Milestones on the long road of training

Almost 3 years ago, we created the Bujinkan Neshaminy Dojo. The primary purpose at the time was to supplement our training with Jack Hoban in Springlake NJ, but of course we were happy to invite new members to come along and try it. Over time we have come to feel the responsibility of teaching and started to evolve a little. We wanted to really progress those who relied on us as their primary source of training. Also we wanted to reward their progress just as any other dojo would, and just as we had been rewarded over the years. We decided to start awarding grades. Below is a picture of one of our students receiving a grade recently.


Grades are a tricky concept, especially in martial arts. There is rarely a definitive answer on what it means to be a certain grade, just as there is rarely a definitive answer on whether a person is good or bad. Just like the expression 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder', so too is the relationship between the teacher and the student. Grades perhaps are useful milestones, that mark the journey of the student on a winding and sometimes looping trajectory.

Ultimately many might say that grades are not significant, but this is like the Buddhist monk who only takes food given by others to his bowl. It is good that we have monks, but if we all became monks the human race would soon starve. New students deserve the nourishment of grades while they still have meaning to them, and we deserve to give those grades meaning by making them a challenge to attain. There is no shortcut to training, so there can be no shortcut to teaching.

Then what if after a certain amount of milestones and years of training a student should wonder where they are with respect to the art itself? Jack Hoban said to me last week "If the road is infinite, then we are both the same distance from the end".