The Value of Bu and Do

I train in budo.  I admit it, I love budo training.  It’s fun.  It’s exciting.  It’s intense in a way that nothing else I do even comes close to.  I could happily spend a lot of time every day training.  Learning attacks and defenses from sword and staff and kusarigama and empty hand, and, and, and, I never seem to get my fill of training and learning.  Budo is great.  In addition, because it’s not a sport you play for amusement, but training in skills that can be applied in the world outside the dojo, I can easily recommend that everyone get some sort of budo training, whether it is their passion or not.  It’s a useful skill set to have.   

But how valuable is that skill set?  The value of “do” 道、is that it is a way of looking at the world, of approaching the world and the way we live in it.  The Taoists and  Buddhists have written quite a lot on the value of “Do” 道、so I want to look at the relative value of “bu” 武。　　In a society where physical conflict is rare, and the vast majority of people get through life without any training in budo, just how valuable is the “bu” half of budo?

If you have a job that places you in the line of physical conflict, of course budo training can be useful, but that sort of job is rare.  So, thankfully, are instances that might require physical responses in modern, industrialized societies, particularly when compared with pre-industrial periods.  But we do still have conflicts.  How we handle conflict has clearly gotten more peaceful over the centuries, but we still have conflicts.  And occasionally these conflicts become violent, so there is still a slim chance that someone might have a literal need for the skills learned through budo training.  Outside of a few, specialized professions though, that need is rare.

So for those of us who can’t get enough of budo practice, how valuable is it really to our lives?  What can it contribute?  The easy one is that budo practice can be great physical activity in an era when we spend more time sitting in front of screens than is healthy.  Unfortunately, this isn’t a very compelling reason to do budo, since there are lots of things that can provide physical activity.  Lots of them are much better overall forms of exercise than budo.

That brings us back to budo training for dealing with violence.  Even though violence is relatively rare, there plenty of reasons for training.  I want my daughters to learn effective “bu” even if they don’t ever embrace my love of budo.  I want to protect them by teaching them to protect themselves.  Many of the facets of budo training that are not directly violent can protect them.  They can certainly use the awareness and confidence that comes with budo training to avoid and handle potentially violent situations so they never become violent.

The above logic though forces me to face one aspect of the value of budo’s primary focus of dealing with violence.  Budo is valuable for what it can protect, not for any inherent value that it possesses. I value budo training for my family because I value my family, and not because I value budo.  I want my children to deal with the world from a position of confidence and personal security, and I think budo is one of the best tools to help them achieve that level of confidence and personal security.

And there it is.  Budo is a tool, not an end in itself.  Budo is valuable for what you can build with it and what it can defend.  Budo is not a beautiful house to be lived in.  Budo is the hammer and saw used to build the house.  Budo, like any “Do” 道　is a method for perfecting the practice of some particular activity, and through the proper practice of that activity, for helping to perfect the practitioners.  

“Bu” 武 alone is not much to practice.  In fact, it’s rather gruesome to spend a lot of time week after week studying ways to control, constrict, disarm, disable, cripple and kill your fellow man.  That’s what we do in budo practice.  It’s not beautiful, and if we are training ourselves honestly, we should not flinch from saying it publicly or to the mirror.   If we don’t start with an honest understanding of what we are doing, there is no way we can honestly value it.

I value a lot of things from my budo practice besides the physical conflict skills that are the foundation of the practice.  I value the understanding of physical limitations, both mine and a potential adversary’s, that make it nearly impossible for me to be physically intimidated in an office situation, even though people frequently try.  I admit it, I find it amusing when the office bully tries his tactics on me and gets confused when they utterly fail.

I appreciate the understanding of spacing that allows me to control distances between myself and people who might actually be dangerous.  If I understand the distances involved in violence, I can prevent it from happening by not allowing the spacing to develop that makes violence possible.  That’s a nice one.

Ultimately though, these are all applications of budo lessons using budo as a tool for protecting something else.  So this leads me to the question of what the proper value and place budo training should have in my life.  When I was in college, it filled huge sections of my life.  I spent hours every day at the dojo training.  I built my life around budo.  It was huge fun and I made friendships that still sustain me.  I know now that these friendships are much more important than the budo practice that nurtured them.  The dojo was like fertile ground where the friendships grew.

Budo is a fabulous tool for my life, both the “Bu” and “Do” portions, but it is a tool and I have to be careful to value it as such.  The dojo is a wonderful place for me, and there are few places where I am more comfortable and completely at ease than in a good dojo.  One of the lessons I’ve had to take away is that being comfortable and at ease is not how I want to be all the time though.  I have used the dojo as an escape and release from stress in my life, and it would be easier than I care to admit to hide in the dojo all time.  

That would require sacrificing things that I find valuable for themselves alone.  My family, my friends, the people I love.  These people are what makes budo such a valuable tool.  It’s great value comes from what it can do for them.  I have to remember that when I want to escape to the dojo every night.  When I go a few times a week, my training benefits everyone involved; me, my wife, my children, the rest of my family, my friends.  An appropriate amount of training is good for me physically and mentally.  I get a great, intense physical workout in the dojo.  It’s amazing how much and how fast you can convince yourself to move when someone is trying to throw you, choke you, or hit you with a stick.  I could get that exercise in a gym, but I like the efficiency of getting exercise and honing skills at the same time.

Then there are the mental benefits.  I’m calmer when I’m training regularly.  The breathing practice, and mental stillness that are required for effective budo are great things outside the dojo, just as much as being in good physical condition is.  We spend some time in our society teaching people how to hold their body and we value good physical posture.  While mental training that is part of the “Do” side of practice in the dojo is just as important as the physical training.  It may be more important, since we don’t have business chains all over the place offering to develop our mental strength and posture.  Practicing the calm, clear, placid, reflecting mind that is required of any “Do” and is especially important for effective responses in “Bu” is also wonderfully useful outside the dojo.

I love being in the dojo, and there are few places where I feel as comfortable and completely at ease as I do in the dojo.  I could easily spend my time escaping from all the pressures of life by spending every available minute in the dojo. If I start spending too much time in the dojo, and sacrificing quantity and quality of time with the people I love, I’m showing with my actions that I value budo over the people in my life.  I’m showing that I value the tool more than the relationships with wonderful people that it can help build and protect.  It’s nice to want to spend my time where I feel comfortable, but that excessively values the tool of budo and undervalues the rest of life.

Budo is wonderful.  It’s a part of life that I love.  It’s only a part of life though.  We have to value it appropriately.  If we allow our love of budo to let our practice take over our life and blot out many other difficult but wonderful things that are part of life, our budo is taking a place in our lives it doesn’t deserve.  I’ve seen people over value their practice and they pay the price in all the other aspects of life.  Budo is not life.  It is a tool for life.  It is a little “Do” pointing at the big Tao.  Don’t mistake the finger for the moon.