Monday, May 9, 2011

The New York Times Crossword & Dojo

In one of last week’s New York Times crossword puzzles one clue read: Dojo discipline.  Since dojo is the Japanese word for a martial arts training hall (it literally mean place of the Tao or way), I was running through the various Japanese martial arts that I know of such as: karate, judo, jujitsu, etc.  Nothing seemed to fit.  Finally, I realized that the answer was TAICHICHUAN.

I should probably alert Will Shortz of this minor linguistic error, but I was happy to see that the author of the puzzle recognized the spiritual and martial arts roots of Tai Chi Chuan.   To have the sense of our training hall as a place of Tao adds power to the environment and the practice.  In fact in one quotation I saved from I don’t remember where, the function of the dojo is transcendent:

"The dojo is literally the battlefield of life, a 'field of life and death.' The only difference between it and the battlefield of war is that in the dojo the trainee may die many times over and live to count these deaths as experiences which benefit his development in the Way and eventually to be able to transcend life and death."

In a somewhat more lyrical and poetic way, Cheng Man-ch’ing describes dojo in his poem “The Hall of Happiness” which hangs on the wall at the studio and is on the website.  View Hall Of Happiness.”

Kim


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