Themed talks

Takada-sensei always gives a short talk in the beginning of practise - actually two of them: after the reihô something more general but usually related to practise, and after we've done shoden and tôhô something about the techniques themselves. Often it's just the same stuff all over and over again: importance of hips, importance of tenouchi, cutting "lightly" and not with force... If only hearing would be learning, I would have absolutely no problems - I'm starting to know the talks by heart soon.

Lately he's changed the subject though. He's talking about me. *g*

Now this might be just my overactive imagination, if he wouldn't come to me after we've started the practise itself and go all over it once again - and relating it all to my failed shodan. Example: today he was talking first about how we must remember the basics, no matter how advanced we are - and how you can't become shinsa-in without knowing also how to do waza in the basic style. BUT, after ikkyû you MUST be able to do hanmi properly or else. Hanmi hanmi hanmi. Important.

In the second talk he went on and on about how we must practise diligently the basics so that
even when there's a bad day and things go wrong, we manage not to hurt ourselves. This is also a recurring theme, usually relating to why we should twist the cutting edge of the sword away from the body while drawing in techniques like gyakutô and ryûtô. If everything goes well it doesn't really matter, but if things go wrong you might accidentally cut away part of your scalp if the edge is pointing at your direction... And then he comes to me afterwards and told me that I was just having one of those bad days last saturday, and that I should practise my hanmi some more.

Incidentally the haiku handbook I'm reading at the moment in the vain hope of getting my poems more like they should be talked about exactly the same thing. The best practise is to write lots and lots of haiku - both good and bad, just to get the feeling to writing them. Even if there's only one word's difference between 2 haiku one should write them both down. No one gets it right 100% of times, but even if there's one good in every 15 haiku, if you write 150 poems you're bound to have more good ones than if you write just 20. So, I decided to accelerate my haiku speed to 2 per week instead of the 0-1 per week it's been lately. Another reason for this is that our haikukai (you see that it's already OUR haikukai, not THEIR haikukai *g*) is putting together a booklet of haiku, and they asked me to take part too. now, we all know that my haiku are far below the standard of the others, but I'm still trying to come up with as many as I can. I have to do half of the work than the others, meaning 10 poems instead of 20 and there's already 3 that might do, but of course the more I write the more there is to choose from.

Also, our jûshoku has the knack of talking about subjects that seem to be related to things I've been through and things I've been thinking lately. I'm always looking forward to his dharma talks after the zazen, as is everyone else. There's something special about that place, and I'm not the only one who feels it.

What else... The tsuyu, rainy season has kicked in properly by now, and trust me, there NOTHING poetic about it. It's not even properly hot, but the humidity makes the life hard. One of the most disgusting things is the tsuka of my iaito. It's been sticky before, but now it's just wet. I had made the mistake of keeping my iaito in the bag the whole week and not in the "open air" on my extra bed as I've often done, and ... Even the thought of how it feels now makes my skin crawl. And I have no idea if my keikogi and pants will dry for tomorrow's practise, but I certainly hope so. I also need to really concentrate on drinking enough, especially before practise. Even though we didn't practise that hard, I gulped down 1/2l water straight after the practise and 1/2l bottle AquariusZero (my new favorite drink) in Shinagawa when waiting for the train. And now I've soon finished still one more bottle of water. And I'm still not sure how I'm going to get through of a practise + shinsa next week with 2 layers of kimono during the afternoon practise (which is hotter than the evening practise our shinsa was held last time)... Well, maybe sensei will take pity on me if I black out of heat exhaustion during my shinsa? *g*