Rely on no one, and have no one rely on you. If we are to move forward and make the Bujinkan what it is worthy of being, we need to live by this.
In response to my last blog where I talked about how you can’t expect dangerous stuff to be shown in the crowds around Hatsumi Masaaki, I got a question about what we can expect in the future and what we can do to make the Bujinkan better. I have opinions, like everyone else. These are only my opinions and advice.
First of all, don’t expect to save even a majority of people. We live in a world where people know more about the Khardasians than Shakespeare. Most people just plain suck.
What most people want is the chocolate cake diet. You can tell them that to lose weight that they have to cut out the rich foods and do some exercise. And when someone comes along telling them they can follow a special diet that allows them to eat all the chocolate cake they want, they will fill that person’s pockets with money instead. We have people learning Bujinkan through videos and then turning around and setting themselves up as teachers. Hatsumi has said time and time again that you can’t learn his art like that, and yet greedy folks trying to make a living off of the art sell belts through courses like this. You can’t say they are ripping off the students. I know there are video students right here in my city despite there being two Bujinkan groups they could train with. They just can’t handle the frustration of a real class with a real teacher. They want to eat all the chocolate cake they want and still lose weight so they won’t listen to reality.
You can’t save such people. Give up the idea. They will always be out there and you can’t use force to prevent them from doing what they do. They tend to be the majority in any type of thing on earth. All we can do is present facts and hope they accept the truth. We can only save people by informing, not by use of force. We have to tell the world about things like the fake ninja masters such as Frank Dux that will tell them complete BS. But if they ignore us, and many will, we have to let them make their own mistakes.
The flip side of this is that no one is going to save us. There are great sources of knowledge you can tap into and use to help what you do to get better. But they can’t make you better. There is an inner fire everyone needs to have to advance.
I noticed a lot of idiots that were in Japan when I lived there. Some of them were trying to build up student bases by going to Japan to be seen with Hatsumi, but not really to learn from him. They went to classes with the boss, but if you told them that a Japanese shihan could help them in an area they needed it in, they would not be interested. They wanted to have their picture taken next to the fountain of knowledge to show they had been there, but they weren’t interested in drinking deeply from it. That would take too much effort and might expose them as being less than all knowing.
On the other hand there were those that seemed to think that just by being in Japan they were getting better. They surrendered all the responsibility for their advancement to others. Sometimes they did what the teachers showed, but they seemed to think that was all they needed. They took comfort in the fact that every class they went to they went further down the path of mastery. But the mere fact that they put all their faith in the teacher undermined what they were doing.
We need to take advantage of the knowledge base that is there now. But we can’t think that anyone else can do the job for us.
But there are people trying to take over our training. Hatsumi himself will not place in controls. If you are a white belt you can go to his class. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. And there are those that will do so. For years, Stephen Hayes tried to convince the world that Hatsumi wasn’t accepting any new students. He is not the only one who tried to control students and not let them train with others. I don’t think it is wise for people who don’t know how to hit the ground safely to show up for class with the boss of the Bujinkan, but the attempts by some to keep people from training with him has led to the open door policy.
Anyone that tries to control others should be avoided. I advise people about the dangers of training with someone like Jeff Prather, who lost his job with the government because of problems with females and his use of “sexual healing.” But I can’t order anyone. You can’t save everyone and sometimes people may just need to train with someone to realize what bad really looks like.
The problem with any organization that can control its members, determine who they can train with, etc is that they always get taken over by egotistical jerks. The best people can set them up, but then they will be pushed aside by those wanting to use the organization to promote only themselves.
What we need is not organization, but confederation. We need a loose group of like- minded people that will help other good folks. The help can be direct, or it can be general. We need to look at our strengths and use it to help others.
In my case, aside from 15 years in Japan, I read fluent Japanese and know a lot about the history. There is a lot of bunk out there and I have devoted a lot of time to putting out good information while countering the crap that people like Christa Jacobson puts out. It isn’t just one or the other, putting out new information or busting frauds. I need to do both. We need to do both. We can’t stop people from accepting crap, but we can put out good stuff and let the world know that anything groundbreaking by people that can’t even read a Japanese newspaper isn’t worth reading. I will keep coming out with books on the history of ninjutsu and other subjects. It is what I can do best to help. We all need to ask how we can help in some way others can’t.
We need to help each other, not control. We have to speak up, but let others make their own choices. Hatsumi never wanted the Bujinkan to be this big. He can’t control it and doesn’t really bother to try. He lets people have access to the best information he can put out there, while leaving the rest up to us. He wants us to do well, but knows the limit of his power. If he had worked for decades to build up the Bujinkan slowly, maybe he could have done more to insure that he had a measure of control. But others promoted the art for their own benefit and attempt to control all training outside of Japan so the art exploded in the 80s. Now he is just trying to help in the limited way he can. Our only option is to do our best and support those we think are doing their best. Share information, check to see if what you think you know is true or not and never stop questioning what you do. It isn’t going to be easy, and the majority are going to go for their chocolate cake diet, but we can help those few students worthy of it.