISH!