12/19/2021
First I stole this and then I cut it so that is was a little more applicable to our train of thought. The whole article is below for reference. Domo.
A true warrior is selfless. The great sword master, Yagyu Munenori said, “Conquering evil, not the opponent, is the essence of swordsmanship.”
Evil in this sense means either the evil within ourselves or the evil out in the world.
In Japanese, having the warrior spirit to help others is referred to as bushidate (武士達 ) which literally translates as “the accomplished warrior.” Thus, the accomplished warrior has developed the ability to help others and that’s probably why the word samurai (侍) actually translates as “One who serves"
We learn selflessness every day in the dojo. In a circuitous way, we learn selflessness as we learn to hurt people.
We take care of our training partners because there is a responsibility in hurting others or in taking a life.
Realizing that someone can get injured or killed by the things that we do instills a level of responsibility and deference for life.
The samurai weren’t maniacs and didn’t glorify killing. Hurting others was thought of as an unfortunate consequence of a job that they were tasked to do.
Today, the only way that we can try and teach ourselves this samurai selflessness is by training ourselves in the martial arts. The best martial artists aren’t the ones who can beat everyone up. On the contrary, the best martial artist is the one who can think of others.
