Mushashin: understanding the warrior heart
What does mushashin mean?
The heart of a warrior?
I was asked this question last night after class and it took me a few moments to capture the feeling.
I could have given an academic explanation, a static definition: Mushashin is the heart of a warrior that allows them to make the needed decision in that moment regardless of the outcome, that it is the heart of a warrior that will guide a person every day in the martial arts.
Not just practicing the martial arts, or living the arts, but *being* the arts.
Yet, with martial arts being movement, these concepts of philosophy-spirituality in training are better expressed through action.
Developing mushashin is easy- just show up to the dojo to train every week.
We have reasons for practicing the martial arts, desires- perhaps to become something or learn something.
When you train at the dojo week after week, month after month, season after season, those desires get tempered.
Want that next rank?
It might take you a year of training.
Show up and work on it.
This tempering of desire, burns it away, so only the heart of a warrior remains, through committing to the training and showing up every week no matter what.
Mushashin is also found outside the dojo, the dojo being a sacred space, a safe space, it is easy to show mushashin in the dojo.
Taking the lessons of the dojo, how do you hold your heart outside the dojo?
When you are tested in life, interacting with others, and navigating society.
Do you behave as a warrior would behave?