Читать книгу Traditions. Essays on the Japanese Martial Arts and Ways онлайн

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Just as are most people drawn to these arts, particularly young people, my original intentions were to learn the budo in the hope of becoming adept at protecting myself from the dangers, real and imagined (and a teenage boy had at that time just as he does now, a quantity of both), that life holds. Over time, I began to discover that “self-defense” is almost an incidental by-product of these arts. It was impressed upon me that their ultimate goals were to be found instead, in different realms, in arenas that were by no means obvious at first glance, or even observable at all from the perspective of the outsider. I discovered, in short, what all serious practitioners find eventually, that the goals of the budo lie in the refinement of the body and the spirit.

Yet, possibly because of my childhood among antiques, and probably because of the encouragement of my sensei, I came to see something else in my budo training. The martial arts and Ways of Japan, I have come to think, are an intimate and powerful connection with the past. Within their techniques and methods and rituals are the essence of the well-lived life as their practitioners of old saw it, and as such they can be considered artifacts every bit as valuable as the antiques in any museum. In his etiquette, his traditions, and philosophies, we can know what was important to the martial artist of the feudal era. Combining the lessons of the physical training in the budo he has left us, along with a perspective on his intellectual and spiritual outlook then, affords today’s exponent a link with another age that is significant, remarkably so.