The Soke of the Bujinkan has often said that he himself is ‘zero’, he also released a DVD called ‘Budo of Zero’ and in 2008 his Daikomyosai in Japan was described as ‘Nine Lineages to Become Nothing’. This might lead to the question: What is the significance of Zero?
Although the existence of number symbols is clear in history, some of the earliest systems used nothing but a blank space to indicate an absence of value. Ranging from the Babylonian counting systems to the ancient Chinese systems the absence of a number *was* the number. These were eventually replaced by symbols and interestingly in China there was a point when the character 空 was often used. This is the same Ku as in the ‘Ku no Kata’,‘Kukan’ and ‘Koku’ well known in the Bujinkan.
As a number Zero is neither positive or negative, being the midpoint between one direction and another. It is the first prime number and matches all of the requirements for being an ‘even’ number. It really does not get the credit it deserves and the invention of it is often overlooked and taken for granted by modern man.
On a physical level ‘Budo of Zero’ might pertain to an overlooked balanced point in space, where one has the most freedom and least restrictions for movement in a given situation. But Budo is so much more than physical, so could it be that becoming Zero relates to the mental and spiritual nature of existence too? The abandoning of one’s own self perhaps? After years and years of training does there come a point where one must let all that go and just simply be the ‘Zero’ we truly are? And so one question leads to many more questions and meanwhile the training continues....
