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The World’s Best Dojo

I regard myself as an extremely lucky yamabushi. I live at the foothills of my dojo, the three sacred mountains of Dewa here in Yamagata Prefecture. In fact, I can see the summit of Gassan from the office I am sitting in right now.

It’s a bit odd to think of mountains as a dojo, though. The word dojo conjures up images of an indoor training arena with tatami mats or similar, maybe a kamidana, a small shrine to the kami, or kakejiku scroll with some four-word phrase from centuries ago.

Either way,

the mountains *are* my dojo.

The mountains are where I go to get a reality check. The mountains are where I go to retrieve my original purpose, so I can live true to myself. The mountains are where I go to gain a sense of reassurance in the face of the unknown.

The time I spend in the mountains away from everyday life, away from family, away from technology, away from coffee(!), this time helps me gain an appreciation for the mundane in everyday life. This appreciation of the mundane gives me Ikigai, an overused Japanese term for raison d'être, a French term which is basically your reason for existing.

Well, at least that’s what I thought.

I thought that until my yamabushi master, Master Hoshino had to rear his awesomely-bearded yamabushi head and say:

‘Tim, life in the mountains is your everyday life. There is no distinction’.
- Master Hoshino

And he’s right.

Hansei Hanzoku (半聖半俗) is a yamabushi concept that translates to half-sacred, half secular. Essentially, in Hansei Hanzoku we yamabushi have a normal everyday life. We are teachers and doctors, bankers and accountants, artists and office workers just like you.

The only difference is, we also happen to be yamabushi. We also happen to go off into the mountains every once in a while to pray to the kami and buddha, and undertake yamabushi rituals.

With Hansei Hanzoku, the mountains are an extension of our everyday lives.

But there’s a little more to it than that

If you’re a Christian priest, you’re a Christian priest. If you’re a nun, you’re a nun. If you’re a Buddhist monk, you’re a Buddhist monk. You can’t just be a little bit of a Christian priest, a nun, or a Buddhist monk*.

Just like you can’t be a *little* pregnant.

In other words, these days at least, if you’re a yamabushi, you’re also something else. And living this way gives yamabushi some core advantages:

By living a ‘normal’ life, yamabushi can better understand and empathise with those who we wish to serve. We can better connect the two worlds, if you can call them separate to begin with, that is.

Plus, Hansei Hanzoku points to another interesting point that took me a few years to realise.

Or rather, it took me a few years until a fellow non-Japanese yamabushi spelled it out clearly to me:

The world’s best dojo? The world IS the best dojo

The mountains aren’t my dojo. Well, not exclusively. The mountains are simply an extension of my everyday life, the real dojo.

Everyday life is where we go to get our reality checks. Painful or otherwise. Everyday life is where we go to retrieve our original purpose, so we can live true to ourselves. Or at least try to. Everyday life is where, if we’re lucky, we go to gain a sense of reassurance in the face of the unknown.

The mountains are where we go to reinforce this.

Everyday life is the real dojo. And like a true dojo, whether you choose to use that knowledge to your advantage or not, is completely up to you.

* in saying that, I do know Christian nuns and Buddhist monks who are also yamabushi, but you get what I mean.

This article from the Kiwi Yamabushi newsletter got more than 1,000 reads, so I decided to put it here for everyone. Get articles just like this in your inbox by signing up here. Paid subscribers get priority access and access to the full archive of over 100 articles.