My view of the Martial Way.

Survival. This is the quest of all life on earth. The grass strives to grow, and survive, and it will encroach on the vegtables of the garden who also contest for the space to live. A person is needed to limit the grass and say "For you, grass, it is good for your existance in the lawn, but the garden is for the vegtables." Therefore the person will do what is necessary to stop the grass from entering the garden, even to the point of killing the grass that managed to enter by pulling it out by the roots. Nature has no evil. Sheep will kill the grass to be able to eat to survive, and cougars will kill the sheep to be able to live another day. All of this is within their nature to perform. Humankind has begun to understand the delicate balance, and when too many herbivores exist, and become a danger to themselves, we allow their numbers to be thinned.

However, humankind is capable of evil. Unlike animals, we are able to take what is natural and warp it. We can choose to be selfish, cruel, deceitful, abusive, and murderous to others. In a perfect world, we would not have to learn the path of martial arts. However, we can see this from the antiquities of our history when the first caveman killed the other with a club, or in a biblical sense, when Adam and Eve's first son Cain murdered Abel out of jealousy. Evil exists, and can affect us in many varied ways. The best protection is to train for war in the time of peace... sometimes this action in itself can prevent the war from happening in the first place.

Survival is the martial way, or in other words, the art of war. We have to learn to protect, and seek for what brings us good, and to defend against what would harm us. The techniques that we learn in our martial art is totally centered on finding THE most effective way of stopping, injuring, maiming, even killing the attacker who seeks to harm us. The ART of the Martial way is to find the quickest, most efficient manner to do this type of defense. We cannot fool ourselves, karate is not a new style of dance, or just impressive board breaking demonstrations. Karate is constantly being aware, and alert to the environment around us, and protecting ourselves through our own efforts.

Yet, in our efforts to learn the art of war, we must be careful not to become that which we are defending against. We have to accept that violence exists in our world, learn how to defend against it, use violence as a tool if necessary, but in the same breath we have to remove violence from within us. Our inner heart/ spirit needs to become self-controlled, humble, peaceful, respectful, valueing life even within the smallest creature.

As Martial artists we have to support our bodies that rely on our daily positive choices to keep them as healthy as possible. We are in more danger from our poor eating habits, and lack of daily exercise than from some random attack on the street. Training in Martial arts protects us by improving our flexibility, strength, conditioning, stamina, and cardio-vascular ability. Our training helps burn off the stress that we place within us, and bring our bodies into calm rest.

This is my view of the Martial Way.