Institute| Academy| Dojo |Training Center, and Miscellaneous Topics

Whatever name is ascribed to a place of training, we should respect and consider it a serious place where some of the most valuable insights are shared and objectively trained. In a broader sense, a dojo is anywhere that training takes place. It makes no difference if you are in a building, or in the deserts, or in a jungle, or in the mountains, or on a battle ship in the middle of the ocean. It is the knowledge and the insight that should be considered first.

During the ancient times, martial arts training locations (dojos——training halls…..) were considered a microcosm of everything else one does outside of the dojo. Necessary and useful life skills such as: Mental endurance, respect, focus, hard work, control of one’s emotions, cleanliness, steadfastness, ability to pay attention to details, overcoming one’s weaknesses, sharpening one’s brain, ability to decipher between B.S and non-B.S, technical perfection, courage, patience, problem-solving abilities, determination, pattern-recognition, justice, resilience, and many other necessary life-qualities are not elements which you should only practice in the dojo or the academy, but to actualize and overlap those qualities with everything else you do outside of the training center. In fact, everything that a student does and learns at the academy——all of that should be considered as definite counterparts to every other activity in life. If the training we do, does not translate into our lives outside of the dojo, then we have wasted our time.

You may be aware that in the ancient times, the locations you trained at, was considered a place where actual “awakening” took place (Satori). So, training location is not just another location or another building one trains in. It’s much more than that. In such a highly esteemed place, nobody should walk on the mats with their shoes on, or walk barefoot in the bathrooms, or make any mindless moves………….. Maybe one big drawback that has come out of the sport of MMA-worldview is that many of them (not all, I repeat, not all) look at the training center as just a place to kick ass, become a famous fighter, make huge money, and buy big expensive items. Though, there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these things, yet IF that’s all that consumes one’s mind, then such individuals really haven’t understood or appreciated the deeper nature and purpose of training. The modern fight culture has greatly advanced the science of fighting, and has dispelled much of the BS in martial arts world, and we should be very happy about that, but the mere materialistic view of the training cannot be the only motive. We should not reduce the importance of training to just a series of material goals and gains and that’s it. This mindset would eventually lead to disillusionment and a false sense of dedication and loyalty. Martial arts is not just about developing the science of fighting, but also, about developing the nature of arts as well. Science and arts are like “two wings of a bird”. They balance each other and make the flight possible. Martial arts, devoid of the scientific parameters becomes a mere superstition, and that science without the development and the appreciation of the art becomes a mere landscape for materialism, justified by animal instinct, and backed by a type of social Darwinism. When the balance is off, they both become corrosive and destructive and lose their constructive natures.

Both the history of materialism as well as the spiritual influences of the world religions long before the first millennium BCE——at least from the appearance of Alexander the Great, from which history had begun to be a systematized field, until now, and the scholastic investigation of how different approaches to epistemology and methodology came about as a result of the collision of those two domains, and how they influenced every aspect of culture through which martial arts, as one of its component elements had emerged from, are all interesting and a necessary study for those who seriously train in martial arts, or somehow they are involved in the sports of various fight cultures. To build a better and more balanced training into the future, I believe we need to pick apart and get a clear and authoritative understanding of the past history. Consequently, in the light of this approach, we neither want to repeat the old mistakes in human history, nor accidentally forget some of the rare and timeless insights and wisdoms from the past.