Dojo are Ritualized

Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)

Dojo, martial disciplines and their like are all ritualized and for good reasons. Rituals are, "ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order." They, like kata of karate, have a prescribed order of performance, especially one characteristic of a particular system like goju vs. shorin. It is a series of patterned actions or behaviors that are regularly and invariably followed by those who practice the art or system. 

The patterned rituals of the dojo go further than the practices of basics, kata and kumite drills for the speak to the very core of our human existence. We exist, we survive, because we have the ability to collect into groups that promote survival and evolutionary progression of the species. 

As one professional wrote, "we perform rituals as a condition involving group dynamics, i.e., thinking in terms of the group (whether we call it a dojo, a tribe, a clan or a family unit). 

In order for the group to function effectively toward its survival the group membership must bond, they must create, have and believe in the unity of the group and to foster group goodwill. It is about survival in the long term, i.e., individual survival, offspring survival and heritage survival of the fittest and most effective group dynamic. 

What is created by the practice of rituals in a group, group culture. The group culture is about surviving as a group and within the group as an individual member. People in the group need to function so the group can function and thereby survive. It provides individual stability and bonding. It builds the foundation that allows that culture to exist and survive. 

Group cultural survivability provides stability of both the group and individual making for appropriate individual and group survival coping skills. It is one of the very core that allow us to live and survive together and without such ritualistic group cultural traits humans would have failed to even attain existence as nature would have culled humanity very quickly. 

Group survival is about cooperation and nothing better than patterned rituals teach this to the group. It becomes more critical to have rituals of this kind with those within the group charged with dealing with other groups where aggression and violence are necessary. To create appropriate actions to survive violence means it has to be learned, mistakes corrected to build on experience and then documented in a form that allows it to be passed down to successive generations of warriors. Nothing works better than cultural etiquette along with patterned rituals that test and teach each generation on what worked before, from those who came before that generation, so that the group survives. 

Dojo are those venues that form an inner group necessary to assume the role of warrior to protect and serve the group. Dojo require such ritualistic patterned behavior, expressed in cultural etiquette, etc., to achieve the teaching and learning simply because in that inner group the training and practice involves greater potential and possibility of grave harm or death. It involves potential and possible harm or death in training but more so in actual application against a determined other group. 

This is how and why such ritual etiquette and training became the defacto methodology to transfer, teach, train and apply such things in the dojo, it is a matter of survival even when it is not for one never truly knows if they will ever have to apply said skills in reality. 

The only caveat is not allowing that ritualistic cultural model stagnate into a dogmatic traditional way that never grows, changes or evolves to the times and situations that constantly change and remain chaotic in nature. The dojo, the groups, very survival depend on this. 

This requires contemplation, it requires consideration and it involves acceptance and implementation regardless. 

Bibliography (Click the link)