Beloved Students,
Every champion I ever knew lived Budo. To live Budo means to be passionately in love with your JuJitsu, Judo, or any Art you practice. If you love Budo, you always have your sport in the back of your mind no matter what you are doing all day long. You are then like the miser who has a big pot·· of gold buried in the cellar. He thinks of this in secret all during the day. It makes him feel good, it warms his heart.
Living Budo is belonging. When you step on the mat you are going home. When you are off the mat, the knowledge that your beloved Budo, and your beloved Team, are waiting for you on the mat, and will always be there; this comforts you.
Living Budo is being joyful in movement. You love the way your body stretches and bunches, the way your feet and hands move: strongly, surely, competently. You can move like lightning while sitting: or sit calmly while running and jumping - because you know that movement is the beauty of life Everything moves and beats: in pulses, in surges and waves, and the movement surrounds you and the movement of the universe is you and you are it.
Living Budo is caring, earnestly, passionately, about everyone and everything. It's being curious about what makes your muscles pull, your mind tick and your heart fear.
Living Budo is abandoning doubt forever. Your life is settled - finished - complete. Come what may, it doesn't matter. Your beloved Budo is always there. If you are confined to a wheelchair, that
·doesn't matter either. Once you have started to really live Budo, you can go beyond Budo to the essence of Budo, which needs no Budo.
There is an eternal essence, and when you live Budo you find it. You only have to pray: "Lord. show me how to live Budo. Help me to live Budo. Make me live Budo," and it will happen for you.
But you must want it more than anything in life. You must be like a child held under water, who believes that life depends on a breath of air. You have to believe you wil1 die if you can't practice your Budo. Later. after you learn to live Budo, and you can't practice Buda anymore, you will still have your Budo, always. Always in your heart. Because, after all, you are just Buda, nothing less, nothing more, and that's all there is.
0-Sensei
