Sice Karate exists for cultivating the spirit and training the body, it must be a moral way surpassing mere techniques.
Interpretation
Karate is more than just physical techniques; it also involves moral and spiritual growth.
Mas Oyama emphasizes that the practice of Karate is not solely about mastering physical techniques but is also a path to cultivate one's spirit and develop moral character. This understanding elevates the practice beyond a mere sport and into a discipline that promotes personal growth and ethical conduct.
In practice
In a dojo where students are encouraged to focus on personal growth alongside their skill development.
Karate is not a game. It is not a sport. It is not even a system of self-defense. Karate is half physical exercise and half spiritual. The karateist who has given the necessary years of exercise and meditation is a tranquil person. He is unafraid. He can even be calm in a burning building.
Karate is Budo and if Budo is removed from Karate it is nothing more than sport karate, show karate, or even fashion karate-the idea of training merely to be fashionable.
Although it is important to study and train for skill in techniques, for the man who wishes to truly accomplish the way of budo, it is important to makehis whole life in training and therefore not aiming for skill and strength alone, but also for spiritual attainment.
One becomes a beginner after 1000 days of training. One becomes a master after 10,000 days of practice.
The path of Martial Arts begins and ends with courtesy. So be genuinely polite on every occasion.
Pride, on the other hand, is the mother of all sins, and the original sin of lucifer.... An instrument strung, but preferring to play itself because it thinks it knows the tune better than the Musician
You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.
The stupider the peasant, the better the horse understands him.
There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.
You shall find out how salt is the taste of another man's bread, and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs.
The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.
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