I heard this one a little differently. The way I heard it: There was a young monk from Nantucket, Who met a girl with a bucket... Wait, I think the ending is against the TOS.
Nice story.. not really seeing the relevance. We shouldn't trust dogma? Is there dogma in the bujinkan? Not really I would say - the lack of clear paths is for some the problem, and for some the advantage. Bloody ninjers!
I agree strongly. They are likely correlated (when you have the chance to train with Japanese Shihan, you train more). Sometimes, I myself am guilty of just 'phoning it in', lacking mindfulness, teachability, and presence. Also, often, in Soke's class, I'm completely confused, so I just do the gross movements and see what happens.
My advice to anyone in Sokes class would be to just try to focus on his footwork. Most people get too distracted by all the fancy stuff he does. If you do the footwork correctly, you should be able to stay safe.
You cannot learn and copy the body mechanics of everyone to any beneficial purpose unless you are a martial prodigy or a master of kinesthetics. Were you either, you would understand the inherent folly in that approach. If you understand Japanese culture, you would see why it is contradictory to the traditional teaching and learning method as well. Now if you don't have access to a teacher, it is seemingly a good idea to have as much access to more than one(including foreigners who "teach" what they learned in Japan). You can't hodge podge your way into greatness though. Hatsumi sensei says different things to different people for different reasons, and sometimes even to the same person. To try to understand and follow everything he says would be like walking in Alice in Wonderland. He is a martial genius though, so he can say and do pretty much whatever he likes. If you understood the basics, the history, and the differences between each of the original students of Hatsumi sensei, you would see how and why a choice has to be made concerning your own progress. For those without this vision, it is literally like trying to sail a sailboat from the US to Japan without a sail, rudder, knowledge of the current, and no sense of direction, while fighting a bear in your boat while covered in honey. Not impossible, but pretty darn close to it.
Why? I'm curious what the rationale is behind these kind of statements Sure there are certain important details that you'll only learn in a deshi kind of relationship, but setting those aside why can't you get competent at this art by learning from Soke's students (plural)? For example my teacher in BJJ often says things like: "I got beaten by someone using a technique that I'd never seen before. It took me a while, but I figured it out and now I use it all the time in competition" Or "I watched X person's fights on YouTube and he often does Y. I've adopted this and it works really well" I believe that as long as (a) you have a grounding in the fundamentals and (b) you can take what's useful for you and ignore things that aren't then learning from multiple sources is better than just one (unless you are a carbon copy of your teacher)
Because the ship needs a rudder, and too many cooks in the kitchen, and any other catchy saying you can think of. Hard to have more than one wife and be faithful. Without a teacher/deshi relationship, how are you going to get competent in these arts? It is through this relationship that you can get a grounding and competency it cannot be achieved in any other way( are you at sea example after example of people having achieved such). None of the Shihan are carbon copies of their teacher so why would that be the conclusion one would draw from my explanation?
I'm sorry but I don't think that's one of your better arguments Is there a technical reason or other rational explanation why you feel that the arts in the Buj cannot be learnt from training with several highly skilled shihan when (a) there are many examples of technical MAs where this doesn't apply and (b) it clearly doesn't apply in life generally?
Actually, I was trying to give such arguments although in abbreviated form. It's not about comparing these arts to other styles(which doesn't really make sense unless you were discussing an organization that mixed bjj with 8 other weapons based arts and only had one grandmaster and his direct handful of students who had the full transmission in any of the arts), it's about understanding these arts/traditions and how they are passed on. Training is cyclical and you build on what you learn in the previous cycles, ever refining, ever reducing. This kind of progression requires a certain relationship and time requirement. Unless you have been exposed to this kind of relationship, you can't really get what and why it's so different and important to understanding these arts. There are plenty of foreign teachers out there who are proficient at these arts at a superficial level, like say a good nidan. But no matter how many people they train with or how many years they dojo hop going forward, they will plateau at a certain level and fail to progress in the way and direction they could if they were a deshi of a shihan who felt responsible to them as a teacher. Sorry I might not be able to properly explain but when you cross hands with the two types of people, you will know the difference.
It seems you two are talking past each other, whether intentional or not. dunc wants to know if you can become skilled while training with more than one teacher while PR is stating that you can't get the complete transmission unless you have a Sensei/deshi relationship. Why can't both be true? I'm with dunc in that I think you can get skilled by learning from different skilled people. if that's all you are looking for, great. Go for it. Just recognize that there is a ceiling for as far as you will go. In most cases that ceiling is far enough above you that you're not likely to reach it anyway. If you want to go as deep as possible, then you may need a very close relationship with a very important person. If that's what you want, go for it. But good luck because it's not an easy thing to obtain.
Fair enough, we might be talking past one another. What I am saying is that to get like the Shihan or Hatsumi(really proficient at these arts in a correct and useful way), you have to learn them in the same way. This is not the way that most people are trying to learn them. As such, they end up with a lot of holes in their understanding and ability. You cannot fix these holes by going to this teacher one day, and this teacher the next. Only one teacher can teach you the basics, fundamentals, and then correct your technique over the years. Why? Because people are different and they do things differently. They have different body types, came to train with Hatsumi sensei at different stages of their and his life and understanding, and have different martial backgrounds. It's like going to 3 different doctors and trying to follow the advice of all three to treat your disease. It gets back to who you choose to listen to and trust for your development. The two paths are at complete opposites and one takes you further away from the true arts because the true arts aren't taught that way and can't be. Once you have reached a certain stage(that very few foreigners ever have in these arts), you can pick up whatever you want and mix it with other arts or body movement sciences because the foundation is there. That is exactly what Doron used to do, but to try to compare the methodology or practice of other arts is kind of irrelevant unless you can think of an art with the same kinds of history, issues, and technical similarities. BJJ isn't a good comparison at all. I never said the sensei/deshi relationship was common or easy, just that it is the only way to really learn the arts. Anything else is in depth dabbling. If fewer people went dojo hopping and following trends and false idols, there would be less cultish behaviour, a higher standard, and probably better teachers out there because they would have learned deeply and correctly. Of course that is hypothetical but it gels with history.
(a) is the problem, I know that most shihan in the Bujinkan think they have a a grounding in the fundamentals but I and I think PR don't agree. You probably think you have a good grounding in the basics Dunc. I was the same as you and thought the same. I've heard Ishizuka scold Daishihan that came to visit his class because their basics were terrible. Before I started training in the Kacem/Ishizuka sensei line I thought I had a good understanding in the basics as well. It turned out I had to relearn everything from the ground up eventhough I was a close student of one of the daishihan and ****enno and was training for more then 20 years intensily and went to japan reguraly and lived in japan for a while for training. Everything I thought I knew about the basics of the nine ryuha was wrong. Now it doesn't mean that what I learned from the ****enno was worthless, it helped me in many fights and it worked for me. I respect him and I like him a lot. But it was not the nine ryuha, it was Bujinkan, a mix of different styles and movement where everybody adds from their own experience, not from transmission. The amounts of details in the basics in transmission is staggering. When I teach the first step of going in kamae it already takes 4 hours of instruction and a year or more of constant correction. (b) you should be a carbon copy of your teacher. If not then what do you pretend to be learning? If not then you are doing your own thing. This is a master/deshi art. In the Bujinkan you are free to do this, but I dont think it is correct. When I went to japan for the first time people could see that I was a student of this ****enno by the way I moved. Now I hope people see the Kacem/Ishizuka line in my movement. Im not being arrogant or think that Im better then anybody else. Im just a student and not a very good one at that.
Thank you Pankeeki - nice post I've heard these arguments many times from certain groups in the Buj However, what I've yet to hear is a clear and rational argument as to why this is fundamentally a better way to develop martial skill than the alternatives outlined above which are also used by other arts, sportspeople, artists, scientists, businesses etc I'm not looking for arguments like "It's the way transmission works", "too many cooks spoil the broth", "everyone else is wrong, you'll know it when you've experienced it" etc, I'm curious as to why people think it's better Thanks and sorry to push the point
My argument is that I've yet to see anybody, ever, learn the ryū (and the martial skills within, naturally) without the kind of transmission we are talking about here. It just hasn't happened. Now, you can learn to fight in many different ways. That goes without saying. But we're talking about nine classical Japanese martial ryū here.
Can you clarify what you mean by "carbon copy"? Because it is the WORST way to transmit anything that is a physical skill....any time you copy something the quality fades, until you are copying the faintest impression of the original
