Making Sense of Sensei!

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Defined fundamentally: a faculty by which the body perceives an external stimulus; one of the faculties of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch; a feeling that something is the case; perceive by a sense or senses. Similar: awareness, consciousness, perception, sight, hearing, touch and taste, etc. 

One way to sense it, i.e., to look at it, is how it relates to common sense. One would find that they have "good sense and sound judgment in practical matters." It can be about having good judgement and wisdom especially when applying or acting on sensory input of one's environment and human situations. In short, for simplicity, to have sound and prudent judgement that is a product of one's perceptions of situations, environments and understanding of the facts of life. It is that sense that allows you to make both good and not-good judgement calls before actually taking action be they words or physical acts. 

If this is sounding familiar to the karate communities then think of how we teach, train, apply and experience those situations within environments that have conflict and violence where one's common sense leads to good judgement and finally sensible, safe and healthy acts be they avoidance or actual hands on actions to end the conflict, the danger and the violence often associated with this discipline. 

If one can accept these premises then one begins to understand the critical importance of those who would lead for those who would follow. In the karate dojo that responsibility falls on Sensei and if we look closely at the term we can see the sense in sensei. 

Expand that to the teachings in the dojo on subjects such as “awareness (situational, environmental, self, etc.).” Do we not use all our five senses in the dojo as well as in self-protection? 

Sensei

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