Picture: Cathy Okada & Ivan Melo at Kōshōji in Uji, in 2023 on the anniversary of their Jukai ceremony.
Written by Cathy Okada
“Very great congratulations on your Jukai and really happy to join you on the Way without beginning or end!”
A zen teacher and fellow sangha friend kindly wrote these words to me three years ago after Ivan and my Jukai ceremony- the formal acceptance of the Buddhist precepts. The words “The Way without beginning or end” jumped out at me from my phone screen. The reason being that some weeks not long before that, another friend, who is very skilled with woodwork, held out some tantos he had made and told me to pick one as a gift. I made my choice, and then he explained that the one I’d picked was perfect for “the Melos”, because the pattern engraved on the tsuka is “…a celtic knot, which has no beginning and no end.”
“No beginning and no end” unintentionally has since become an unofficial personal koan, always somewhere at the back of my mind, popping up from time to time. More recently, these instances have been during Aikido and Iaido practice.
It comes to me sometimes when I notice how people train or conduct themselves on the tatami. For example, sometimes I’ve seen students stay lying down on the mat after they’ve been thrown, either limp from fatigue, or to contemplate what just happened (or perhaps their life choices), and sometimes both simultaneously. We always discourage this, partly because when training in class staying on floor is a safety hazard, with other people practicing and falling around you. When your body has switched off, you have usually switched off mentally too- forgetting the martial implication of being in such a situation. So we always take the approach that if you truly need a moment of pause, then you do it when you are back on your feet with awareness of your surroundings. More importantly than that- every time we stand back up we are a little bit stronger and a little bit more resilient than before.
But staying down there also implies that there is a definitive “end” to the exchange, and that end is the point when you’ve fallen. I was recently helping another student improve her ukemi, and she voiced her realisation; “I need to think of standing back up to my feet as the end, not landing down on the mat.” To address her particular issue- yes, that’s right! It was a good realisation, which she had arrived at herself, without having had it spoon fed to her.
Then it got me thinking… Is the point where you stand back up truly the “end?”. Perhaps it is the beginning. Or is the beginning when you strike or grab Sensei? Is it the moment they call you up to take ukemi? Is it the journey from your spot to the center of the tatami, or the moment when your eyes meet?
It can’t be ignored that there are definitive ritual markers throughout our repetitive practice. For example for the beginning and end of class; the bell, bowing in, bowing out and even getting dressed. But does our practice really just end when we leave the dojo? And should it?
Speaking of definitive markers- there are clearly distinctions between yourself and your weapon- your skin being one of them. But I’ve had Sensei tap the end of my bokken and tease “Helloooo? Cathyyy? Are you IN there?”.
When teaching, sometimes I find myself saying things to our students during class and I hear the words as if I myself were learning them for the first time. I told them recently “Your body is at the service of the sword”. This was something I have recently been feeling in my body, but hadn’t yet found the words to describe until then. Its common for people to say that the weapon is an extention of ourselves, and I’ve recently been getting glimpses of that but in reverse, noticing instead how at times my body feels like an extension of the sword, and how my body serves the weapon, and then in turn, it serves me. So which way around is it? Where does the weapon really end and we begin? And how about between yourself and your partner during paired body arts practice?
I haven’t found answers, only more questions. So in lieu of having no end to my article, I’ll share an extract from a book The Open Way, two copies of which made their way into my possession in close succession, as it happens around the same time that my koan came to me.
Wherever we are, ‘here’ is the centre of our life- journey. There is no edge, no outside, no lower, no higher, no end, and no beginning. Whatever this world is giving us now, we are in the centre of our lives, on the open way, step by step. This is it! Our ultimate peace lies in the midst of the heavy storm of our daily lives. Therefore, how can we not neglect even one grain of rice?
~Hōgen (Daidō) Yamahata