Four years ago I decided to realize, in part, a dream I had to have my own bamboo forest in my back yard. I wanted to train in it, cut it for practice and generally be in it. I love bamboo.
You see, Masaaki Hatsumi made this video years ago showing the techniques of the Shinden Fudo Ryu school of dakentaijutsu. He and his senior students are shown training in a bamboo forest “with nature” (which is emphasized in this school) using the elastic bamboo to practice throws, thick small groves to practice kicking techniques while walking, and other concepts involving the natural properties of this wonderful and fast-growing plant.
Wonderful and fast-growing plant…
I planted two plots of bamboo, one larger plot of the giant Japanese Vivax bamboo and a smaller 6 X 7 plot of the Robert Young bamboo, a beautiful golden bamboo with a single green stripe on each section. I installed a rhizome barrier as instructed by Bamboo Giant, the Aptos-based distributor of virtual all species of bamboo, which was a thick rubbery 3.5 foot sheet creating an impenetrable wall around the plot where the bamboo was to contain itself. The Bamboo Giant website advertised specifies of running bamboo as not being the threat legend makes it out to be. It simply needed to be contained and it would grow wonderfully tall and beautiful in it's assigned space.
Within the first couple of years I noticed a strange tendency for roots to grow up out of the ground and back down outside the barrier like some alien intelligence. I continued to monitor and cut back these escape attempts while enjoying my tiny grove that was flourishing with every spring season. With the end of the winter rains and coming of the new warm weather bamboo literally takes off with several new and increasingly larger shoots.
I’d also noticed the neighbor with whom I share a fence with was covertly cutting the branches which had begun to hang over to his side of the property. Being somewhat of an introvert I worried for him that my bamboo was causing him stress he didn’t want nor deserve.
Wonderful and fast-growing plant…
I knew I was in trouble three months ago when I found three separate runners that had found their way outside the barrier and were making a run for it through my lawn. I also learned from my neighbor through careful and friendly questioning that a sprout had shown up on his property as well.
There was a painful moment; an epiphany experienced while painfully staring at this evil alien invader that my bamboo must die.
The bamboo is gone. It is well cut down, the lumber stored for future projects, and there is a muddy hole where it once grew. It had infiltrated well past the barrier and under the cement down my walk-way where there was apparently sand instead of clay for you see, bamboo loves sand.
I am continuously flooding the hole for two weeks, as recommended by “sources” which should bring about the demise of any remaining root systems. I don’t know what the future holds. I am not happy with my bamboo adventure. I feel like I would have been safer releasing cockroaches into my kitchen.
The giant Vivax in the back seems to be growing more slowly, and new shoots from this year have reached to over 70 feet. I am watching carefully.
The Buddhist implications of this story are as painfully obvious to me as they should be to you…..
Rev. Greg Dilley, Shidoshi
It’s been awhile since I’ve written.
Fact is I’ve been involved with things I can’t write about. But a few I can, like the Chapter Leader’s meeting at the Santa Clara Valley Kaikan in San Jose.
We’re entering yet another stage in SGI of collecting statistics. This is both a good and bad thing in my opinion. On the dark side is the tendency of making numerical goals, playing the numbers game. This, in my opinion, is worthless and non-productive and belittles our Buddhist practice which centers on introducing others to the Gohonzon.
On the light side is the reality that we must keep track of those whom we do introduce.
We broke into discussion groups, something that I both dread and enjoy. I gave everyone a solid 30 seconds to say something before I started in. 30 seconds went by, as expected (the Japanese sat politely and quietly still. Good for them, Japanese are so cute and quiet; ya gotta love ‘em).
I was glad to have Richard Yoshimachi in our group. I trust Richard and look forward to whatever he has to share. He shared a lot. Besides discussing the importance of collecting statistics for the member’s sake, and sharing weird stories of the upper-crust leadership in Japan riding the trains for hours with shoe boxes of membership cards (containing every member in their area), he stressed the primary function of Chapter Chiefs;
“To always instill confidence in the Gohonzon”
What I fear is currently lacking in the Monterey Area, and I mean me as well, is the willingness to instill this confidence through personal experiences. In Monterey our leaders have developed the habit of lecturing from notes and out of the Living Buddhism (our monthly journal) rather than to share their personal experiences, dreams, and goals. Lecturing is safer.
So, beginning with our Chapter Discussion meeting on the 25th, it’s my goal to change this.
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi
This last weekend I attended the super-secret Ninja training camp held at the old Nike missile base in San Francisco.
Friday evening’s session is taught exclusively by Jack and while most years’s training offers new perspectives on our art of Budo Taijutsu, this year was an even bigger bang for the buck. Jack has been focusing on Kukan or space in his evolving personal perspective on this art. This weekend we trained in concepts and variations that truly surprised me.
The funny thing is, when you’ve been doing something for a long time you don’t expect to run into a new slant that literally leaves you thinking “duh, why couldn’t I have figured that out?”, which is exactly what happened. We worked with some very basic techniques, the basic techniques of the Bujinkan School which we call the Kihon Happo or, basic eight techniques.
While I was happily being surprised and wowed by Jack’s latest tricks I could overhear other Shidoshi teaching lower ranking students. What I couldn’t figure out was, why were they teaching? I am confident that what Jack had to offer was hot off the press, concepts from, or inspired by what Soke Hatsumi is teaching in Japan based on this years theme, Roppo Kuji no Biken, and I know these particular Shidoshi are not personal students of Jack, who lives, works, and trains in New Jersey. So why were they so much more informed that they could actually teach and explain what Jack had taught only minutes before?
This is, of course, human nature. In our struggles to be who we wish to be, or even more importantly, to appear how we wish to appear, we work harder at knowing it all than we do at learning something new.
Epiphanies are important to me, like a small child who repeatedly spins themselves around to enjoy the sensation of dizziness; I enjoy having my perspective refreshed, even sometimes rebooted. Unfortunately in order to be open to that experience one must first admit to oneself that one does not already know everything. This is, I am sure, how Jack Hoban thinks and trains. Leaders in SGI whom I have trusted throughout the years seem to have this quality as well. Others are busy just already knowing it.
Everyone must find their own path in the end. Often it is our nature to stand still on our path of individual self-discovery, especially when we are feeling uncomfortable with who we feel we are. This can be a dangerous thing to do though, especially with something so fraught with peril as religion.
With martial arts, especially with a living school such as the Bujinkan who’s Grandmaster is still alive and evolving, the risk of knowing it all is that we become ossified and stuck in our own time and place. We can see this in each other; I know I can see it in people I train with every year at Buyu. There are those who, while capable and talented, are stuck in the taijutsu of the 1990’s or even 1980's.
More fearsome are religious leaders who become stuck in time, clinging to past conflicts that have outlived their usefulness. Even worse are those cult survivors whom, having been unable to manage their relationship with the organizations with whom they once practiced, become militant in a sad effort to shift the blame for their misfortune to the org. They all become, I believe, enemies of the Buddhist law, deceptive and held in place by their own misperception, regardless of whether they know it all or not.
Of course having said this I acknowledge that I may just be one of the few that truly doesn’t know it. Maybe I’m like the stoner high on pot watching Monty Python’s Holy Grail for the 43rd time laughing so hard his sides hurt. Should that be true, it’s ok. Life is not a contest or a comparative game. Unless you can convince others to give you their money there is no pay-off for being a know-it-all, and in the end it’s not much fun.
Rev. Greg