I apologize if there is anything like this already existing in the forum but I have not seen anything of the sort.
I've been introspecting more than usual lately and came to the realization that I don't really know why I strive to better my fighting as much as I do. I know I take great enjoyment from it but I still don't know the answer to that. I figure that it doesn't really matter right now and the answer will come in due time and at the right moment.
This thought provoked a deep curiosity in me, though. Why do you all practice martial arts? Why did you start and why do you continue it? I'm interested in your story, as I'm sure many others are.
Good to see this thread, although it is from 2012.
Why do I practice martial arts? Good question. The reasons have changed over time. Initially it was to lose weight, gain some kind of physical conditioning or strength, and to learn some self-defense.
Now, I train to train. I don't have a reason anymore. I am simply on the path. No idea where it leads, and no concern about not knowing.
When I started training, I was all about learning technique and trying to apply it properly. I liked to do it, I liked to talk about it. I recorded my kata and played it back to try to see where I could improve, I shared it with others and asked for criticism.
I went to tournaments and seminars. Not a lot, and I wasn't a kid when I started training, so it was only as I had time, money, and desire to go.
Over time, I began to worry less about seeing everything and experiencing everything. I don't know why. No deep significant reason, it just happened.
I also joined a lot of discussions on MT and on Facebook, tried to interact with other martial artists. I thought it was important to share techniques and explain them and have them explained to me. To demonstrate, to learn from others...
I thought of this art as 'good' and that art as 'bad' and this one as 'legitimate' and that one as 'phony' and I laughed about bad training and bad teachers and bad technique and generally felt good about myself because I was getting good training from good instructors in a real style...
Over time, I grew dissatisfied with that as well. I met a few 'first generation' students and watched how others interacted with them and tried to curry favor from them, played political games, traded on their presumed closeness to great martial artists, invested their egos into everything they did with regard to martial arts. And I realized that although I wasn't in a position to do those kinds of things, I wasn't immune to the call of ego either. I stopped pretty dead in my tracks. I quit all the FB discussion groups, and I stopped posting on MT twice; both times after allowing myself to be sucked into arguments where my ego drove me to prove the correctness of my point of view.
Now all I want to do is train. I do not know why I train, I just train. I don't know why techniques work or don't work, I don't know if your way or my way or any way is a better way, I only know that I need to train. I practice kata (not enough) because I have a strong feeling that it is the key to doors I have not yet even approached yet. I spend more time trying to tamp down my own ego, and failing with regularity, than nearly anything else.
I feel that my martial arts training is also a key to how I should live my life. I feel it builds character, strong, morally correct character. I feel it burns out the badness in my own being if I let it, it purifies as it burns.
I practice martial arts because I do not transcend, but I sense that true martial arts does transcend, and I like that. And by 'true' martial arts, I mean no specific style, technique, or master; I mean a true relationship with the heart or core of what the training is (undefinable). I hesitate to use words like 'budo' or 'warrior' because it is both more than that and at the same time, nothing like that. It is a calm mind and astonishing energy at the same time. Motion and no motion, mind and no mind. Yeah, it starts to descend into mushy poetry and symbolism, I can't seem to help that.
I have stopped trying to become anything. By training, I simply am, but I become without trying to become, and there is no final form of becoming until death brings training to a halt. And this is not to say that any of this grants me any advantage as a martial artist. My kata; still sloppy and ugly. My sparring still stiff and uncoordinated. Time and change produces flowers, but some flowers are prettier than others, it seems. Still, when one is on the path to becoming a flower, that is what one does, no matter what the final result may be.
It is, at last, a 'do' for me. Again, I hesitate to use the word, primarily because I have difficulty enduring never-ending arguments about what the word even means. Suffice to say that what I find myself doing is my interpretation and understanding of the word 'do'. A way. A Path. And for no reason other than for itself and because now I can do nothing else.
