Inspired Budo

Training in budo begins with the slow development of spatial and body movement skills designed to maximize economy of movement and to position the body in space and time to achieve mastery over the opponent.  Decades pass and the budoka masters the physical and mental skills needed to control the flow of combat.  However, mastery of physical skill, though a necessary component, does not enable the budoka to develop his true potential.  As in art, in budo taijutsu there exists an ineffable quality that can only be properly described as inspiration.  Soke exemplifies this in every aspect of his elegant mastery of ninpo taijutsu. It would be absurd to think that great art comes from a paint-by-the-number process.  But, many in the martial arts community train in the fashion of a child’s paint-by-the-numbers set.  Technique is merely the beginning, for so many it is misunderstood as the end.  Inspiration gives life to technique and, therefore, is the essential quality of budo.  Inspiration by definition finds it source in divinity.  As an artist mimics God’s creative acts by artistic inspiration, so the ancient warrior relied upon the divine to breathe life into technique and, thereby, transcend it.  This process occurs from without and can only be developed by communion with the divine.  It is said that a divinely inspired warrior once slew six hundred opponents with an ox goad (bo) (Judges 3:31).  Such a feat is only possible by a warrior imbued with the spirit of the divine.  It can only be imagined to what transcendent heights the warrior mounted as he flowed in the void, hiding in the interstices of space and time to strike with mortal blows into the fury of 600 doomed combatants—this is the true expression of kami waza.