“Your journey is not always straight and smooth.
Sometimes you have to go through rough and hard roads, but you will grow bigger from going through them.“
The name of Japanese martial arts is usually finished with this word “Do” such as Judo, Kendo, and Aikido.
And these martial arts styles are classified as “Budo”.
“Bu” means martial, combat, or fighting.
“Do” means way, road, or journey.
So the direct meaning of Budo is something like the martial way or fighting journey.
That means your participation in these arts should be a long journey like walking on a long road.
Your journey is not always straight and smooth.
Sometimes you have to go through rough and hard roads, but you will grow bigger from going through them.
Also, these arts have the concept and system of practicing and to keep improving for your life time.
Even other arts whose name finishes with “Do”, they should have the same concept, such as Sado (Tea ceremony) and Shodo (Calligraphy).
If there is no system or concept to keep improving for a life time, those martial arts are not Budo.
Even if you are doing one of these arts but training for just competitions, and stop training when you stop competing, you are doing just a sport.
Just continuing hard training or hard sparring randomly doesn’t make it Budo too.
If you don’t train in the proper way of Budo, you might get injuries or something and eliminate your possibility to be the best version of yourself in 20 years or 30 years later.
The important thing is to have a good system to keep improving our mind, technique, and body for our life time.
In Budo, we have a very famous word “Shin” “Gi” “Tai”.
“Shin“ means mind or spirit.
“Gi” means technique or skill.
“Tai” means body or physical.
In Budo training, you must try to keep improving a balance of these 3 qualities.
“Shin” could be to be able to control your emotions, achieving mental strength, or learning manners and respect.
So, that art has to have a good philosophy and good concept to improve them.
“Gi” is fighting technique, but not just techniques with physical strength.
You need to learn techniques by following the laws of nature which is less effort and less impact to your body.
And “Tai”, you should be healthy and fit, and be able to achieve strength and speed from doing proper Budo exercises.
If you miss one of them, you are not really doing “Budo”.
So in real Budo, they should have the concept and system to keep improving our mind, technique, and body for a life time.
And that’s what we should aim for.
