I wrote the following essay in a “fit” of inspiration over a few hours. I have been “sitting on it” for a day because I’m not really sure, if I’m entirely honest, what to make of it. For some reason, the subject was haunting my mind, and when that happens the only way for it to stop haunting me is to put pen to paper and see what comes out. I have written other things in a similar manner, only to never publish them because I was unsure what readers would think. I have decided to post this despite my reservations about it. Perhaps it will have some appeal to a reader interested in the subjects.
In Japanese philosophy, the concepts of “self-power” (jiriki) and “other-power” (tariki) have always fascinated me. Primarily a concept found within the Jodo Shinshu sect of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism, it has made its way into Japanese philosophical thought as a whole. At first glance, it seems rather straightforward, but as one delves deep, you find that there is more to it than first meets the philosophical eye. And as one practices, you find that the lines begin to blur, until eventually you cross over into a new way of seeing, of looking, and of being your Budo training that you wouldn’t have thought possible when you first took up the martial ways. You come to realize that Budo training isn’t as much of a self-power practice as you had assumed.
At first, it may even seem absurd to think that Budo is a practice of other-power and I think, when you first take up any particular Budo, you should see it in a self-power manner. It seems so clear cut. Sitting in zazen, training in budo, lifting weights—how can these not be self-power practices? And if you’re new to a martial art but also devotionally religious, you don’t want to have the attitude of, “I don’t need to practice hard because I’ll leave it up to God and He can decide how good I get or don’t get. It’s all Other Power, after all.” You don’t want to have the attitude that it’s all Fate. Or it’s all simply out of your hands. No. You must train hard of your own effort. You must understand that the amount of time you spend in hard training and how consistent you are in the dojo will determine what you get out of your Budo training.
Before we continue to discuss how this applies to our Budo practice today and in the future, let’s look at a little bit of history, some of it fairly recent as far as history goes, some of it stretching back over centuries into the martial past.
Despite the plethora of books and articles on the subjects—mine included—and the well-intentioned budokas that combine the two, Zen and Budo do not, historically speaking, have much of a connection. (For a deeper dive into this, read my essay “The REAL Connection Between Zen and the Martial Arts.”) In Japan, budokas have traditionally been followers of devotional paths such as Shinto or one of the various Pure Land sects of Buddhism. The idea that samurai had the leisure or time to sit in zazen throughout the day, the way Zen monks do in a temple, simply doesn’t make sense nor is it accurate. Most samurai who were Buddhists followed Mikkyo or “esoteric Buddhism,” believing that the secret mantras and mudras they utilized would protect them in battle. Almost all of them would have prayed to various Shinto deities, too, even if they were Buddhist or Confucian.
Some of the most well-known budokas were the Ikkō-ikki, from the 15th and 16th centuries, warrior monks of the aforementioned Jodo Shinshu Pure Land sect. Despite being “monks,” they often drank sake and caroused with prostitutes, believing that, no matter their behavior, they were saved by “faith alone” through their devotion to Amida Buddha. If they died in battle, they were immediately reborn in Amida’s Pure Land. Despite its popularity in the West, to this day the most popular form of Buddhism in Japan is not Zen but is Jodo Shinshu. Almost all Japanese today, just like in the past, also worship at Shinto temples, even if they are Buddhist or even Christian. It would make sense, then, that martial artists in Japan—assuming they are religious at all—would be devotional, relying on other-power, and that these beliefs would infuse their Budo practice.
All of the popular martial arts in America that came from Japan—Karate, Judo, and Aikido—were created in the 20th century, although they do have some historical antecedents. Morihei Ueshiba, also known as O-Sensei, the founder of Aikido, is an example of an entirely devotional budoka. Aikido cannot be understood as its founder intended if it’s divorced from the religion he fervently believed in, Oomoto-kyu, or “Great Source,” a Shinto-inspired Japanese “new religion” founded in 1890 by Deguchi Onisaburō. (If you want an entertaining, if not entirely historically accurate, movie on Ueshiba, his early years when he founded Aikido and also encountered Oomoto-kyu and Deguchi Onisaburō, I suggest watching the 1975 movie “The Defensive Power of Aikido” starring Sonny Chiba and his brother, Jiro Yabuki, as Ueshiba.)
One reason for the lack of understanding in the West over other-power—whether in martial or religious practice—comes from the mindset of many who took up the practice of Zen when it first came to Europe and America. Many (most?) of them had turned away from the fundamentalist versions of Christianity they either grew up with or had encountered throughout their early lives. In Zen (and the “insight meditation” practices that came to America largely from Burma), they found a religion that didn’t ask them to believe in a God or had any notions of “sin” or “Divine retribution” or of a judgmental Deity or any of the other elements that they were put off by and rejected. Pure Land Buddhism (if they even heard of it or encountered it) seemed far too close to the religion(s) they had spurned. The issue, as I see it, however, is that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. If you travel to Asia—anywhere in Asia—you will find that Buddhism as it’s practiced by the average person is almost entirely devotional. This is so even in Theravada countries. (Theravada Buddhism is the one form of Buddhism still in existence that is probably the closest to what the historical Buddha actually taught and practiced. Mahayana Buddhism—of which Zen is just one form—didn’t come into existence until centuries after the Buddha’s death.) When I worked as an engineer and used to travel to Thailand for work, everyone there seemed to treat the Buddha in much the same way that Christians treat Christ, as an object of devotion who they prayed to and worshipped. My good friend Gridsadakorn was a monk for a year before disrobing and becoming an engineer. He said that the monastics were the same as their lay counterparts. They, for the most part, spent more time chanting and praying to the Buddha—along with a host of deities; so much for that just being a Mahayana practice—than they did meditating. In the Thai Forest Tradition, more monks do spend their days in solitary meditation, but even there you will find an incredibly devotional attitude, even if it’s toward the Dhamma as a whole, rather than cosmic buddhas and bodhisattvas.
Even those who are familiar with the Pure Land sects of Japanese Buddhism—such as Jodo-Shu, Jodo Shinshu, and their lesser known counterparts Ji-Shu and Yutsu Nembetsu-Shu—may be surprised to discover that the other sects of Buddhism that arose during the Kamakura period also relied upon other-power. For example, Eihei Dogen, the founder of Japanese Soto Zen, considered zazen itself to be a practice of other-power and not self-power. In 1234, he wrote, “A practitioner should not practice buddha-dharma for his own sake, to gain fame and profit, to attain good results, or to pursue miraculous power. Practice only for the sake of the buddha-dharma.”* The Zen teacher Dan Leighton comments: “Practice is the effect of realization, rather than its cause. In this way, Dogen’s meditative praxis is a faith expression of the beneficial gift of grace from the buddhas and ancestors, analogous to how nembutsu and shinjin are provided to the Shinshu devotee thanks to the vow of Amida.”**
Nichiren Buddhism arose during the same period. It’s mostly known these days due to the worldwide influence of Soka Gakkai International. Famous Nichiren Buddhists include the late Tina Turner along with well-known actors such as Orlando Bloom, Chow Yun-Fat, and Kate Bosworth. Instead of meditating or praying, the primary practice of Nichiren Buddhists is the chanting of the mantra Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. Although emphasis is placed on the personal responsibility of the individual to achieve happiness and enlightenment, you chant in order to attain what you desire, even if it’s a larger bank account or, apparently, a successful career in entertainment. But here’s the thing. You don’t worry or intellectualize over how you will achieve your desires or whatever results you seek. You just chant and then a Power that knows the way takes care of the rest.
I write all of the above so you will understand that the thoughts that follow shouldn’t somehow be considered odd or unique. They are certainly nothing new.
Even if you are not religious in any manner or have any hint of theism to your thought—perhaps you even believe in a purely materialistic universe that is completely random in nature—you must admit that there is a power beyond the self at work. There are too many things, too many factors in life, that are beyond your control. You may practice Budo for a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with the spiritual. But however hard you train, no matter how committed you may be over years and then decades of training, how “good” you end up becoming is because of things that you simply have no power over. It is due to your genetics, for one. Second, it depends on the level of training that you receive. Unless you are willing to drive hours to find the best teacher you can—actually, a truly committed budoka will do just that—you are left with the skill that you can find in a local teacher. There are many dedicated and highly skilled teachers that can be found, true, but they are few and far between.
I have often wondered what it was that compelled my interest in Budo from such a young age. I started training at 9 or 10 years old—there is debate in my family over the exact year, and I cannot remember myself—and, even before that, I was interested in Asian, particularly Japanese, art. My Buddhist friends tell me it must be because of my past lives. Perhaps I’m just returning to a love that has been embedded in me throughout multiple lifetimes. My Christian friends tell me that it is a love for Asian philosophy and martial practice that was placed in my heart by God as a way to reach others of that same interest, so that in the end I might draw them toward Christ. I’m not so sure about any of that. I just know that it has always been there for as long as I can remember. Whatever the source, it is certainly a power beyond “me.” I have always been deeply attracted to it. I always will be.
When I was a teenager, one of my senseis would berate me, and the other students in his advanced class, to “fight without fighting” and to “think without thinking” when we were engaged in kumite. When he first uttered the words—he never said such things to me when I started out as he didn’t to anyone else who didn’t have several years of training under their belts—I wondered what the heck he was talking about. One night, however, I did understand. Though it wasn’t an understanding that could have been put into words. Nowadays, we might call it a flow state. Everything was easy. Whatever technique that I threw against my opponent worked. But I wasn’t trying. I certainly wasn’t thinking. I was just doing. A power was at work that had nothing to do with me.
I often think the Budo Zen path should be compared to gardening or sailing. To be a successful gardener or a successful sailor requires the learning of skills. In Budo training, we develop our skills through constant practice. A gardener develops skills that can facilitate the growth of plants but doesn’t actually grow plants. Whether the plants grow is ultimately up to a Power beyond the gardener’s direct control. Similarly, to be a successful sailor requires a veritable toolkit of skills—an understanding of the sea, of the stars, of the climate and the seasons. The skills that the sailor develops allows him to harness the gift of the wind but he cannot cause the wind to blow. Whether the wind blows or not comes from the Power beyond the sailor. Constant Budo practice will allow you to hone your skills. How far those skills take you, how far you are able to travel the Budo Way, however, will be from the same power that pushes the crops through the soil or takes the sailor to her destination.
“A warrior’s mind and body must be permeated with enlightened wisdom and deep calm.” ~Morihei Ueshiba
The skills that we must develop in order to harness other-power are stillness, silence, and spaciousness—when I teach, to make them easy to remember, I refer to them as “the three S’s,” —leading to what O-Sensei terms deep calm. If what I have discussed so far has seemed impractical, then here we encounter the practical.
When you practice your particular Budo—whether it’s the basics, kata, or even just stretching or push-ups—intentionally bring a sense of stillness and calm to your body. The more you do this, the more natural and easy it will become. At first, however, you may need to practice deep breathing and bringing your perception of awareness to your entire body. Breathe into your tanden, your “energy center” of power and balance located a couple inches below your navel. While maintaining an upright, straight posture, relax your body. Notice wherever there is tension and bring a sense of calm to that place.
This is where it also helps to have a regular practice of zazen. If you are accustomed to bringing this stillness and relaxation to your body, and breathing into your tanden, while on the meditation cushion, it will be easier to do so while in a state of movement during training.
Practice silence while in class or when training by yourself. In class, do not idly chat with other budoka or discuss all of the different philosophical or technical aspects of the Way. You can do so after class. I personally love talking philosophy or discussing technical components of different martial arts, but I can do that over a dinner or lunch or while just hanging out with a fellow practitioner, not during class. When training by yourself, don’t look at your phone between practicing techniques or kata. Instead, sit in silence and cultivate interior silence within yourself. Notice that silence is always present, behind words or even thoughts. Try your best to be that very silence.
Spaciousness could also be called openness or emptiness. But it’s not the emptiness of meaninglessness or nothingness but that of shunyata, a term referring to the understanding that conditioned phenomena lack an inherently independent existence. Right now, take a moment to look away from your phone or tablet or computer (whatever you are using to read this essay), and look at the room you are in. If you’re outside, you can do this when you return to somewhere inside. Look at all of the things in the room. Those are just additions, whether they’re chairs or tables, desks or televisions, microwaves, countertops, or refrigerators. The room is naturally spacious, open, and empty. Even the room itself is part of a building—whether it’s your home or an office building—and it was built upon space. That’s the nature of our minds, as well. Our minds are open and spacious—just as they’re naturally still and silent. The nature of mind, and reality itself, is free. To realize this is to realize shunyata.
Spaciousness is not as easy to put into practice. It often arises of its own accord through the practice of stillness and silence. It can be practiced, however, once you have trained in a Budo Way for some time, perhaps several years at the least. If you have practiced kata so much that you know it by heart, then simply give yourself to the kata. Or, if you are sparring, simply give yourself to the sparring—what my sensei meant when he said to “fight without fighting.” Once you have practiced this over the course of several months, you will discover that stillness, silence, and spaciousness converge as one.
The freedom of spaciousness, silence, and stillness can be discovered in our Budo practice. But we must practice. We do the hard work. We develop the skills of whatever Way we follow. Then—and this is important—we let go. And when we let go, the Power that knows the way will take over for us.
It is often hard to let go. It seems as if it would be easy. But we have been conditioned since birth to hold on rather than to let go. For other-power to work in our lives, it’s a necessity, however. What follows are a few thoughts that may help us on our journey.
Try not to think. Not thinking is often as hard as letting go. They go hand in hand. Often, it is thoughts that we most need to let go of. When thoughts come into our mind that are not healthy, simply recognize the thought as being a thought and move onto something else. Often, these may be thoughts of how we’re not good enough at Budo (or life) or not skilled enough. Perhaps we think we’ll never be as good as we want or we brood over our failures in the dojo.
When unskillful thoughts enter our mind, you can always try replacing them with skillful ones. Think about the budoka that inspire you. I often think of Yamaoka Tesshu or Miyamoto Musashi, two of my heroes. Or think about philosophical concepts that you find uplifting. If you’re familiar with them—a teacher is traditionally needed unless you are naturally apt—you can use a koan or, what I prefer, a hwadu to ponder. Although it may be best to not think at all, replacing “bad” thoughts with “good ones” is what Zen considers a skillful means. There are skillful and unskillful means. Use the skillful ones.
Practice cultivating the three S’s at all times. If the only times you are still, silent, or spacious are when you are meditating or engaging in Budo training, then you will never reap the profound results available. Some people take up meditation but then stop because they complain that it “doesn’t work.” But if you just go back to your “normal life” once you get off the cushion, then of course it won’t work. You must remain mindful and vigilant whether sitting, standing, walking, or lying down. In other words, at all times, from the moment you awake in the morning until your head hits the pillow at night.
Learn to surrender. If we approach letting go, not thinking, or cultivating the three S’s as purely self-power practices—which they admittedly look like on the surface—then, in the end, I don’t believe they will work. Life is hard. It will throw things at us that are completely unexpected—even though they probably shouldn’t be if we understand the impermanent and unsatisfactory nature of samsaric existence. But if we practice—whatever our practice may be—and then surrender to a power beyond the self, everything will work out in the end, even the hardest things in life such as a serious illness or the death of a loved one. As the saying goes, pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.
In the end, it’s probably beneficial to strike a healthy balance between self-power and other-power. In fact, it could be that other-power won’t work, or ever be truly salvific, until we have exhausted self-power, until we realize that we, of our own power, can do nothing, but we won’t know that unless we strive with all our might. It is then, when we have come to the end of our striving and have seen our bombu nature, that the Power beyond the self can show us the way.***
If you found this essay interesting, here are the links to the first two parts of the series :
*The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen‘s “Bendowa“ with Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi (Boston: Charles Tuttle and Co., 1997)
**Dogen’s Zazen as Other-Power Practice by Taigen Dan Leighton from the February, 2005 IBS Shin Buddhist Conference on “Meditation and American Shin Buddhism”
***Bombu is a Japanese term for one who has discovered his foolish, selfish, arrogant nature. It often comes at the end of the path, after much striving, when he realizes that he has not, truly, changed despite his incessant hard work. However, this can be the opening for him to rely completely on other-power. To quote one of my favorite of all Pure Land philosophers, Shuichi Maida, who, in his book “The Evil Person: Essays on Shin Buddhism,” said: “What is a buddha (awakened one)? He is an ignorant person. He knows he is totally ignorant. He has awakened to his own ignorance. What is a deluded person? He thinks he knows something. He has not yet awakened to the fact that he knows nothing at all… Thus, the difference between a buddha and a deluded person is very subtle. The former has awakened to his own ignorance. The latter thinks he is wise although he is actually ignorant. So a buddha is an ignorant person and a deluded person is a wise person.” This always reminds me of the words of Christ, in the gospel of Mark, when Jesus says, “Why do you call me good? There is no one good but God.”
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