Shu-Ha-Ri is a Japanese expression which means form, variation, and breaking of form. In the beginning of budo training, we focus on burning new ideas into body memory to overcome old ones — moving at a diagonal instead of a straight line backwards, for example. Eventually, we get to a point where we transcend body memory, where we have so much experience and knowledge that we can safely approach any situation as a brand new experience and still come out okay. That applies to all forms of habit — relationships, daily routines, eating habits, etc.

We need to build experience through body memory and routine, and then when we have the experience, we need to throw away the memory because it can hinder us badly. For example, I’ve seen boredom in a relationship. Body memory became so strong and ingrained that it actually created the antithesis of its purpose — it created absolute boredom. Combine boredom with crisis and you get fracturing. Instead of building experience and then leaving behind the routine, this one couple kept the routine and killed the benefit of the experience.

This is what Hatsumi sensei and Manaka sensei talk about constantly. For beginners, we must work on the aspect of shu, the preservation of tradition and form. This is the body memory part, where we drill and practice to get the concepts and feeling burned into ourselves to burn away prior bad habits. Then we work on the ha aspect, the variation and diversion from the form. We call this henka in taijutsu, variations that preserve the spirit and feeling but change the application. Finally, we work on the ri aspect, the breaking. This is where we take the form, the mold, and we destroy it so that all we’re left with is the essence of the concept. The arcane concept of shu-ha-ri becomes alive when we transcend the stoic Japanese to get at the concepts. We can look at anything from this pattern of growth.

Sometimes people see only the form and when the form is complete, they perceive that nothing remains. That’s the way it was in my karate school. We had these kata (Japanese for forms) which we had to memorize with mental and body memory. When we perfected our memory, we moved on to the next kata. We never got at the essence of karate. We perceived that the form was the end, the completion.

Ninpo approaches its kata differently. We learn the form, the basics, and then we vary them. After varying them, we break free of them and make things happen spontaneously. For people who see only form, they never get at the secrets. That’s why you’ll hear Hatsumi rail against people who are kata collectors. The form is important — it’s the first stage of growth. But we have to break free of it.

Form can also mean expectation, stereotype, or desire. For example, we have these images in our culture which we interpret as ideal. For Thanksgiving, we interpret a large dinner with a big turkey and all the trappings as the ideal. This is our form, and when life doesn’t conform to our kata, our expectation, we come away disappointed. Think of how many forms we have, how many expectations. We expect a date to be dinner, a movie, and the intimacy afterwards, and people spend millions of dollars every year trying to fit to this form. The form is there to teach us the basics, but then we have to transcend the basics and get creative. Think about modern fashions. We interpret current fashion as a norm, which is another word for a form, a kata. We learn the kata as a means of understanding the principles of fashion, but some people never get past the image to the substance. They’re stuck in form, in shu, forever, and they’re constantly disappointed when things don’t match form.

When you transcend form and reach variation and ultimately freedom, you really do stop being disappointed. You may go out on a date that doesn’t resemble form in any way, no stereotype, but you can really enjoy it because the essence is there, the feeling and spirit of a real date. Likewise, you could go out on a date which matches the form perfectly, but you’ll be unhappy because it’s a routine — it’s lacking the essence, the spirit. The same is true for any form and variation.

When you learn to recognize the essence of things, you can find happiness in places and situations that would baffle most people.

This article originally appeared in the F&M Ninpo Society training journal, Quest Notes. For more information about Quest Notes or the F&M Ninpo Society, please visit http://ninpo.fandm.edu. The author, Chris Penn, has been training for five years.