List of posts

January 4, 2024

A myriad of methods

What is waza or technique or a form? We shall try to understand what that means with the following musings. We have now trained with many teachers. We can, if we are regular students, over time, generally see a pattern that any teacher uses. This reveals to varying degrees the different types of practitioners of
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December 21, 2023

The “Mahabharata” to the “Sakki Test” to “The Wheel of Time” – Endure deep trouble to unlock great ability

Credits for the images – (L) Many issues of Mahabharata published by Amar Chitra Katha, (C) Logo of the Bujinkan, (R) Symbol of “The Wheel of Time” written by Robert Jordan (Orbit Books), sold by Hachette India I recently watched the second season of the web series “The Wheel of Time” on Amazon Prime. The
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December 7, 2023

Dashāvatāra & Budo, Part 2 – Katsujiken & Satsujiken

The previous two articles I posted were related to the festival of Deepāvali and the stories of the Dashāvatāra respectively. The article related to Deepavali was related to the stories about Naraka Chaturdashi and Bali Pādyami. In both the articles I identified concepts from the martial arts in the stories related to the festivals and
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November 24, 2023

Dashāvatāra & Budo, Part 1 – Issho Khemi

The Dashāvatāra – Balarāma is included instead of Buddha in the above image In my previous article I attempted to explore martial art concepts that can be gleaned from the festival of Deepavali. This is a continuation of the same. Here, I will delve into the concepts that I could not consider in the earlier
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November 12, 2023

Deepavali – Light on the Martial Arts

Credits for the images – (L) “Dashavatar” published by Amar Chitra Katha (Kindle edition), (R) “Krishna and Narakasura” published by Amar Chitra Katha Deepavali or Diwali as it is mostly called, is light personified. It is a five or three or one day festival, depending on one’s culture, traditions, community, geography and upbringing, or any
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October 23, 2023

Aayudha Pooja, Vijayadashami – The most important festivals for the martial arts

Image credit: Original art by Vishnu Mohan (Goobe Art) , above rendition by Chirag Hasyagar (Goobe Art), art concept by Vikram M R Today is Aayudha Pooja and tomorrow is Vijayadashami. Aayudha Pooja is celebrated on the ninth day (Navami) of the Dasara festival and Vijayadashami on the tenth (Dashami – it is built into
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October 15, 2023

Missile – long range weapon :: Narrative – “Long time” weapon

“Kirik” in colloquial Kannada means, “deliberate mischief”, maybe with malicious intent Training of any traditional martial art system involves learning to use weapons. Generally, practitioners learn the use of weapons based on the reach of the weapon. The range a weapon can affect is based on its reach. A simple classification of weapons based on
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September 28, 2023

Kaitatsu Gairouku and Tapasya – How to get help with influencing the Gods

Kaitatsu Gairoku means “do it indirectly”. This is just a phrase from the Japanese language. But it is also a concept that is trained in the Bujinkan system of martial arts. It is understood and applied differently based on the depth and duration of experience of a practitioner in the Bujinkan. Further, this concept is
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September 14, 2023

Gogyo – Ura and Omote

Godai – artwork by Adarsh Jadhav During the pandemic, all of us had to deal with several changes. We all had a lot of trouble changing how we went about our regular routines due to the enforced situation and the lack of choices that allowed one to go about life without making any changes. While
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August 31, 2023

Shabdavedi, Sakkijutsu and Why Charioteers are Awesome!

Anyone who has read stories from Hindu culture or watched TV series based on the same, would have heard of the ability called “Shabdavedi”. This is the ability of an archer (either a hunter or a warrior) to accurately strike a target purely based on the sound it makes, with no visual input at all.
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