道場で泣き戦場で笑う
Dojo de naki, senjou de warau
Cry in the dojo, laugh on the battlefield
Martial arts training is supposed to be fukatte (不勝手) or an “inconvenience” or “something that makes life hard.” The arduousness of training was oftentimes purposeful and done to prepare the student for the trials and tribulations of battle. When discussing martial arts training, Furuya Sensei would often say, “Cry in the dojo, laugh on the battlefield.” Making training purposefully inconvenient was supposed to force the student to become diligent, disciplined and to have foresight. For instance, when our dojo was at its previous location, it didn’t have a public bathroom. Sensei lived in the dojo and the only bathroom was in his private residence. So in order to use the restroom, a student would have to have the courage to knock on Sensei’s door, interrupt him, walk past him and use his bathroom and then interrupt him again, walk past him and leave. From the moment you knocked on his door to the time that you left, you were open to being criticized for something or given a task that you didn’t want. You didn’t want to be the nail that sticks up drawing his ire, so most students elected to use the bathroom before arriving at the dojo or find some other place to relieve themselves. Inconveniences or hardships force the students to have to get good at circumventing obstacles by preparing themselves ahead of time and/or coming up with workarounds. The thinking was that when things are easy and user friendly, they lull us into a certain complacency which opens us up for attack. Thus, making things hard, user unfriendly or inconvenient forces the students to be on their toes and ready for any eventuality. Today, things are lauded for their ease and user friendliness and so we have to find ways to make ourselves more diligent, more disciplined or to think ahead. Thus, the ownness of making our training inconvenient is now on us. Inconvenient just means purposefully making yourself work harder for your own benefit to achieve whatever it is that you want. That’s why harshness or inconveniences enable you to cry in the dojo so that you can laugh on the battlefield.
Today’s goal: Are there things you can purposefully make inconvenient that will make you better?