The OVERLOOK MARTIAL ARTS READER Vol 2 edited by John Donohue.
Page 142
From “Armed Martial Arts of Japan” by G. Cameron Hurst
(Breakdown of the paragraph added by me to make reading easier.)
“Kata mastery progresses through three stages.
We find in many texts on geido reference to shu, ha, and ri, the developmental steps to mastery.
Shu means ‘to preserve’ and refers to the initial phase of study in martial and other arts. The novice simply ‘preserves’ the tradition by constant repetition of kata, polishing both outward form and internal mental awareness until the techniques become automatically replicable.
But simple repetition could conceivably lead to (and in Tokugawa martial arts certainly did lead to) the ossification of the art, so the student must ‘break down’ or ‘destroy’ (ha) the kata that he mastered,
in order to move to the final stage of development, where he was ‘liberated’ (ri) from the kata, and true creative individuality could express itself.
The theory behind the mastery of secrets via kata memorized involved, then, a progression from total subservience to tradition to a level of individual creativity.”
