Shugyosha

This year's Seminar - training with the head of my Sword Order - was perhaps the most meaningful of the six that I have attended.  It was the longest for me - 5 days of 5 hours a day - and perhaps for the first time I began to hazily understand what it means to actually be a swordsman.

During day four during the morning session, Soke discussed the training that takes place every year at Katsuura in Japan - the one I am going to next year.  This, he said, was very difficult training where shugyosha from all over the world studied to improve their skills.  It was very hard, he said, but you would improve massively in your technique.

Shugyosha.  I thought I remembered this word but could not place it.  Until I got home and reminded myself.

A Shugyosha was a warrior in Japan who had separated themselves from school and clan and wandered the countryside, honing their skills by practice and challenging other opponents.  The ultimate goal of the true shugyosha was to achieve mastery of their art.

This, then, was the challenge being offered to us.  To turn our own lives into musha-shugyo, the warrior's quest, by becoming shugyosha.

Soke was quite clear in his comments.  He wants each and every one of us to work hard to become his number one (ichiban) student.  And from him, I do not believe it to be the sort of "morale building" speech I would expect in most businesses I have worked for or organizations I have been associated with.  He believes that it is possible for every person that trains in his school.

His words moved me - both from a slight sense of fear (this training was intense - the fact that he considers Katsuura "hard" unnerves me just a bit) but more based on the experiences that I had during this year's training.  Faint flickers of understanding of what it truly meant to seek for and achieve a level of mastery - maybe not "the" mastery but a mastery all the same.

The pay, of course is low.  The benefits are few, outside of personal pride.  Like the shugyosha of old, there is little in the way of fame or fortune or recognition.

But there there is the knowledge that, at the end of it all, you did all you could to bring yourself to the very highest levels of your ability in your chosen field.

There is no other way but to begin my own musha-shugyo.