Hello everyone!
The past month and a half we were super busy organizing the memorial tournament of my father. As all the students arrived, it struck me about the word pilgrimage.
I left for India soon after my mother passed away in 2006. I needed my soul and my spirit to heal .
What I found with my visit to my Shala where Guruji resided was more profound that what was originally intended.
This year in particular I felt a stronger sense of unity within the organization.
Since the dawn of history, spiritual seekers have been making pilgrimages to sacred places often by traveling long way from home.
I watched the students pay their respect to where their teacher or their teacher's teacher had trained in, graded at and for others, though they never set foot in before but knew they always belonged to. The floor so many had sweated upon and time and again bled and cried, where right beneath their feet. Some opt to sleep in the Dojo with their sleeping bags feeling the need to nourish themselves in the presence of the shrine Sosai had it specially built for Honbu and Kyokushin Karate. It has the God of Creation, God of Intellect and God of Justice, as well as Sosai and Mother resting right where everyone trains.
A pilgrimage is not a stopover at some famous tourist spot. A pilgrimage is a journey of self-
discovery and the nature of that discovery is shaped by the site itself. We select that special place
because we look for a specific kind of experience, one that can only be spoken by those who experienced it. Just like Sosai always said, 実戦 is the key to everything.
