Learn something new about yourself? Sorry Dude. That’s outside my comfort zone.
Lately there have been more than a few commentaries floated around out there that speak to the changes in the Zen community and how current Western thought has corrupted the realization process including the learning and the finding of our true self; that realization being replaced by social and cultural ideas of the moment. Unfortunately for Budo, those changes have also impacted martial arts in much the same way.
In the viewpoint of some (true) Buddhist practitioners, Zennists as-it-were, one of the ideas behind following the teachings of Buddha is that of overcoming appearances and behavioral affectations in our lives that prevent us from understanding and realizing that our true nature (who we really and truly are, what our purest base essence is) is not what we think.
Are we truly honest, or do we dishonestly spend our lives using situational ethics? Are we a great parent, or do we just show up at birthdays while our spouse/nanny/grandparent does the tough work and the heavy lifting? Are we moralistic, or do we steal the pencils at work and are we stingy with the tip for the waitress? How we think of ourselves (or said another way how we “think” we act towards and relate to everything and everyone around us) and how we really act when viewed objectively can be two totally different things. Think for a moment of “posturing”, “virtue signaling”, or being “smugly moralistic”. Also consider the concept of “situational ethics”.
There is a word not often used but it just fits …… zeitgeist (“spirit of the time") or the entire pattern and picture of what is going on out there culturally, spiritually, religiously, and intellectually during a defined time-period in popular culture.
Do we follow the zeitgeist; or do we swim upstream against the current like a spawning salmon in search of who we “truly are”? Put another way, are we in search of the truth about our spirit despite what the social norms of the moment may be. One is easy while the other difficult; and there lies the inherent conflict in the choice.
One of the themes or foundations of the current zeitgeist could describe the authentic Buddhist-Zennist practitioner who struggles with overcoming appearances (both sensory and mental) as being an “anti-realist” or going against the flow of popular culture. The goal, the true goal, of their study is to one day achieve the state of being a Buddha which goes beyond appearances and is what Bodhidharma was talking about when he said to understand your true nature become a “Buddha.” He also said: “Seeing your true nature is Zen. Unless you see your nature, it's not Zen”
Zen, esp. Western Zen these days, is no longer a kind of anti-realism but, instead, has been turned upside down being pro-realism as if to declare, “Live in the here and the now — there is nothing transcendent to realize. You are already a Buddha. You become and are fully self-realized not by doing the work of Zen but instead, by taking up social causes, saying the right things, owning the right things which at one time was referred to as “Keeping up the Jones’s” and gathering material possessions but today it has perhaps become wearing a “Che Guevara” t-shirt and marching for justice, drinking only sustainable coffee from socially active coffee shops, voicing support for the “cause du’joire”, eating vegan, and not wearing animal products.
None of those of course have a thing to do with true self-realization (they are only social ideas) but in the new perversion of “Zen” that is all it takes to “Become Buddha”. If followers of the way were truly becoming Buddha then they would immediately understand that they were self-deluded and not self-realized and that social ideas have little to do with self-realization.
To understand and comprehend the breadth, depth, and the sense of this is to understand the current Zeitgeist which has morphed into a kind of personal despair called postmodernism which is a new kind of nihilism designed for personal destruction in a very Nietzsche-esque’ fashion. The discovery and internalization of your actual identity, of your true nature is sacrificed in favor of wallowing in feelings, appearances, and affectations, joining the right crowd and being seen supporting the right causes.
We should describe this nihilistic life as “realized worthlessness”, a life status in which the normally seen Modus Operandi is drugs and alcohol, posturing, smugness, and arrogance that is sometimes backed by overeducation and credentialing signifying an “intellectual superiority”; basically, a self-medicated or self-therapeutic way of life that is little more than an attempt to alleviate the pain of a meaningless existence by demonstrating moral superiority over others.
A teacher is supposed to teach the student something that they do not already know, rather than what the student expects or wishes to learn. Students who want to be taught what they expect Zen Buddhism to be when it is not that way, and who cannot tolerate a teacher who takes them beyond their comfort zone, are little more than beginners, ignorant ones at that. They will never advance because they came to Zen and Buddhism with their minds already made up as to what those are (or should be). Worse yet, they base their opinions on articles or books written by non-Zennists,, or they have had “deep” conversations with others who are also beginners and who themselves are equally into posturing, virtue signaling, and their own affectations; something that the current Zeitgeist refers to as “living in a bubble”.
For anyone to learn, to become Buddha, or as I prefer to say, becoming a “Zennist”, they must be accepting of the truth that their assumptions about Zen and Buddhism have to be abandoned and that what they think to be The Way, is only an illusion.
And so it also is with Budo.
The very term Budo in and of itself is misleading. Martial arts in Japan up until the Meiji Restoration, were more correctly considered as being Bushido, and of being koryu or old flow; Budo not really coming into play until the dictates of SCAP or Supreme Command Allied Pacific occupation forces which for a time outlawed the practice of martial arts and ways until a more sportive form of “Budo” instead of “Bujutsu” could be formed; ergo “kenjutsu” became “kendo”, “Aikijutsu” became “Aikido”, etc.
The term Bushido can be hotly debated (primarily due to Nitobe’s writings that many believe distorted its origins) but there are writings that refer to the overall concept as far back as the 1600’s. Bushido can be described as the “outward appearance” of behavioral norms for the Samurai, but the truth of koryu is a martial system that contains educational pedagogy designed to teach the psychology of combat and of life and death, strategies of combat whether individual vs individual or divisions of Samurai, and techniques of fighting that were designed to ensure victory (read “total incapacitation of the opponent” or death).
This was the reality of being Samurai whether during the waring periods or the times of peace in which even dueling was prohibited (but still done none-the-less).
Concurrent with the decline in Zen and the degradation of the work necessary to “Become Buddha” is the view of Aikido and of other martial arts systems as being less than what they were. Discussion of death is frowned upon and is not very marketable in today’s climes. Teaching technique as being functionally used to disable or kill the opponent is discouraged in favor of “blending spirits” and improvement of “body, mind, spirit”. Even the milder term of “self-defense” is frowned upon in many cases because the martial arts are either baby sitting children or becoming “self-realized” adults.
While koryu forms emphasized those aspects of martial arts such as life and death and how to perform those for ourselves or on others, the truth is that they also could result in improvement of the individual as evidenced by Mushashi’s writings in his final days for example after a lifetime of shugyo. They were not automatically mutually exclusive and could be and were taught side by side. Kamakura Zen is an example of how to face life, how to face death, and how to leave the temple as being “more” than we were when we walked in as a monjin (standing at the gate) and petitioning to become a deshi (disciple).
Learning how to consider and to face death (and its natural corollary of life) doesn’t mean that you run out today and kill the first person you see. Most martial artists never use their skills in anger but they find through years or a lifetime of study that the study in and of itself makes one a better person overall who becomes more peaceful because of the deep understanding of what violence really means. Ignoring the truth of Bushido and of Zen only creates someone with an incomplete view of the reality that they pretend to seek, but are really not as they work to self-validate their distorted views of who they are and of what "their" reality may be in their eyes.
L.F. Wilkinson Kancho
The Aikibudokan
Houston, TX
January 8, 2021