Everything in your power: Modern Uketamo

uketamo

I think there is a bit of a misconception of Uketamo, the philosophy of the Yamabushi. Uketamo is about acceptance to the core, but if you just accept everything that happens to you, and people know you are doing this, it can be very easy for them to use you. They can just throw stuff at you and say 'accept this'.

Obviously this is not how the philosophy works. I understand it as you do everything in your power first, and only then is the situation there for the uketamo. This means that if someone is trying to use you, you don't just accept it, you push back as you normally would. It might be better to say that uketamo is for the retrospective, the things in the past that you cannot change. And equally this is true for the future as well; things that might transpire that you have no power of controlling because they haven't happened yet, i.e. they are not real and not worth worrying about. But if someone is trying to use uketamo against you, don't let them. Do everything in your power to have the situation transpire as it normally would, without being used.

ENJOYED THIS? HAVE MORE.

MOUNTAINS OF WISDOM

Subscribe to my yamabushi newsletter

RECENT BLOG POSTS

Put Your Jealousy to the Test
Focus on your audience by focusing on yourself
Focus on your audience by focusing on yourself

YAMABUSHI BLOG POSTS

photo of a man in a black shirt training for boxing
Getting punched in the mouth
Don’t start by explaining, start by doing
Do do do -The Yamabushi Way

RANDOM POSTS

man wearing black cap with eyes closed under cloudy sky
Not would have, just is.
Genso No Mori: The Forest of Illusions in Tozawa Village, Yamagata
The one constant
Going the distance with language learning
Tim Bunting Kiwi Yamabushi

Tim Bunting Kiwi Yamabushi

Get In Touch

Sakata City, Yamagata, Japan 

tim@timbunting.com

Share this:

Like this:

Like Loading...
Scroll to Top
%d