Shu Ha Ri

This interim mini-blog is an esoteric, philosophical, yet pragmatic and functional treatise I had the inclination to share with you on the first day of the year. It is an idea that is becoming clearer to me after 64 years of judo. 

How can I tell you about a future you’ve yet to experience, since it is the experience itself that is the important part of the message?

The Shu Ha Ri process can make you a better physical judoka. More importantly, it can make you a more self-fulfilled one; and, as Kano would appreciate it, a more fulfilled person, over time.

If you are consciously or unconsciously currently involved in the process of Shu Ha Ri in your judo life, you are fortunate. If not, no problem. All of the obvious judo benefits you are already enjoying are always there for you.

Shu Ha Ri has a powerful irony attached. To benefit from it, you must know that you are involved in it. That is the first step of itself.

Over the decades we have seen the vulture-like tendency of Western profiteers to swoop down upon esoteric Eastern thinking and apply it as a newly found wisdom in the business world. This has happened to Shu Ha Ri and its inclusion in the “agile” thinking world. Double the irony, this happened over a couple of centuries in Japan as it was applied to the adaptations of its strongest primary origins, the tea ceremony.

Not a Thing, but a Process

 Shu Ha Ri can happen for you without you ever having heard of it. It is a learning process that is very akin to the “competence” process. Unconscious Incompetent>Conscious Incompetent>Conscious Competent>and Unconscious Competent. The consciousness analogy is just here for a comparison and frame of reference. 

Shu: A state of learning where everything is new. Think of a jigsaw puzzle.  Where to begin? What in the world is this little jagged blue and brown piece? I didn’t even know it was there. 

Ha: A learning process, where you’re being taught the best ways to most efficiently locate and place the puzzle pieces. The methods, the tools, always apply to the same principles, which you are doing, even though not appreciating yet. You might know their names, be able to duplicate them, but you haven’t truly internalized them. Internalizing them isn’t the same now as in the competence levels analogy; because here the internalization does not lead to unconscious application. Unconscious application is a stage you are yet to go through on the way to Ri.

Ri:  Have you ever sat outside on a day when the sun was covered by clouds, and then suddenly there was a break in the clouds and the full strength of the sun’s totally uplifting warmth completely engulfed you with a special pleasure? Your brain doesn’t tell you the pieces of the event. It presents you with the wonderful feeling.  In Ri, not only do you get the feeling, you get the awareness of how and why it is different from all the other moments of having been bathed in sunshine.  It speaks to you of your own biology, your place in the cosmos, perhaps. That sunshine will always have this new awareness for you. It could even be a wordless essence.

Now, you can also go back to the basics that were essential to having first moved beyond Shu and you have an understanding of how they really work, at their core. You can both understand and utilize them beyond the way you have ever before. You also realize that you cannot simply explain this to somebody who is in the state of Shu and have them incorporate it now. (As this mini blog is doing)

Not only does the Ri apply to this moment, it applies to the overall study of judo and all its aspects, beyond just the physical.

You will have to wait many years for the full Shu Ha Ri experience to bring you in. I’m reminded of the story of the 70 year old woman who told her friends she had decided to get a law degree. One friend said, “But by the time you do, you’ll be 77 years old.” The ambitious woman replied, “And if I don’t, I’ll still be 77 years old.”

Shu Ha Ri doesn’t apply only to judo. It applies to the endeavors to become a master of any worthwhile skill. Shu Ha Ri has been forever.