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Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Martial Virtues (Budo Bitoku [武道美徳])

Caveat: This article is mine and mine alone. I the author of this article assure you, the reader, that any of the opinions expressed here are my own and are a result of the way in which my meandering mind interprets a particular situation and/or concept. The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of other martial arts and/or conflict/violence professionals or authors of source materials. It should be quite obvious that the sources I used herein have not approved, endorsed, embraced, friended, liked, tweeted or authorized this article. (Everything I think and write is true, within the limits of my knowledge and understanding. Oh, and just because I wrote it and just because it sounds reasonable and just because it makes sense, does not mean it is true.) 

Please make note that this article/post is my personal analysis of the subject and the information used was chosen or picked by me. It is not an analysis piece because it lacks complete and comprehensive research, it was not adequately and completely investigated and it is not balanced, i.e., it is my personal view without the views of others including subject experts, etc. Look at this as “Infotainment rather then expert research.” This is an opinion/editorial article/post meant to persuade the reader to think, decide and accept or reject my premise. It is an attempt to cause change or reinforce attitudes, beliefs and values as they apply to martial arts and/or self-defense. It is merely a commentary on the subject in the particular article presented

The characters/ideograms mean, “Martial virtues.” The first two characters/ideograms mean, “Budo; martial arts; military arts; Bushido.” The second two characters/ideograms mean, “Bitoku; virtue.” The first character means, “Warrior; military; chivalry; arms,” the second character means, “Road-way; street; district; journey; course; moral; teachings,” the third character means, “beauty; beautiful,” the fourth character means, “benevolence; virtue; goodness; commanding respect.” 

Martial virtues is about the development of a military oriented virtue, i.e., goodness, righteousness, morality, integrity, dignity, honor, decency, respectability, worthiness, purity, etc., that drive the use of violent conflict to solve socially driven issues between differing nations. This drives down toward a more personal or person-to-person combative method that comes from the same set of virtues. 

Budo Bitoku, martial virtues, is about those more esoteric fundamental principles of martial systems whereby things like moral turpitude is combated so that the power of martial disciplines are not set to violate such virtues as righteousness, morality and integrity. It is about making the dangerous and often destructive forces of martial disciplines to be directed toward a more virtuous and righteous, etc. direction. 

If we fail to instill budo bitoku into the spirit of the martial practitioner then were merely provide another human predator with the combative tools to use against others. The only way to combat such depravity of a system like martial arts is to train our practitioners toward a budo bitoku or martial virtuous way of practice, training and, most important, application of martial arts.  


It is the hope through the integration of all fundamental principles of martial systems we provide character development through wisdom, courage and compassion that budo bitoku that is the essence and corner stone of all martial disciplines. 

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