Summer. At the Issho Dojo, summer was a quiet time. Due to vacation schedules, the student body would diminish for the two and a half months of New Jersey’s summer season. After Labor Day, the corps of students would return to full strength and be augmented by new students seeking to learn the secrets of Goshin-Do Karate-Do.
I have learned that the same is true for the readership of my blog. With summer upon us, people turn away from their laptops in favor of experiences outdoors in nature. This is a good thing. Now that summer winds down and readership levels are returning to normal, I will once again begin to post substantive articles that explore the means by which Karate-Do physical protocols and martial ideology enhance daily life.
With that in mind, I want to post the within as a “Welcome Back” banner to my faithful readers. Below is a Canto from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Through me you enter the woeful city,
Through me you enter eternal grief
Through me you enter among the lost.
Justice moved my High Maker:
The Divine Power made Me.
The Supreme Wisdom and the Primal Love.
Before Me nothing was created
If not eternal and eternal I endure
Abandon every hope, You who enter.
These words of obscure color I saw inscribed over a portal; wherein I said: “Master, their meaning is hard for me.” and he to me as one who understands,”Here let all cowardice be dead….” and when he placed his hand on mine, with a cheerful look from which I took comfort, HE LED ME AMONG THE SECRET THINGS.
I hung the Canto in the Issho Dojo not as the a-typical warning for which the Canto is known for. Rather, I displayed the Canto as a means of reminding the students that they embark upon a journey into heretofore unknown aspects of themselves as individuals, the so-called “secret things” referred to in the Canto. The mechanism by which the journey was undertaking within the confines of the Issho Dojo is the sometimes hellish dictates of Goshin-Do Karate-Do.
The Torii Symbolizes a path or journey. Shinmei Torii at Benton Shrine, Kamakura, Kanagawa Perfecture.
The mechanism of this secret journey in terms of this blog is the many lessons of the Issho-Dojo as articulated by the art of Goshin-Do Karate-Do. In the spirit of my Sensei, Thomas DeFelice, Ku-Dan (9th Degree Black belt), Menkyo Kaiden, through the mechanism of this blog, I offer this secret journey to you. Discover yourself, if you dare.
So, now that summer is over, WELCOME BACK, to all my faithful regular readers, the journey once again begins. New articles begin after Labor Day.
Sensei John Szmitkowski, Soke, Jiriki Kata-Do
ENDNOTES:
1. Alighieri, Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto III
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