I began drawing my scattered mind into a single area of awareness: the breath, a sensation, one quiet anchor. Each time my attention drifted, I gently returned to it, to that point of yielding and relaxing. I came to see this not as a destination but as a gathering point a doorway. As the mind grows steady, it begins to soften and open into a greater awareness, dissolving into spaciousness. The effort of attention gives way to a clear, open mind, one that lets us perceive the stirrings of our own heart and the subtle sensations of the world we live in.

Owner and Head Teacher

Boston Martial Arts Center

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

www.bostonmartialartscenter.com

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

Maintaining preparedness both spirit and technique no matter what happens.

Mark Davis

Owner and Head Teacher

Boston Martial Arts Center

Over my lifetime of training in martial arts, I’ve taken time to explore other systems to talk with their teachers, understand what they teach, and learn their core philosophies about training. Even within my own system of Ninjutsu, there is much that remains unexplored and not yet fully understood.

I approach each day as a fresh start. This morning, I noticed mourning doves in the trees that weren’t there yesterday. I saw rabbit tracks in the snow that hadn’t been there the day before. Driving in, I heard new things on the radio about the previous day’s events. There is so much I still don’t know.

Even though I’ve been practicing martial arts since 1969, there are things I’ve never seen. I find great wonder in exploring those areas. I never think of myself as all-knowing or all-seeing  I’m just a regular person who loves martial arts and never tires of exploring its ways and methods. There are techniques I’ve practiced tens of thousands of times, and yet each time feels different. Each time, there is a new awakening.

When I go to explore other martial arts, I wear a white belt  because that is my attitude. I am always a beginner. Recently, I had the chance to try a new style. I stood in horse stance with my legs shaking alongside the other students, and listened as the teacher explained his method of breathing and movement. At the end of class, it was so liberating. So freeing.

Sometimes it’s simply important to say: “I don’t know. it’s very liberating.”

There are a great many things in this universe still left unexplored even the things we think we’ve seen before.

Mark Davis

Head Teacher and Owner

Boston Martial Arts Center (Dojo)

New England Ninpo Society (Seminar, workshop, Personal Lessons)

Shin (心, heart/mind) means genuine or authentic pointing to that which is without pretense, uncontaminated by illusion or self-deception.

Ken (剣, sword/blade) in martial traditions represents the soul of the warrior: the instrument of life and death, the tool that demands absolute presence.

Together, Shinken (真剣) means real sword, distinguished from training implements such as the wooden sword or bamboo sword. When you hold a real sword, everything changes. A single moment of inattention can mean fatal injury. There is no reset button, no second attempt.

By extension, Shinken means deadly serious a total commitment to approach. To engage something Shinken is to approach it as though your life depends on it.

Total Presence

A warrior facing an opponent with a live blade cannot afford distraction. A mind that wanders, even for an instant, may not survive to wander again. This total presence is what the Japanese call Zanshin continuing awareness and it must characterize all of our practice.

When we step onto the mat, we leave behind the concerns of daily life. When we face our training partner, we see only them not our plans for later, not our worries from before, not our internal commentary about how we are performing. There is only this moment, this technique, this breath. The real sword demands nothing less.

Commitment and Accountability

The real sword teaches us that actions have consequences. In combat with live blades, a mistake cannot be taken back. This understanding infuses our practice with gravity and weight. We must move decisively, commit fully, and accept responsibility for our choices.

This principle extends far beyond the physical. Shinken means taking responsibility for our development in our relationships, in our impact, and in our lives. We cannot blame circumstances or other people. We cannot pretend our choices do not matter. The real sword makes us accountable.

Awakening Through Training

When we train with the spirit of Shinken, we come out from behind our excuses, rationalizations, and comfortable illusions. We must face ourselves as we are with our weaknesses, fears, and limitations fully exposed. Only from that place can we honestly and radically transform.

When we live and train this way, the mind begins to sharpen and awaken, which can open the door to profound transformation what might be called a great awakening.

The Warrior’s Diligence

Shinken diligence means there is no vacation from readiness, no day off from development. It means training whether or not we feel like it, pursuing mastery even when progress is invisible, and showing up fully even when no one is watching. The real sword cares nothing for our mood or our preferences.

Shinken Wisdom

Wisdom in the spirit of Shinken is immediate and practical. It cuts through deception including self-delusion and perceives what is actually happening, not what we wish were happening or fear might be happening. Shinken wisdom cuts away illusion and reveals reality. This is the wisdom of illumination.

The Modern Application

Most of us will never face a real sword. Yet the spirit of Shinken remains essential. Modern life offers countless ways to avoid authenticity entertainment, distraction, comfortable routines, socially accepted half-truths. We can pass an entire lifetime without ever truly showing up.

The martial path offers an antidote. On the training floor, pretense fails. Techniques either work or they don’t. Partners provide immediate feedback. The body cannot lie the way the mind can. Through consistent practice in the spirit of Shinken, we develop a capacity for authenticity that extends into every area of our lives.

What Shinken Means

Shinken is not grim intensity it is genuine presence and total commitment. It is not perfectionism, but authentic engagement. Not aggression, but the clarity that cuts through confusion and pretense.

The gift of Shinken training is the capacity to meet life directly to engage reality without a buffer, to bring our whole selves to whatever we do. In that meeting, in that engagement, in that wholeness, illumination awaits.

Owner and Head Teacher

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center (Dojo in Boston)

New England Ninpo Society (personal training and seminar group)

In the process of training in this new method, I found myself overreacting, thereby putting myself in greater danger. The unusual way of moving made me uncomfortable to the point where I felt I needed to improvise to make the technique work  adding more steps, putting far more energy into it than necessary. I realized that I had developed a lot of bad habits in the context of training with this new idea.

But the teacher said that we carry habits that may not be serving us.

A civil rights leader once said, “No one else is coming to fix your condition. The responsibility falls on you the moment you see the problem.”   Malcolm X

An-Shu Stephen K. Hayes once said that these methods are habit breakers. When training in weapon defense, there may be a habit that is not serving you something you can’t quite see, but you sense something is wrong.

When training, don’t only pay attention to the step-by-step method or how you feel comfortable doing things. Pay attention to the habits that get you tied up and limit your ability. Admit that you have a bad habit, and take the responsibility to change it. This will help you become a deeper skilled martial artist and a fuller person.

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

www.bostonmatartscenter.cmm

Ego, Fear, and Seeing Only What We Want to See

A Teaching Narrative

捨身  Sutemi   

I was trying to learn a martial arts method and apply it, but I could not understand what I was doing wrong. The teacher said something to me that cut deep into my ego. But my fear of being wrong only let me see what I wanted to see.

It was not until years later that I realized that was the best lesson I could have learned at the time.

Now I do my best to yield and listen before repeating that mistake before letting ego, fear, or attachment blind me to what is real, and letting a falsehood take root in my actions instead. The teacher’s sincerity and candor were unavoidable.

What Was Not Sacrificed

The Japanese word for what was needed in that moment and what I could not do is sutemi. 捨身. It means to throw away the body. To sacrifice.

In the training hall, sutemi-waza are techniques where you abandon your balance to complete a throw. You go to ground. You give up structural safety in order to achieve something that stable posture cannot. The sacrifice is the source of the power.

But 身 mi does not mean only the physical body. In classical Japanese, it means the self. Your person. Your position, your image, your identity. To suteru the mi is to throw away what you think you are.

That is what the teacher asked of me without saying so. Not to abandon technique or change my stance. To abandon the part of myself that could not tolerate being corrected.

I could not do it. Not then.

What the Ego Builds

Here is what happened, though I could not have described it at the time. The teacher’s correction arrived clear, direct, without softening. And something in me flinched. Not physically. Something behind the eyes. Something that said: if this correction is right, then I have been wrong, and if I have been wrong, then I am not who I think I am.

That flinch is the beginning of a cascade. The mind, threatened, contracts. The field of attention narrows. And in that narrowed field, only certain information gets through the information that confirms what I already believe about myself. The rest is filtered. Not consciously. Not deliberately. The ego does not announce its operations. It simply edits the incoming signal until the signal says what the ego needs it to say.

So I heard the correction. I heard the words. But what I received was a version of the correction that my self-image could accommodate. A version that did not require me to change in the way the teacher was actually asking me to change. The teacher’s sincerity was unavoidable. But my reception of it was filtered, partial, and ultimately false.

A falsehood took root in my practice. I trained it. I reinforced it. And because repetition makes everything feel right, the error became invisible to me.

What Sat Dormant

Years passed. I kept training. And at some point I cannot tell you the exact moment, because it was not a single moment but a gradual clearing I returned to the memory of that correction and saw it for the first time without the filter.

The teacher had been right. Not partially right, not right in a way I could fold into my existing understanding. Right in a way that required me to let go of what I thought I knew.

That recognition was the real sutemi. Not a physical sacrifice. A sacrifice of the version of myself that needed to have been right all along. A sacrifice of the years of practice built on a false foundation. A willingness to let the falsehood die.

I think about this a great deal: the lesson did not fail when it was delivered. It was delivered completely. It sat dormant like a seed in soil that was not yet ready. The teacher did his part. The kuden was spoken. What was not yet available was my capacity to receive it.

In the classical transmission model, there are three channels: kuden (the spoken word), taiden(body to body), shinden (spirit to spirit). Each one requires something from the student. Kudenrequires not just hearing but yielding to what is heard. When the ego is in the way, the words arrive but the transmission does not complete.

What Yielding Actually Means

I use the word yield deliberately. The Japanese concept is yawara 柔 softness, pliancy, the capacity to absorb force without breaking. It is the foundational principle of jūjutsu. And it applies to the mind as directly as it applies to the body.

A rigid structure shatters under force. A rigid ego shatters under correction or, more dangerously, it does not shatter but instead distorts, bending reality to fit itself rather than bending itself to fit reality.

To yield is not to submit. It is not to become passive. It is to maintain structural integrity while allowing the force or the information to move through you without causing damage. The tree that bends in the wind survives. The tree that refuses to bend breaks. But the tree that bends does not stop being a tree.

This is what I try to practice now: yielding and listening before my ego begins its editing work. Hearing the correction as it was given, not as I would prefer it to have been given. Allowing the discomfort of being wrong to exist without collapsing into it or defending against it.

The formulation I have come to teach is: not identifying with arising thoughts, feelings, and views is the practice of emptiness. When the teacher corrects me, things arise. A thought: I already understand this. A feeling: shame, defensiveness, fear. A view: the teacher doesn’t see what I see. These arisings are not the problem. They are natural. The problem is when I collapse into them when I identify with them as though they are me, as though they are reality, and let them govern my response.

Sutemi is the practice of not collapsing. Of letting the arising happen and then letting it go, so that what is actually in front of me the teacher’s correction, the reality of the situation l can reach me undistorted.

What the Teacher Sacrificed

I have come to understand that the teacher practiced his own form of sutemi in that moment.

It would have been easier more comfortable for both of us if he had softened the correction. If he had framed it gently, or offered it as a suggestion rather than a direct statement. That would have protected my feelings. It would have preserved the relational comfort between teacher and student.

But it would have sacrificed the teaching.

Instead, he sacrificed comfort. His sincerity and candor were unavoidable not because he was harsh, but because he refused to let politeness dilute the truth of what he saw. He threw away the easy path and delivered the correction that needed to be delivered, in the way it needed to be delivered, knowing that the student might not be ready to receive it.

That is the teacher’s sutemi: the willingness to sacrifice relational comfort in service of genuine transmission. The teacher who softens every correction to protect the student’s ego does the student no service. The teacher who delivers correction with sincerity even knowing it may not land for years trusts the process. Trusts the seed.

What This Means in the Field

I teach professional audiences law enforcement, executive protection, emergency medical services, security professionals. These are people who make decisions under stress, who receive supervision and correction in contexts where the stakes are real, and who carry professional identities that are as susceptible to ego-protective distortion as any martial artist’s.

When I stand before three hundred officers and tell this story, I watch the recognition cross their faces. Every one of them has been the student in this story. Every one of them has received a correction from a supervisor, a trainer, a partner, and had their ego filter it into something they could tolerate. Every one of them has practiced the distorted version until it felt right.

The cost in the training hall is slow progress and accumulated error. The cost in the field can be measured in outcomes no one wants.

The officer who cannot yield to correction on use-of-force protocols carries that error into the next encounter. The protector who filters threat information through ego misses what is actually there. The paramedic who anchors to an initial diagnosis when the patient’s presentation changes endangers the patient. In every case, the mechanism is the same: the ego’s need to be right overrides the system’s need to perceive accurately.

Sutemi is the counter-discipline. It is what allows the professional to update, to adapt, to receive new information without the ego’s editorial process stripping it of content. It is Banpen Fugyō ten thousand changes, no surprise applied not to the external environment but to the internal one. If I am prepared for the possibility that I am wrong, then being corrected is not a crisis. It is intelligence. It is the environment telling me something I need to know.

What Remains

I still feel it. When someone offers correction even now, even after decades of training something in me stiffens for an instant. The ego does not surrender permanently. It does not retire. It arises, every time, because that is what it does.

But I have gotten faster at catching it. Faster at recognizing the flinch for what it is an arising, not a reality. Faster at yielding before the cascade begins. Not always fast enough. But faster than I was when a teacher’s sincere correction sat on the surface of my understanding for years before I let it in.

Sutemi is not a single act of sacrifice. It is an ongoing practice a continual willingness to let what is false die so that what is real can be perceived. In the training hall, this accelerates learning. In the field, this preserves life. In the space between teacher and student, this is the mechanism through which transmission becomes possible.

The teacher’s sincerity and candor were unavoidable. What was not yet available was my willingness to sacrifice what I though I knew.

That willingness is sutemi. That willingness is the practice.

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

Mark Davis

From Private workshop recently held

Boston Martial Arts Center

Why the path of training asks more of us than understanding

 I remember training with Hatsumi Sensei. He was demonstrating techniques that were confusing to many of us not because they were poorly shown, but because we weren't ready. He paused, stood up, and said: "This is for future training."

That single phrase has stayed with me for decades. It captures something essential about the path of training and learning: you cannot force understanding. It arrives on its own schedule.

Sometimes the material you encounter in the dōjō is not meant for you right now. That is not a problem to solve. It is the nature of deep study. You continue to train either on something more fundamental, or on the very material that eludes you and you watch how it unfolds over time.

A teacher cannot fully explain a technique. No words are sufficient for that. What a good teacher can do is offer a basic framework a way to begin and then create the conditions in which understanding can emerge naturally. The really good teachers know that their job is not to pour knowledge into a student. It is to cultivate a space where discovery becomes possible.

Taijutsu is an ancient system vast and deep. Understanding its wordless ideas, the things that live beyond language, is something that comes only through sustained experience. You will gain glimmers of clarity. Not sudden mastery, but quiet recognitions that accumulate across years of practice.

I have learned that just because I have the notes does not mean I understand the material. I have notes from the 1980s over forty years ago and they remain starting points. The real understanding lives somewhere beyond the page. It lives in the body, in the training, in the life you build around what you practice.

So take on the challenge. Go beyond your notes. Get the training into your life.

Train well.

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

Think of life as being full of energy active, alive, and waiting for events to come together like the beginning of a thunderstorm, when the ground, clouds, air, and winds are all playing a role in making the storm. The lightning has not happened yet, but because all the conditions are present, there is a high potential of it happening.

Our method is responsive adaptation. Our technique arises from the interaction with the environment itself codependent variables shaping one another in real time.

Our reaction is not passive. It is a heightened readiness within our environment, both external and internal maintaining preparedness of body, mind, and spirit, no matter which direction an attack may come.

This produces a responsiveness to conditions as they unfold, flowing onward with no bounds a formation that echoes the direction of infinity, the very meaning of happō itself.

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

After many years in Ninpo Taijutsu, I have learned this: the kata is not the art. It is only the shape the moon’s reflection makes upon water.

To mistake the form for the principles beneath it to confuse the vessel for what it holds this is like drinking the name of wine and believing you taste its depths.

The kata arrives last, when everything else has already been forgotten. It is the echo of something that was never spoken. A gate that stands after the garden has disappeared into the mist.

Do not confuse the fingerprint with the hand that made it.

Boston Martial Arts Center

Learning from the source of our tradition. Through this study, I have experienced breakthroughs drawn from an age-old body of knowledge. I am not locked into one way of doing things. I have learned from the past and built upon it, shaping the future of what I am doing now. At times, it can look entirely different, yet it shares the same source our tradition.

I have been training in a martial method for years, and I can apply it without even thinking about it. I can adapt to many situations, but I found myself increasingly drawn to this changing and adapting that draws on the sources of past traditions. From this exploration, an entirely new way of solving problems is born, developing its own identity. When a problem arises, there is a sense of freedom the freedom to change and find a new way to solve it.

The solution doesn’t just happen because I am trying to be different. Each situation demands a slightly different or completely different approach in order to be successful. What I have observed is a deepening sense of how to solve problems. These past traditions were not just a path  they were the path that the ancestors of these traditions were cultivating through problem-solving and critical thinking. They expanded how they solved problems, and today we learn from their footsteps. We continue to grow and deepen our understanding of how we interact with and fit into the world using these ancient martial art traditions.

I am not creating a new martial art. I am learning a deeper way of understanding how to solve problems through studying and living the principles and methods of traditional martial arts. At the same time, I understand the needs of our modern times. By positioning the principles of our traditional martial art within a contemporary context, we can begin to see fresh approaches come alive.

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

Strategic Thinking in Takagi Yoshin Ryu

By Mark Davis, Boston Martial Arts Center

Introduction

Most martial artists today, unless they are professionals, do not think strategically. They think, "How can I blow this guy up? How can I land that lead jab?" But real martial arts require something deeper: a goal in mind, a tactical approach, and the ability to …

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The practitioner wore a traditional martial arts uniform while facing the wall. I paused for a moment, thinking, This is an amazingly diligent individual.

I went to class and trained. Afterward, on my way out and rushing to catch the train, I passed the same room. The practitioner was still there, but now without the traditional uniform just a sweatshirt and shorts still doing the same movement over and over again.

On the train, I found myself thinking about how many repetitions this person must have practiced that evening. Then I realized: the number didn’t matter. It’s the practice itself that’s most important.

A few days later, I went to another training center for a class. I arrived early, and on my way to the classroom, I saw a lone senior Kyudo master. By his appearance, he looked to be in his nineties. He was setting up for practice.

He saw me looking in the room as I walked by. He smiled and waved, so I smiled and waved back. He moved toward the door and I stopped. We had a brief conversation.

He explained that he was there to practice, that he had been practicing his entire life since he was seven years old, and that he was still trying to master the fundamentals. He spoke about his teacher and how he was trying to replicate his teacher’s method. But he felt he hadn’t practiced enough his elbow sometimes rose into the wrong position, his back wasn’t correct, his knees were out of place. After so many years, he was still working to perfect his form.

Then one of his students arrived. We smiled and bowed, and he said I could stay and watch if I’d like. I watched for a bit, then politely excused myself to go to class.

I think it’s important to find time in your day to practice one small piece of your martial art repeatedly but practiced mindfully, not through blind repetition. Pick three points you would like to work on in your technique and keep those in mind while practicing: bending your knees, breathing, keeping your head up, shoulders back. It could be any number of things. Pay attention to how your mind drifts away from these points. Too many points and you’ll get confused. Pick only three that you know will make your technique better.

The number of repetitions doesn’t matter. When I do this type of training, I go until I’m exhausted and all that is remaining are the points I’m trying to practice. But I keep three points in mind. Today it was my gaze, my breathing, and keeping my knees bent. When I started reaching the point of exhaustion, I kept these points in mind. It feels liberating.

Don’t overtrain. Train with spirit in mind and enjoy yourself. Martial arts can be a liberating experience when practiced in a joyful way.

Head Teacher and Owner

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

One of the problems we face when training for self-defense is that numerous situations and problems can occur. How do we prepare for these?

One thing I keep in mind is living in the moment. The past is the past. What happens in the future can be based on our personal goals and the actions we take right now. Other things remain unpredictable. So taking action in the moment allows us to stay in control.

When practicing self-defense, I keep a sort of mantra in mind: I just need to get away from the situation and get safe. Have you ever heard a very simple one? “I just want to go home” wherever that may be. That can become the goal in the moment as actions and energies start to unfold around you. Keep that goal in mind, and it can help direct your actions and energies to facilitate your escape.

This type of mindset can go a long way with many things in your life. It’s helped me out on numerous occasions. One key point I keep in mind whether times are rough or peaceful and great is to always keep flowing towards my goals. By doing this, I can see more clearly how things are unfolding in the moment. I share this with my students in class.

Mark Davis

Owner and Head Teacher

Boston Martial Arts Center

The feudal warriors of Japan lived with survival as a constant companion. What they learned was that they needed truths they could stake their lives on. What they discovered was that clarity about what they needed to achieve doesn't come despite difficulty it comes through it.

Meaning

Shiken Haramitsu Daikōmyō can be understood as:

“In every experience, there is the potential for divine illumination.”

Or more literally:

“Divine resonance, transcendent perfection, great radiant light.”

The phrase declares that each moment of training each technique, each fall, each struggle, each victory carries within it the seed of enlightenment. The divine resonates through all things; through proper practice, we can cross to the far shore of understanding and be illuminated by the great light of wisdom.

Significance in Training

Setting Sacred Intent

When we recite Shiken Haramitsu Daikōmyō at the beginning of training, we consciously shift from the mundane world into sacred space. This transition is not merely psychological but represents a genuine change in how we approach our practice. We declare that what follows is not mere exercise but a path toward something greater.

Embracing Difficulty

The phrase reminds us that enlightenment comes not despite our struggles but through them. When training becomes difficult when we are thrown hard, when techniques fail, when our bodies ache we remember that these very experiences contain the divine resonance. There is no wasted moment in sincere practice.

Connecting Generations

By speaking the same words that have echoed through dōjō for generations, we connect ourselves to a living lineage. We stand in the footsteps of those who came before and prepare the way for those who will follow. The phrase becomes a thread binding past, present, and future practitioners together.

Gratitude and Humility

Closing training with the same invocation expresses gratitude for the teaching received and humility before the vastness of what remains to be learned. We acknowledge that each session has offered opportunities for growth, whether or not we were wise enough to recognize them all.

Mark Davis

Happy New Year

I remember heading into training one day with my back and shoulder sore. From playing sports in college and high school, I had sustained injuries that, even though they happened many years ago, still seemed to flare up every once in a while.

I had taken a short flight from Boston to Dayton, Ohio, to train with my teacher and mentor, Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes, in the art of Ninjutsu at his dojo a place regarded as a safe haven for training both physically and spiritually.

My training partner and I were moving around the dojo, working on a particularly difficult throw. As I moved with him, I could feel my back and shoulder starting to shoot with pain. I did not say anything, but he stopped immediately, looked at me, and asked, “Hey, are you okay?”

I told him about my injury. Looking back on it now, I realize he seemed to sense that something was wrong in my movement. He could feel some sort of tension or disruption. We agreed to take it easy that day to help aid in my recovery.

I realized afterward that if you are sensitive enough during an interaction with your training partner, you can sense things about them that you wouldn’t ordinarily perceive. This in-yo, or yin-yang, of moving with your training partner creates a dynamic where you become one side of a whole.

Over the years, I have come to understand that martial arts can help us find empathy for others if we can put aside the ideas that block this feeling. For example, always desiring to win as opposed to explore, or personal insecurities that rear up at the wrong time. The list is endless.

These days when I train with a partner, I seek to become connected, sensing changes in their movement, feelings, and spirit.

Within the context of self-defense, this can be extremely valuable, as you can sense changes in your environment and respond appropriately. But the training is difficult because we have to put certain things in perspective. First, we need to find unity between mind and body through personal awareness of ourselves and how we act and react to our environment. Then we must take time to see others as we see ourselves, realizing that we all have challenges, even though they may differ.

This realization that we all face challenges—and having empathy toward others can help us work toward more peace and stability in our lives. We realize that we are not alone on the path.

Here is an interesting exercise we did at one of our past workshops at the Boston Martial Arts Center: Have your training partner select a subject that is not too personal and begin talking about it. As the listener, try to give your full attention. Do not judge what they are saying, interrupt them, or bring your own thoughts into the conversation. Simply listen. Do nothing else just listen fully.

It is almost as if you do not want to infect your way of thinking into what they are saying. We often find ourselves only half listening. Instead, listen fully, without judgment.

Take time to fully listen to what somebody has to say today.

Founder and Head Teacher

Mark Davis

Boston Martial Arts Center

New England Ninpo Society

A Lecture

Mark Davis Owner and Head Teacher

Boston Martial Arts Center

Introduction

Respect makes you better at martial arts and life. We hear about respect constantly in martial arts contexts—in the bowing rituals, in the relationship between teacher and student, in the etiquette of the training hall. But what is respect, actually? Is it merely politeness, a social lubricant that keeps the dojo running smoothly? Or does it point toward something more fundamental about human encounter and self-understanding?

Learning martial arts takes time and hard work, yet with constant effort, we make breakthroughs. These breakthroughs are rarely just technical—the perfection of a throw, the timing of a strike. More often, they are breakthroughs in understanding: of ourselves, of others, of the mysterious dynamics that unfold when two people meet in honest physical encounter.

In over forty years of training in the Bujinkan tradition under Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi, I have come to understand that respect is not something we perform. It is something we discover—often in the most unexpected moments.

A Lesson from the Mat

In the 1970s, I competed in a judo match where some unkind words were exchanged beforehand—I wasn't proud of myself. There was tension, ego, the competitive fire that young martial artists often mistake for strength. The match itself was hard-fought, and I lost by half a point.

Yet something unexpected emerged from that encounter. After the match, we emerged with greater respect for each other. We remain friends to this day, decades later.

What happened? We've both wondered over the years. The transformation from antagonism to friendship through physical contest suggests that something in the nature of honest struggle itself generates respect—not despite the conflict, but through it.

The Nature of Honest Encounter

Some things are certain. An intensely honest interaction with another person can move us toward a greater truth. The intensity of action prompts a state of mind free of doubt. Over the years, martial arts has taught me that self-assurance can arise from mutual integrity in conflict.

In classical Japanese martial arts philosophy, we speak of banpen fugyo—ten thousand changes, no surprise. This principle suggests that when we are truly present, truly engaged with reality as it unfolds, nothing can catch us off guard. We respond naturally because we are not defending a false image of ourselves.

The judo match stripped away pretense. In those minutes of intense physical engagement, there was no room for posturing or self-deception. We met each other as we actually were—and in that meeting, something like recognition occurred.

The Integration of Spirit, Center, and Posture

Traditional martial arts training emphasizes the unity of shin (spirit/mind), hara (center/belly), and kamae (posture/structure). These are not separate elements to be trained independently; they arise together or not at all.

When the spirit is scattered by doubt or ego, the center becomes unstable, and the posture collapses under pressure. But when the spirit is settled—when we are not defending an image but simply present—the center naturally stabilizes, and our structure becomes responsive rather than rigid.

This is why honest encounter can be so transformative. In the presence of a worthy opponent, our pretenses become liabilities. The body cannot sustain deceptions that the mind insists upon. We are forced into authenticity—and in that authenticity, we sometimes find respect.

The Mystery of Depth

The Japanese aesthetic concept of yugen points toward a beauty that cannot be fully articulated—a profound depth that emerges in certain experiences. Great martial encounters sometimes touch this quality. Something happens that transcends the technical, the tactical, the competitive. Two people meet in a way that changes both of them.

My judo opponent and I experienced something like this. We cannot fully explain why that particular match, preceded by hostility, produced lasting friendship. But we both recognize that something real occurred—something that our words can only gesture toward.

Beyond the Competitive Arena

We don't need a sporting match to have this kind of intensely honest interaction. Introspection and mindfulness—cultivated through meditation and martial arts training—can help clear away personal doubts and illusions. The internal confrontation with oneself in solo practice mirrors the external confrontation with an opponent.

In daily life, being unsure of oneself can lead to acting negatively toward others. Being mean or hurtful moves us farther from making the world a peaceful place. The martial artist's discipline becomes a form of ethical training—not through rules imposed from outside, but through the self-knowledge that emerges from rigorous practice.

It is important to be mindful of our actions in the world and within ourselves. The respect we discover through martial training—respect for ourselves, for others, for the difficulty of genuine encounter—can inform how we move through every aspect of our lives.

Conclusion

Respect, in the end, is not a technique or a posture. It is what arises when two people meet honestly, without pretense, in a moment of genuine engagement. Martial arts provides a unique laboratory for this kind of meeting—a place where the body's truth cannot be hidden, where honest struggle reveals what words often obscure.

When we train sincerely, when we meet our partners and opponents with full presence, we create the conditions for this kind of discovery. The respect that emerges is not performed but recognized—a mutual acknowledgment of the depth and difficulty of being human.

This is what martial arts can offer beyond technique: a path toward the kind of self-assurance that does not diminish others, but recognizes in them the same struggle, the same aspiration, the same humanity that we carry within ourselves.

© 2025 Mark Davis. All Rights Reserved.

Boston Martial Arts Center

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