Three Pillars of Training.

It is the weekend and I seem to have a lot to say, so I figure it is best to write it out while it is still fresh in my mind.
I would like to cover the idea of Shu, Ha, and Ri; why it seems that it does not apply in our modern age of 'purity.'

As I have stated for years, there really is no such thing as 'purity,' especially when it comes to 'Karate,' with the term 'Karate' being a modern invention and the notion of 'styles' being modern itself, as if one 'style' of Karate were different in principle from another.
'Karate' as we know it is a modern synthesis of many different people from many different places that happened to converge and mix on the island of Okinawa then further develop as it was taken to 'mainland' Japan.
This stuff is all common knowledge, no need to beat a dead horse, other than pointing out the fact that 'Karate' is not a style, it is ecclectic, personal, a Mixed Martial Art in the truest sense of the term.
[Not in the same sense as sporting events for young men, but in the sense that it was personal to the farmer that needed to ensure they were healthy enough to work by not getting injured from people that would do them serious harm and often used into old age].

What we see today is endless copying of copies, almost like writing the same letter over and over, like drawing the same picture over and over.
Iain Abernethy had it right when he wrote in his article 'Are Styles Killing Karate' that we seem to be stuck in a 'shu-shu-shu' stage, never moving to the next level, and if a person does move to the next stage of development that are usually dubbed as a heretic by the mainstream, though in some instances this is becoming less prevalent as people seem to be waking up and challenging this stance.

Certainly there are differences of opinion just as there are differences of expression, and we need to build on what is there, look at it the way a researcher would look at a problem - utilize the principles we have learned over the years to improve upon what we know and make it into something more personal, something more functional.
Like writing, you may learn your ABC's, but you are not writing the same alphabet over and over, you are writing it differently every time, utilizing those base forms, along with Grammatical Principles, to formulate something unique, and by unique, I mean functional, and you do it in your own way, with your own handwriting.

I once talked to a guy, Michael Rosenbaum, an author of books on Martial Arts, who had 'founded' his own 'system' of Martial Arts called, I believe, 'Snow Leopard Boxing,' and when I asked him about this he said it was a tradition in Bando that you internalize and express it in your own way, starting with a name. You named your own system to differentiate it from that of your Teacher, and this was not a sign of disrespect.
Looking back on all this, I feel, the context may have been missed as well. Many are stuck on the notion of 'purity' and of 'style' in the context of sporting events, there is, indeed, a disconnect from the original intent of these principles that have been passed down, which causes us to ignore the principles themselves in favor of the form, the superficial.

Karate, like Classical Jujitsu, was not meant for sporting events. With the advent of the Modern Age more and more people are looking less and less to Karate for guidance because it has lost its' root, it has forgotten its' purpose, just as will happen with Jujitsu when more emphasis is placed on Ne Waza and the Classical Standing aspects are emphasized less and less.
It is not just that, in the physical sense, it is more the fact of the context has been lost altogether. The context is violence, and violence is, strictly speaking, highly complex. The fact that we have principles based on understanding into this unsavory thing and they beg to be built upon and improved, yet we only dust them off for tournament play where the principles are superficial at best, that is the loss of spirit.

Does what I am saying mean the old needs to be abandoned and that it must become a free-for-all for the sake of change? No, absolutely not.
Nor does it mean that the sporting aspect that young people enjoy needs to be abandoned either, just that things need to be looked at a little more closely, placed under a microscope and understood at a deeper level, beyond superficial forms, beyond commercial brand names that 'style' has become.
Straight to the point, Shu, Ha, and Ri is a process that has been absent for far too long, it needs to be reinstituted at the very center of what we are doing, placing things in proper context.

You have a core, you have a root, you must seek to understand it in relation to the context, experiment with it in order to learn and grow, finally internalizing it and making it more personal, building on what is there, adding to what is there, possibly even subtracting from what is there if it does not add up the way it should.
If there is a better way to do something, rest assured, it will be found according to this process, at which point the art and science that is Karate (and all Budo) will grow, evolve, and change the way it needs to in order to remain relevant and fresh.

We have old Masters from which to draw in the stuff that we study, but we also have modern Teachers from which to draw as well. Rory Miller has had my gears turning for some time utilizing a matrix against which to judge the context of what I am doing.
If you look at what you do and place it against the context of violence in its' myriad forms (not possible to touch upon everything, but at least a base knowledge will help) then things will start to click.
You must also look at what you are doing and place it against the context of nature, your body is designed with built-in mechanisms for defense, is what you are learning and training working with those or against them? Can the body be retrained and improved upon as far as instinct goes? Sure, but one really needs to understand the fundamentals contained within before they start making changes.
Change for the sake of change is never good, that is why there is a process to be followed so that things are understood in their proper context according to the proper fundamentals.