Akasha and martial art

Anyone who has practiced martial arts for a long time knows those moments when the body moves before the mind has decided anything. The hand blocks, the foot steps aside, and only a fraction of a second later do you understand what just happened. Most people explain this with reflexes and many years of practice, and that's certainly part of it. The old traditions of Japan, however, also had another explanation. They said that something acts through the practitioner, and they gave that something names.

One of these names leads to a bodhisattva who is called Kokūzō Bosatsu 虚空蔵菩薩 in Japan. In Sanskrit he's called Ākāśagarbha, and this is where it gets interesting for anyone who has heard of the "Akashic records."

Kokūzō Bosatsu, the treasury of space 虚空蔵

The name is easy to take apart. Kokū 虚空 means empty space or sky, the boundless, and zō 蔵 means storehouse or treasury. The Sanskrit name says the same thing: ākāśa is space, and garbha is womb or inner chamber. Put simply, Kokūzō is the one who holds a treasure as boundless as space itself, above all the treasure of wisdom and memory.

For me, Kokūzō is the keeper of the Akashic records. The idea of those records reached the West a little over a hundred years ago through Theosophy and Helena Blavatsky, but only the idea came over, not the ritual. In Japan, the ritual has been practiced for well over a thousand years, and Mikao Usui practiced it too. Both sides work with the same image, a space that isn't empty but holds everything.

Kūkai and the Gumonji-hō 求聞持法

As a young man, Kūkai practiced the Kokūzō gumonji-hō 虚空蔵求聞持法, a ritual centered on the mantra of Kokūzō. It was regarded as a way to gain a memory that retains every text one has heard, and strictly speaking it brings abilities, not just knowledge. In his early work Sangō shiiki (797), Kūkai himself writes that he practiced in the mountains of Awa and at Cape Muroto in Tosa, and that the morning star came flying toward him. Later tradition locates this at the Mikurodo cave at Cape Muroto, from which you look out onto nothing but sky and sea.

What exactly happened there, we can't know. What is clear is that this experience became a turning point for Kūkai and that his path into esoteric Buddhism began with it. In other words, the access to wisdom here doesn't come from studying alone, but from a practice in which the practitioner opens himself to a spiritual being.

Intuition in spiritual martial art 霊武

In the mountain traditions of Japan, in Shugendō, in the esoteric lineages of Shingon and in shamanic Daoism, the idea that spiritual beings stand behind martial art is very old. The most famous example are the tengu 天狗, the mountain spirits who were regarded as masters of the martial arts. According to legend, the young Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who later became one of the most famous generals of Japanese history, was trained in swordsmanship by Sōjōbō, the king of the tengu in the Kurama mountains.

Other beings belong to this world as well. Marishi-ten 摩利支天, the heavenly protector of warriors, was called upon to remain unseen and unassailable. Fudō Myōō 不動明王, the Immovable Wisdom King, stands for unshakable resolve. And Kokūzō stands for the wisdom and clarity that arise when the mind becomes as wide as space.

For me, psychic or intuitive perception is one aspect of spiritual martial art, but not the whole of it. Spiritual martial art is a path on which the body is seen as a vessel and the spirits as masters. Joy of life, coming into your own strength and the connection with nature are just as much part of it. Intuition grows out of this practice. You start to sense an attack a little earlier, or a movement simply happens without having been planned. This is my experience, and of course everyone experiences it in their own way.

Transmission 伝授

The Japanese traditions know the term denju 伝授, transmission. Alongside practicing and repeating, there's the idea that something is passed on directly, from master to practitioner or from a spiritual being to a person. In Shingon this happens through initiation, in Shugendō through practice in the mountains, where the mountain spirits are present. These two ways don't contradict each other. Transmission opens a door, and practice is what you do once you've walked through it.

What this means outside the dojo

Maybe you know these moments from everyday life as well, an impulse that comes out of nowhere or a decision your body makes before you've thought it through. Highly sensitive people often experience this, and often they've learned to distrust these impulses. Spiritual practice doesn't mean following every impulse blindly. It means refining your perception so that you can tell a real intuition apart from a passing mood.