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Budo

Where does budo come from and what is the meaning of it?

In the time when all the martial arts were founded in Japan, they were all referred to by one term: bujutsu. Bu is the stem meaning “martial” and jutsu mean “skill of art”.

Although the term is often misused in Japan today, in a strict sense bujutsu refers only to those schools where combat skills alone are taught.  Many centuries after the foundation of the schools, Zen Buddhist influences affected the Japanese martial arts, and when the Edo period (1603-1867), a long era of peace, followed the days of the fighting warlords, a new concept entered their arts.  At this time the idea of budo came into existence. Budo means “martial way” or “path” during this peaceful era, the Japanese warrior was committing himself primarily to following a path aimed at spiritual development through martial training.  However, Bushido, “the way of the warrior”, is primarily concerned with the mental attitudes and goal of the feudal warrior.  Real bushido is concerned with the spirit of self-sacrifice. The meaning of this spiritof self-sacrifice is that you will make the effort to help

 people or to do something good in the world, even to the point of it costing your life, if it is for some good purpose. 

Karate is an art that has been developed from the spirit of the samurais’ blade and the image reflects the samurais soul.

There was a priest named Tannen who used to say in his daily talks that a monk cannot fulfil the Buddhist way if he does not generate compassion within and persistently stir up courage, that is, if a warrior does not manifest courage on the outside, and hold enough compassion within his heart to burst his chest, he cannot become a warrior.  Therefore the monk pursues courage with the warrior as his model, and the warrior pursues the compassion of the monk. 

In our days, there are many students who are attached to martial arts and by training hard believe that they have achieved full stature of a “warrior” or, as we would understand it today, a good fighter or competitors.  But it is a regrettable thing to put far too much effort and at the end to become merely an artist.

Sensei Sid Tadrist