What it means to be ronin

So, it is May again, the month in which I celebrate being kicked out of my old group, my old life, my old affiliations. At this point, I can say in all honesty I don't think about what happened all that much. Last year (anni no. 5) I did write about it bec. I felt that 5 was a significant number. But, you know things only have significance if you let them. Anyway, a post on FB about one of my budo friends who is a judoka set me to thinking. He wrote briefly about his great judo practice, wherein he both got "schooled" in some techniques, had an opportunity to work on some aspects of his practice that needed work, and also had an opportunity to help along a newbie. It sounded great.

The opposite of that, I can tell you, is what it means to be ronin. It means not having that cool, exhilarating experience of belonging. It means not clearly remembering how to do something, and having no one looking over your shoulder to either reassure you, or pointing out where you're screwing up. It means not knowing for sure if what you are passing along to your students is the right thing. Instead, you have to rely on memory; on what you think you might have observed at some point in the past six months, or last year, or six years ago.

It's not that I don't have friends or colleagues (scattered around the eastern US as they are) or that I don't have the occasional outstanding practice (I can actually say I had one last night). It's the ordinariness of belonging - that you have a place in the hierarchy, that you know what and where that is, and you enjoy being where you are. A perfectly ordinary experience, week after week, that you don't have.

That is the part I miss. I don't miss the politics, or the business of running a group. I don't miss the annoyances of who owes money, or who feels dissed, or what happened to whats-his-name. I miss being part of the group, the crowd. It's not being part of a hierarchy - after all, in my current place, I am the instructor, the person whereat the buck stops. I have met people who dearly want to be exactly in this position - the be-all and end-all, the person at the top. I guess I am, in my little group, at the top, but to be honest, it's not the most fun place. The fun place is being in the mix, in the middle, in the place where there's give and take. Where you can both teach and learn, week after week.

I know, in some ways, including some really difficult ways, I have earned this place. In six years of reflection, I know this is where I should be probably. But I really miss the feeling of belonging to something bigger than myself. I do have that in the abstract, of course - studying traditional koryu arts means you are just a brick in the wall, a piece on the centuries-old continuum of sincere practice. That's pretty cool, actually. But the missing part for the ronin is that being a part of that continuum is the sum of what you have. One of my teachers, before I ended up on my own, remarked that his teacher kicked his butt, and, in turn, he kicked my butt. That is how it is supposed to work. Well, while I get my butt kicked in the global sense, when I have the opportunity to be around people who know this stuff better than I do from time to time, I don't have that on a regular basis.

I go on, because this is what I do. Sometimes I think it would be easier to take up a more conventional hobby. My old teacher, who died ten years ago, once said I was compelled to practice budo because I did it in some previous life. Sometimes I think that is the only explanation that makes sense. And sometimes, I think it is the only reason I go on.