Although it is important to study and train for skill in techniques, for the man who wishes to truly accomplish the way of budo, it is important to makehis whole life in training and therefore not aiming for skill and strength alone, but also for spiritual attainment.
Interpretation
True mastery in budo requires not just physical skill but also spiritual growth and a lifestyle dedicated to training.
Mas Oyama emphasizes that true accomplishment in the way of budo transcends physical techniques and strength. Instead, it entails a holistic approach to training that integrates one's entire life with the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment, indicating that the journey is as important as the destination.
In practice
In a martial arts class discussing the deeper meaning of practice.
Karate is not a game. It is not a sport. It is not even a system of self-defense. Karate is half physical exercise and half spiritual. The karateist who has given the necessary years of exercise and meditation is a tranquil person. He is unafraid. He can even be calm in a burning building.
Karate is Budo and if Budo is removed from Karate it is nothing more than sport karate, show karate, or even fashion karate-the idea of training merely to be fashionable.
Sice Karate exists for cultivating the spirit and training the body, it must be a moral way surpassing mere techniques.
One becomes a beginner after 1000 days of training. One becomes a master after 10,000 days of practice.
The path of Martial Arts begins and ends with courtesy. So be genuinely polite on every occasion.
While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you.
Fictions are necessary for the people, and the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its brilliance. In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The Truth must be kept secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason.
I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.
This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.
Bread has been made (indifferent) from potatoes;_x000D_ _x000D_ And galvanism has set some corpses grinning,_x000D_ _x000D_ But has not answer'd like the apparatus_x000D_ _x000D_ Of the Humane Society's beginning,_x000D_ _x000D_ By which men are unsuffocated gratis:_x000D_ _x000D_ What wondrous new machines have late been spinning.
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. It's like a cancer that's metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
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