SWORDs of Wisdom

SWORDS of Wisdom:
© Copyright 2017 Avi Nardia

During my last workshop I had to remind my class of the goals in Martial Arts and have since decided to share it again here in Budo Magazine.

I want to impart some new and some old advice.

“Pain is the best teacher, but injury is the wrong teacher.”

This is one reason that we advocate safe training – “Slow is Fast.”

When you have Martial Arts knowledge you only need to share it! We don’t need to slander and only see the mistakes of others. We just need to share our work and knowledge. “The more good that is inside you, the less bad you will see in others.”

“That’s like the pot calling the kettle black.”

“It takes one to know one.”

“You don’t show a fool half-work.”

“The hunchback sees only his companion’s hump.”

“Judge not that ye be not judged.”

‎כל הפוסל – במומו הוא פוסל (translated: “Anyone that rejects others – sees his own shortcomings in others.”)

אין הגמל רואה את דבשתו (translated:” “The camel does not see his own hump.”)

Now, I wish to share some old wisdom: SMARTial Arts of a great swordsman – we call it sWORDsmanship.

Yagyū Munenori was a Japanese swordsman, founder of the Edo branch of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, which he learned from his father Yagyū ‘Sekishūsai’ Muneyoshi. This was one of two official sword styles patronized by the Tokugawa shogunate.

The purpose of mastering Martial Arts through training is to overcome six kinds of diseases:

  1. The desire for victory.
  2. The need to impress others.
  3. The tendency to rely on technical cunning.
  4. The desire to master the psychological aspects of your opponent.
  5. The will to wait for the opponent’s first move(s) which would expose their weaknesses.
  6. The desire to overcome all of these diseases.

“It is easy to kill someone with the slash of a sword, but it is hard to be impossible for others not to cut you down.”

“It is bias to think that the art of war is just for killing people. It is not to kill people, it is to kill evil. It is a stratagem to give life to many people by killing the evil of one person.”

“See first with your mind, then with your eyes, and finally with your body.”

“Throwing down your own sword is also an art of war. If you have attained mastery of swordlessness, you will never be without a sword. The opponent’s sword is your sword. This is acting at the vanguard of the moment.”

“Conquering evil, not the opponent, is the essence of swordsmanship.”

“There may be a hundred stances and sword positions, but you win with just one.”

“Once a fight has started, if you get involved in thinking about what to do, you will be cut down by your opponent with the very next blow.”