The truth of budo

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Diesen Artikel habe ich von aus einem Facebookeintrag von Duncan Stewart übernommen.

It’s important not to be deluded about your actual ability in Budo.
Rank is by no means and indication of your real ability either. This is the Shinken Gata of the Bujinkan Sakizuke ranking manner. Pride will not help you either. This will often make you even more deluded as you do not address reality.
Basically, reality sucks.
The truth of budo study is to understand your weaknesses in all areas and have the courage to accept to work hard to make them strengths. This is the majority of your time and focus in the dojo.
If you ignore or hide from this, you are not studying the martial arts, but plainly just doing all you can to maintain your ego, pride and self from hardship and struggle both internally and externally. Budo is about struggle and hardship. It is only when you push yourself beyond your comfort zones that true development can be made. This comes with blood, sweat and tears.
Budo is not for everybody. However, nowadays we have seen the Bujinkan move into an era where everyone is given access or the chance to experience this budo.
The only way is to harden up.
When I arrived in Japan to live, I was a 10th dan. I went there because I knew that I wasn’t skilled or strong inside. Nagato Sensei may have seen this youthful desire for improvement but also my numerous weaknesses. For two years he took me as uke. I was thrown, kicked, punched, held, locked and hit with weapons. A few weeks before I was leaving to return to live in Tasmania, he came to me when I was changing with my jeans around my ankles ( another weak point/moment ) and said “ Takamatsu treated Hatsumi like a son, I was treated like a martial artist.“ He looked at me intently and walked away. I stood there with my jeans around my ankles. Lol.
As I was saying my farewell, he said that he used me as uke because I needed toughening up. And, that I did! From then on, in nearly every class I attended he would talk about the importance of being uke and more so, being a GOOD uke.
Uke is your ability to receive whatever is thrown at you. It demonstrates not only your physical skills but your character. It’s the ability, moment to moment, to address the discomfort, confusion, pain and chaos of constant change on your body, mind an spirit. How much can you accept and where can’t you take it? This is the way to reveal your openings and weaknesses.
Being uke is a gift.
It is a gift because it can show you ( if you want or are open ) to the road of progression and development of the self as a person following the martial way.