Saturday, February 15, 2020

No Spear, No Stopping.

Bunkai is a process, not a specific response to anything. The process of analysis, breaking things down to analyze their base elements or principles.
There is no real ‘Bunkai’ for ‘this’ or for ‘that’ in response to some specific thing. No X,Y,Z formula for dealing with anything.

In his letters to Yagyu Munenori the Zen Priest, Takuan Soho, said that the mind that stops and thinks only of responding to a specific thing comes to be stuck on that specific thing and ends up getting cut by it whereas the mind that does NOT stop on any specific thing is free and those who try to cut such a person down will end up being cut by their own sword.
There are no specific stopping points outside of learning, and no specific interpretations, there is only endless movement of principles so ingrained they no longer require a mind to guide them... The guiding mind and the principles are inseparable to the point that mind and principle cease to exist as specific points to which one can point and discern.

If a beginner is attacked they simply react, once they start to learn effectively their minds tend to get caught up on specific points, it is from this they should be guided in a manner leading towards an end that is the same as the beginning, thus coming full circle.
Breaking a student out of a point by point mindset by leading them THROUGH points so that understanding may be so internalized as to be consciously forgotten entirely.

In the beginning there are no techniques or principles, quite literally, in the process techniques and principles serve as the cart and horse through a vast array of things meant to show more efficient ways of responding until, ultimately, these are discarded and, in the end, there are no longer techniques or principles.
There is no such thing as Kata, no such thing as Kihon, nothing to Bunkai, just endless infinite movement backed by an immovable mind and spirit that does not get caught up or focus on any specific thing.
No response yielding infinite responses. There is no us versus them, our way or their way, there is just the way, which is found by abandoning the way and yielding to nothing at all.

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