A single moment within infinity...

Maru ichi (one moment within infinity)

I’ve often considered what would happen if I were to write down and share my thoughts about budo, training, and my practice to acquire the perspective and spirit of a warrior. Would I look back a short time later, from a perspective further down the path, to shake my head at thoughts from earlier in my journey? How would I know when my perspective was ‘correct’ enough to share with others in a permanent form like the written word, rather than the more transient perspectives and insights I try to share with my students in class? Is there even such a thing as ‘arriving’ in that sense, to where I might have enough wisdom that I can speak with some understanding?

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Such ideas, when we have them… are illusions. The only time you think that you’ve ‘arrived’ is when you stop moving. On a journey to greater understanding, if you stop moving forward, you stagnate. You’re simply not continuing down the path… rather than the journey ending in some sort of permanent enlightenment. This is why Soke always tells us to keep going (‘ganbatte’), especially when we don’t understand.

This is similar to the way that Soke describes one of our basic concepts from Tenchijin - kugame/kamae. Oftentimes beginning students think of these concepts as static shapes - fixed postures that do not move. As we move forward in our training, we start to understand that these are maru ichi - ‘one moment in infinity’. Soke has describe kamae during Hombu classes as “the moment before the change”. Kamae are one single frame in a movie that constantly changes. It is important to understand that shape or piece that we call kamae, to fit it into the space around us at just the right time… but it’s never static. Kamae are contained in our movement… they are maru ichi (one moment in infinity) within the continual flow of shizen koun ryu sui (naturally drifting like the clouds, flowing like the water).

Soke speaks regularly in Japan about his perspective that if you are confused in budo training… that is a good thing. If you don’t understand, that means you are moving outside of your current box of ‘things that you know’ to try to understand mysterious matters that you don’t yet comprehend. In the practice of Saino Kon Ki (talent/knack, spirit, capacity), you will be confused and you will make mistakes… but within that confusion and those mistakes, your spirit is stretching your capacity to something greater than where you are today.

He’s usually telling us this as we are looking dumbfounded at his instruction to do something that he has just demonstrated in the Hombu Dojo, and for which we have no idea how to start practicing. It is an encouragement to those of us closer to the beginning of the journey than the end to keep going, especially when you don’t understand… because then you are really training.

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So, that fear - because that is what it truly is - of not understanding yet, of not yet being wise enough to share… of writing down things that you will move beyond later… is the measure of a perspective that hasn’t quite grown enough to be comfortable with always flowing and changing. It is a human attempt to define a ‘sure thing’ and know that you have it. It is staying in your box.

And therefore I am starting to write about my experiences in budo, and setting aside the question of whether I think I am ‘ready’ for it or not. This is not going to be an attempt to capture wisdom in some final form for posterity. I fully expect to look back in future years and see the limitations of the perspectives I have now. That is OK… it would demonstrate that I grew as I continued to walk the path. These musings and thoughts are simply ‘maru ichi’ (one moment in infinity), and I have captured them in a space so that they can be seen more easily. These are touchpoints to see where I am along the path. As part of our practice, it is important to let those moments go, to flow and change and move past them to the next moment, and the next, and the next.

For me, these blog posts will be maru ichi along the path to enlightenment. I hope that I and others can learn from them and use these reference points, just as we use our kamae as touchpoints within the flow of shizen koun ryu sui. I share these thoughts in the hope that perhaps, in a mysterious way, they may transform and also become maru ichi along someone else’s path.

Ganbatte,

—Scott