VEBO DO

HEIJO SHIN WO USHINAWAZU

"Never lose stability of your mind"

Taiji Kase

In 1992, Kase Sensei had appointed me as one of his assistant's. That significant event entirely changed my attitude and sealed my determination to follow Taiji Kase's Budo approach to Karate-Do. The above message is his dedication to me.  

          The samurai date from 10th and 11th centuries when they were spawned by rural villages.  Under the centralized system of nationhood, the emperor was the supreme owner of the land and the people.  When that system crumbled, local strongmen claimed their own territories, and in the struggle for territorial supremacy, the samurai emerged to form fighting groups established by these lords for self-protection. In the early days the battles were primarily small-scale territorial disputes, but gradually the strength of the samurai increased.  As large-scale battles over the supremacy of powerful lords became more common, fighting techniques employing a variety of weapons increased in importance.

          Toward the end of the 12th century, Minamoto no Yoritomo became shogun and established Japan's first warrior government ( called the Kamakura period, 1185-1333).  During the subsequent dynastic schism of the 14th century, which saw the emergence of feudal samurai lords,or daimyo, the Ashikaga warrior clan overthrew the government to assume the shogunate, beginning the Muromachi period (1392-1573).  The samurai of the mid-Muromachi period honed their fighting techniques on the premise that they would be using them in real battle.

          A period of fierce civil wars and even invasions to Korea ensued during the 15th and 16th centuries, but major conflicts became less and less a fixture of the landscape once the Tokugawa came to power and put their shogunate into place in 1603. With battles a thing of the past and the sanguinary of the previous period  subsiding, the samurai began to incorporate the teachings of Confucianism and Zen into their fighting techniques to add to them a moral dimension.  Honing fighting skills came to be seen as a form of spiritual training designed to lift the practitioner beyond the limits of the self.

          When samurai confronted an enemy, they held a Zen objective as one of their ideals.  Zen taught them to attain a physical and mental condition free of attachment to any object or event, to be ready to act in an instant on any decision; in short to attain a free and unfettered spirit like flowing water.  During the nearly 300 years of the Edo period, a time of virtually no major conflicts, the fighting  technique of wielding a sword came to be known as Kendo ( instead of Kenjutsu), and its nature changed: Rather than being a means for killing, it became a way (do) for the individual to cultivate mind and spirit.

           Up until about 1900, it was highly fashionable in Okinawa to have anything or to do anything associated with the Chinese. Thus the character commonly used for Kara in Karate meant "Tang" and referred to the Tang dynasty of China.  Later, around 1935, Funakoshi Gichin made a courageous and revolutionary step, he first suggested in newspaper articles and later in his book, Karate-Do Kyohan, that Karate-Do had in fact become a pure Japanese martial art.  In an effort to correct the interpretation of Karate-Do as a Chinese art and at the same time to more clearly indicate the nature of the art as a way of life, Funakoshi changed the character for Kara from Tang to Ku.  Ku is also pronounced Kara, and is found in the Hanya Shingyo, a Buddhist sutra containing the phrase, Shiki soku ze ku, ku soku ze shiki.  In this phrase the essence of  Karate-Do is contained.  Literally it means, "Form becomes emptiness, emptiness becomes form".

            Shiki is the visible physical form of things.  It is the outward appearance of anything, such as a technique or a kata.

Ku is a term similar to the mu in Mushin, and it means “emptiness”.  But mu is a specific term relating to the thinking processes of the mind, while ku refers more generally to the state of being, without any regard to form. Ku acknowledges existence, but describes an absence of form in that existence.

Ku is difficult to describe, but easy to feel.  For example, in our daily routine, there is a larger process occurring all around us which we never examine, but which we notice and accept.  That larger process is the change of seasons.  As spring turns to summer, the weather becomes warmer, and one day we notice that it is uncomfortably hot outside.  As summer turns to fall and then winter, we become aware of the changes in temperature, and suddenly we realize that it is cold.  This change from season to season is ku; the seasons and the changes exist, but they do not rely on conscious action, and has no actually visible form or shiki.

In Karate-Do, the meaning of Kara (Ku) is the same.  For example, when a student first learns kata, he must concentrate on the movements, involving him completely in conscious attention to every detail.  A great deal of conscious thought is required, and complete attention must be given to shiki, the physical form of the kata.  After many repetitions, however, the student does not consciously think so much about physical nature of the movements; they become more natural, and the body remembers the sequence.  The form, shiki, is becoming emptiness, ku.  Shiki soku ze ku.

After thousands of repetitions (Funakoshi believed that at least three years of solid practice was necessary to master a kata), the kata becomes part of the nature of the student.  When we watch a master perform a kata, we sometimes feel that he is moving in another plane of existence.  He is no longer doing the kata; the kata is “doing itself” on his body.

No conscious thought is given to the physical form of the kata.  The complete emptiness ku is the same emptiness involved in change of the seasons.  No conscious thought is involved, and the shiki (the different season or the techniques of the kata) is expressed through his emptiness.  Ku soku ze shiki.

In the kata Kanku Dai, the first movements are visual representations of shiki soku ze ku, ku soku ze shiki.  The hands move together and rise above the head to look at the sky, and then break apart, moving in wide arc to come back together again in front of the center of the body. Together they are form; apart they are emptiness.  Then they come back together.

Form becomes emptiness, emptiness becomes form.

(Randall Hassell, Shotokan karate)

The element which exerted the most influence upon the doctrine of Bujutsu (later Budo), however was the discovery that, the disciplines of introspection used to achieve centralization in the hara, seemed to coordinate the various factors of a man’s personality in a manner which unlocked the source of a strange form of energy.

This energy moreover, appeared to differ from, or at least be far more encompassing and comprehensive in both substance and intensity, than the common type of energy usually associated with the output of man’s muscular system alone.

It was generally believed that this powerful source of energy could be tapped only if a man had stabilized that position of inner centralization in the hara, which would than be understood not only as an immanent Centre of being, of consolidation, of coordinated independence, but also as transcendent Centre of becoming, of development, of transformation.

The correlated energy of centralization has been defined in many ways, but all are related to life and its energy, which like Centre itself has innumerable aspects and ranges.  In India it has been known for centuries as prajana, in China as chi and in Japan as ki.  It has been referred to as the “essence of life” and its “breathing”.  Harmony and ultimate liberation were achievable then through the balanced unification of the cosmic Centre.

The coordinated energy of the hara, consequently, had a range of intensity and substance which was directly proportionate to the degree of centralization achieved. The Ki of individual centralization, for example, resulting from coordination of man’s physical, functional and mental personality in the hara, could infuse a man with tremendous vitality and make him extremely powerful in action – much more so than the man who had developed muscular power alone through exercise of coordination based primarily upon purely physical disciplines.

The individual Centre and its coordinated energy could be positive and help man to live and act but it could also be negative and so egotistically self-centered as to foolishly attempt to separate from the rest of creation. The cosmic, universal Centre however, as well as its creative energy, was viewed as ultimately positive because of its impartial munificence and unrestricted dispensation of life in every direction and in every form.

            The discovery of coordinated energy (superior to the specialized energy of the muscular system) which could be unleashed through centralization in the lower abdomen (Hara) was only the preliminary step to harnessing and utilizing it.  Accordingly, Asia produced innumerable schools of development which, from India to China, form Tibet to Japan proceeded to explore the range of possibilities of this energy, its degrees of power, its methods of employment, and its techniques of development.

Like its source (the Hara) this coordinated energy, this Ki, could be developed and controlled through special exercises of a bewildering variety – each as specialized as the purpose that energy was intended to further.

But all of them included, in addition to meditation and concentration, the fundamental exercise of abdominal breathing which had become the prerequisite for the development and control of Ki.   In ancient text of the doctrine of Ki, in fact, the word itself is translated as “air”, “atmosphere” and “breath”. 

The doctrine was a main source of metaphysical and intellectual speculation for Indian, Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese scholars, philosophers, religious leaders, Chinese schools of medicine etc.

             Finally, this energy was used by almost all important schools of Bujutsu (Budo).

 (Rattl Westbrook, Secrets of the Samurai)