Recently in a post on the Shinseidokan Dojo blog Mr. Michael Clarke wrote about ulterior motives of today's karate-ka. It is a good question we all should ask ourselves from time to time. In my question, the title of this post, I mention the word study. I think this is more apropos to the word practice. I don't just practice karate, I tend to study it.
I devote my time and attention to gaining knowledge of martial arts by means of physical practice, mental intuitive effort and by academic study through books, films, blogs, articles, etc. I research to learn, I investigate to understand and I practice to apply it to my body, mind, and spirit. I endeavor, encourage, strive and make diligent efforts to study, benkyo [勉強], the art of Okinawan karate-do.
When I ask myself the question I tend to find that the answer changes yet the core or essence of why remains steadfast and has been so through out my entire life span within the martial art of karate-do studies. I never neglect my study, I work hard at my studies and I endeavor to study while I pass on what I understand to others who may follow the same path as I.
Study means to seek out answers and knowledge yet it also means to not accept the answers as final since they may change due to new knowledge. This is a key, change is inevitable and when it arrives you have to be willing to allow for that change even if it goes directly against what you study, you know and what you believe.
If I has asked why I practice karate then I would be limiting my understanding of karate. Study encompasses practice, it encompasses training, and it encompasses far more than just practice. I guess this is why some use the sound bite that it is a way of life.
A way of life sounds a bit dramatic but if you take the study of martial arts to its full length and breadth then the practice of the physical aspects are present but a part of a greater whole.
It is influential as to how one acts outside of training halls or dojo or what ever you wish to label the place where you study karate. Clarke Sensei mentions about ugly lives outside of the dojo and he is right. I go one step further to say that if your karate studies are not positively influencing how you live life outside then you are missing out on true, realistic self-defense aspects. Many of the more social events that end up in the fight come from a lack of social skills and to practice karate-do fully, to study it to its infinite ways is to lose site of what can benefit you in the most serious of events in life, in a conflict.
I believe Clarke Sensei that to truly study karate or any traditional/classical martial system you want it, you need it, it must be a part of who you are, not just something you do.
I also believe as I suspect Clarke Sensei believes that today's martial arts would benefit from changing the current mind-set to the full and complete study of the arts to make it your own, to make it a part of you and to remove it from something you do to something you "DO (doe)."
Bibliography:
Clarke, Michael Sensei. "Ulterior Motives." Sunday, April 14, 2013. <http://www.shinseidokandojo.blogspot.com/2013/04/ulterior-motives.html>
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