Kugyo
by Nick Engelen

‘Weakening the physical senses by practicing austerities is one way to allow the spiritual senses to become stronger. Activities like Zazen, fasting, ascetic practices in the mountains, and so on exhaust the body and allow the spiritual senses to become more active.’

Onisaburo Deguchi, Founder of Otomo Religion (Aikido Journal, Vol.25, No.1)

The Kugyo was held in a sport facility in Tongerlo in Belgium on 7, 8 and 9 September 2005 .
It was a highly anticipated event organised by our organisation Aikido Samoerai Limburg and supervised by world renowned author and aikido-Shihan Stevens Sensei.

  The first day we arrived around 9.00in the morning at the sporting facility where we greeted Stevens Sensei and the others at the car park of the facility.  It had been a couple of weeks ago since we saw each other.  I had been ill from flu and was eating some candy that helped against coughing while some others quickly had a last smoke before the Kugyo started.

  After everyone said their hellos, everyone moved to the sport complex.  There we started to lay the tatami where after we went to the changing rooms to get into our keikogi’s.

  After everything and everyone was prepared the real kugyo started with a short introduction from Sensei.  Stevens Sensei explained the meaning of and differences between keiko, shugyo and kugyo.  Keiko is just training while shugyo means intensive training.  The meaning of Kugyo is pain training, literally translated as carrying on while suffering.  He also explained that it was a form of misogi [cleaning], cleaning the mind and cleaning the body.  There also would be a lot of sweating to clean the body from toxins.  It would be in the style of Tesshu Yamaoka’s classes.

  In the old days when a student couldn’t complete a kugyu he was obligated to commit hara-kiri.

  After a short lecture we got an intensive warm-up.  Physical exercise gets the adrenals out of the body.  My worries about work faded and the remaining stresses of the past week were soon out of my body.

  The training was a mixture of sword-work and body techniques, some of it I knew from last seminar and formal training but there was also a lot quite new to me.  As the training progressed, our concentration went weaker.  I often found my mind wandering off while Sensei was teaching where after I had to ask my partner if he knew what we were supposed to do.  Domien, our teacher, who was taking notes had to train and was translating for the ones that don’t understand English, deserves a lot of applauding.

This went on until 18.00 with only a couple of breaks to have some water and a power-bar.

  At the end of the training everybody was tired and the majority didn’t take break falls anymore.

  During short conversations with sensei it seemed we were getting off rather lightly.  We were allowed to sleep while sometimes on Kugyo in Japan the day was for training and the nights for meditation.  We also were allowed to talk… as we seemed to like to talk a lot.

  After training we finally went for dinner.  The dinner was far from my favourite but being hungry makes all food good.

  With full stomachs we went back to the dojo for a short explanation about next day’s meditation where after we recieved our room keys and unpacked our stuffs.  I felt very tired and was almost immediately in dreamland.

  Next morning we rose at 5.00AM as meditation started at 6.00.  Most people weren’t used to sit long times in seiza so they brought sleeping bags to sit on.  We sat in a big circle and went into meditation.  There wasn’t any explanation… we talked about meditation the day before, this day, we were going to do it. 

I am used to meditation as I was in a zen-group a couple of years and still do it regularly at home, but the time went on silently except the sound of a fart followed by some giggling and on a certain moment we were sitting for 40 minutes.  On a certain moment I opened my eyes to see people with their faces in agony.  I couldn’t help but started to giggle.  This affected my neighbours who also started to giggle and I had a problem to control myself, then everything went silent again.  After a couple more minutes Sensei finally clapped his hands as to end the meditation.

Everyone had problems with their legs now as we tried to get the feeling back into them to stand up and walk around the edges of the mat as a walking meditation also called kinhin.  After 5 minutes of walking we went back to our original spots to sit down again.  The meditation-session continued with kotodama or sacred sound.  This is a form of meditation using mantra.  The power of word is very strong, with words you can make someone happy, sad, angry, words hurt and can bring comfort; with words you can teach etc….  Also a sound is a vibration of a certain frequency and isn’t everything on a certain level energy on a certain frequency?
The sound of 30 people practising kotodama was very calming and the meditative state went deeper.
This went on for half an hour and afterwards again we had troubles to get our legs back ok.

  Luckily there were 3 meals arranged for today so we had breakfast now.

  After breakfast the training involved all kind of waza.  Working on the knees was a real torture today as they hurt from the 45 plus minutes in seiza.  We also did some knife taking work with some very nice moves.

  After lunch we took our weapons and went outside.

  On a field nearby we grabbed our wooden swords and paired up in two rows.  We all did a series called sho-shiku-bai which means Pine-Bamboo-Plum blossom.  In ancient times sword masters gave secret techniques obscure names to confuse rivals.  After playing attacker and then defender we changed partner, so when we finished we had done it 30 times.  I didn’t practise for 6 weeks prior to this kugyo so my shoulder muscles felled very tired afterwards.

  After this intensive physical work out we had an opportunity to try calligraphy.  We practised on newspapers to perfect our kanji where after we tried on some real calligraphy paper.

While we tried our bests, Sensei was kind enough to make some calligraphy for us on paper, in books and on wooden boards.

  This continued till 18.00.  Then we went for our meals.

  That evening we enjoyed a lecture by sensei.  He talked about his time with Shirata sensei, how the books came, some frightening ghost-stories etc…  Great stories before bed…

  This ended our second day.

  Next day we again rose at 5.00 to have the cherry on the cake, 10.000 sword cuts. 

  Again we went to the field we trained on the day before, following a nicely laid runner’s path.  It was still dark and it feels strange walking in a group trough a forest where you can’t see where you put your feet down.

  On the field we started with our bokkens.  Everyone had to count and we started with doing silent kiai.  Soon my shoulders started to burn so I diverted my attention to my surroundings and tried not to think of the burning feeling.  The surroundings were dark and misty, and the only light came from a lantern next to a nearby road.  The other aikidoka were only visible trough the reflection of the street light on the white gi-tops.  When first light started the birds started to sing, a lone man on a bicycle passed by as well as some early runners.

Blisters started to form and the burn in my shoulders grew stronger.  Others also started to get blisters and burning shoulders and as everyone grew fatigued the kiai grew stronger.

After about 5000 sword cuts we switched our sword for the jo where after we kept working until 9.00 to get a short break for breakfast.  Hereafter we continued our sword cuts until we approached the 10.000 at 12.00.

  The group spirit was amazing as everyone was giving strong kiai and everyone supported each other.

  Relieved that it was over, everyone went back to their lodgings to collect stuff and preparing themselves for our lunch.

  During lunch I had the opportunity to have some nice conversations with Sensei.

  After saying our goodbyes everyone went home.  Most went first to a bar to hydrate them and to refill the lost calories with our national drink, beer.

  This ended a great weekend.  The next day I was feeling only a little sore but didn’t feel weak at all.  On the contrary I came out stronger.  

The end.

 Thanks to Nick Engelen for permission to reproduce this article