修行会

Introduction

Shugyō is an ancient way, typically considered “hard training”. Some may define shugyō as rigorous, oft ascetic, training full of a single-minded focus. However, through Japanese scholarship, shugyō is evidenced as an embodied, ethical, and oft ritualized program of self-cultivation where bodily practices and meaning making co-produce one another (Watari, 2009). Yuasa Yasuo’s (1987) body theory—hugely influential across religious studies and psychology—argues that Asian cultivation systems transform consciousness through disciplined bodily techniques. Shugyō is paradigmatic of this body–mind integration. The concept of shugyō can be seen across culture, religion, and governance, and has a set of aspects and observables that may help individuals grasp the meaning.

The concept of shugyō has changed across time and space. Here at Shugyōkai, shugyō is a living process that is already well embedded in biological lifeforms beings inhabit, and if conceit and its associated states are guarded against with vigilant procedure, shugyō continues its process making life between individuals, societies, and ecologies, livable. This site was formed on this very basis many years ago, and here it continues. Shugyō starts with life-living liberation amidst ancient-flow. Taking a note from Space-Coyote (2025), it is that process which steers “proliferating searches toward practices that re-approach felt perfection—e.g., disciplined sensorimotor training, contemplative inquiry, and collective rituals that keep sense-making tethered to embodiment and community”.

Definitions and Etymology of 修 (Shu) and 行 (Gyō)

According to Wikimedia Foundation’s (2025a) Wikipedia, 修 in Japanese has many meanings (a) decorate / embellish, (b) repair / mend, (c) build / construct, (d) revise / write / compile, (e) study / cultivate / take a course, (f) tall / slim / long, and/or (g) and is an abbreviation of 修正主義 (Revisionism). 修 is comprised of a phonetic radical 攸, a literary term in Chinese. 攸 is further comprised of 人 (human; etymology is side profile of human) and 攴 (hit lightly or tap, strike, hit; etymology is hand holding tool, weapon, or whip), and the semantic 彡 (three, ornament, short hair or fur radical; etymology is three strands of hair and in some cases, light rays).

行 on the other hand, carries meanings of (a) to go, (b) to carry out, and/or (c) line / row with additional etymologies. 行 was simplified from a symmetric representation of a crossroads / street intersection, first cited in Buddhist texts with the pronunciation “goon” which comes from earlier Sanskrit words. Yet the left side of the crossroads became 彳which is the left “step” radical in Japanese, yet in Chinese carries definitions of (a) to walk slowly, (b) to step with the left foot, and/or (c) to suddenly stop when walking. The right side 亍 came from the right side of the crossroads, where it means (a) to take small steps, and (b) is a Korean place name. Historically, in Chinese, it carried definitions of (a) to stop / to stand still, (b) to step with the right foot, and/or (c) to take small steps.

Variations of Shugyō

There are variations of shugyō (e.g., 修行, 修業). The main variation here is 修行, which is primarily focused on a religious or spiritual practice, cultivating mind, and honing knowledge and arts. In many cases, 修行 specifically relates to pursuit of enlightenment, as it is a loaded Chinese term imported through Buddhism, where in scripture 行 appears more frequently. Alternatively, the variation 修業, usually connotes more focus on technical development, academic training, and worldly learning. There is no doubt that both 修行 and 修業 are evidenced on this very site, however the ultimate aim is and always has been 修行. It just so happens that 修業 practices, as practiced by Shugyōkai are an effort to better communicate, guide, and validate 修行.

Buddhism

In Charles Muller’s Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, 修 carries a basic meaning of “repeated practice” with senses being (a) to practice, religious practice where it generally refers to the cultivation of goodness, and specifically meditative practice. It carries additional meanings of (b) having pursued, (c) to carry out individual religious practice, (d) abbreviates 修道 (path of [meditative cultivation]) as the 4th stage of Abhidharma/Yogacara path scheme (see 五位 [i.e., five ranks]) where this path is the entry into that of a 預流 (stream winner), and the second of three supramundane paths (see 三道 [i.e., three holy paths of 見道, 修道, and 無學道]). In these, one can see that 修 imports a sense of post-insight/enlightenment cultivation (Muller, 1993/2008; Muller, 1993/2015, Muller, 1997/2009; Muller, 1997/2020a).

As with standard definitions of each character, now 行 is turned toward from a Buddhist perspective. 行 carries a basic meaning of “to practice” with senses (a) to undertake, conduct, do, carry out, to practice, accomplishing, practicing… a path, “religious acts, deeds, or exercises aimed at taking one close to the final goal of enlightenment” (Muller, 1993/2021). In Yogacara, (b) it refers to a being’s temperament in 五行 (i.e., 貪行, 瞋行, 癡行, 慢行, 尋思行). It refers also to (c) conditioning [forces], conditioned phenomena, and (d) volition, impulse, intention, orientation (i.e., 行蘊) as one of the 五蘊. t also means (e) to go, to move, to proceed, to walk, to continue or (f) a feature, a defining activity. It can also mean (f) “to engage in”, or “a row, a line, a series”, and (g) to travel, a trip (Muller, 1993/2021; Muller, 2001/2010; Muller, 1993/2023).

It is critical to note that in the Buddhist perspective, 修行 is as an activity that follows 正見 (right view) in the 八正道 (eightfold path) as right view is the “forerunner” of the path (see Majjhima Nikāya 117; Bodhi, n.d.). This is a critical perspective, and is a critical perspective of Shugyōkai. Right view precedes 正思惟 (right intention), 正語 (right speech), 正業 (right action), 正命 (right livelihood), 正精進 (right effort), 正念 (right mindfulness), and 正定 (right concentration). Sila does not come first. This means in the 三学, 正見 precedes 戒 (morality / conduct; kai/sila), and 定 (meditation / concentration; jō / samadhi). Again, this is a critical understanding. The view here is concerned with causation [of phenomena suffered/endured] rather than mere correlation, and understanding 四諦 (four noble truths; shitai). In the Buddhist perspective,shugyō is intimately tied to post-enlightenment (i.e., insight) training (Muller, 1997/2020b, 1997/2021, 1993/2014). While some perspectives emphasize sila prior to right view, as it is seen to allow for a fruitful birth to allow for practice that allows for the development of insight, this is not the case here as sila accompanied by incorrect-view damages the vipaka (e.g., destining sila’s fruits for brahma realms etc.), and if kamma was that manipulatable, then there’d be no need for enlightenment.

Shugyō’s Sibling of Shūyō (修養)

Related to the rigor of shugyō, which operates under an assumption that human nature is evil/sinful, is shūyō (修養 ; Nishihara, 2019). Shūyō returns to nature while operating under an assumption that human nature is good. According to Nishihara, shuyō is a well-spring of the Japanese educational tradition, appearing earlier than Meiji era, and has been “inconsistent” in use since the Edo Era. Shuyō was interpreted in various ways depending on individual. In some perspectives, “shuyō is the way to become a ruler”, yet later Japanese Confucianists included the “governed” in the practice(s) of shuyō. Modern translations make sign and index of shugyō difficult, as these rest on frameworks of modernity, where understandings of less-than-modern events may yield insight into shugyō.

Term	View of Human Nature	Method	Goal
Shugyō (修行)	Ignorant, Evil, Sinful, Polluted	Rigorous, strict constraints.	Transcending the “average” human state.
Shūyō (修養)	Fundamentally Good	Gentle, returning to nature.	Moral perfection and character building.

A Break with Tradition

Ogyū Sorai, a prominent scholar of the Edo period, broke with historical tradition, and considered shuyō as separate from politics, as personal cultivation was no longer seen to make for good governance (as cited in Nishihara, 2019). Up to that time, moral perfection was thought to then allow for social governance, and shuyō was a necessity of “rulers”. To expand on the ideology in these early times, “the way of the saints” allowed for a society that was built around common diverse “temperaments” (i.e., individualities) of human nature. Regarding governance, Sorai emphasized ritual (e.g., etiquette) and music because words were considered ineffective. In these ways, institutions ruled through ritual and music “traps” without the public knowing (sort of Machiavellian) without rule by cultivating virtues (i.e., without shuyō and its adjacent shugyō). In this time, practicality (of politic) eclipsed shugyō and left sages as a type or ruler.

政治のために修養は必要ない。修養を積 んだところでよき統治ができるわけではない。

“Self-cultivation is not necessary for the sake of politics. Accumulating self-cultivation does not mean that one will be able to govern well.”

(Nishihara, 2019, p. 473; citing 荻生徂徠 [1667-1728])

Self-Power and Other-Power

Nishihara (2019) also finds that as long as one performs shugyō through what is termed “self-power” (自力; jiriki), it is not authentic. The understanding is that it must inevitably progress toward “other-power” which is addressed by Kiyozawa. Kiyozawa was a Meiji-period Buddhist philosopher whose concept of shūyō was more like shugyō, and noted the limits of self-power. This self-power, while good for getting started in face of adversity, as a starting point, yet when one reflects on the depths of self, tendō (the Way of Heaven) is revealed, and transforms to other-power. This is an important aspect of Shugyōkai, as it relates to not only our practices, but also practices and teachings of the founder of Aikido, Ueshiba Morihei, and from Saotome Sensei.

Polishing the Inner-Self and Relations for the “Commoners”

Shuyō overlaps morality but not norms; it is “personal ethical practice… it is the work (motivation, expectation, and effort) of individuals who wish to improve themselves… it is like training” (Nishihara, 2019, p. 475). Where keiko polishes character through art and craft, and shugyō distances from daily life, shūyō is practiced in daily life, and it is this perspective that some brought to the concept of shugyō. Where Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism opened the possibility of anyone to govern, Tokugawa scholars (e.g., Nakae Tōju, Itō Jinsai, Ishida Baigan) abandoned that possibility, leaving commoners to cultivate themselves and live in harmony [under rule]. For example, rather than shuyō, Tōju emphasized his own term, gakumon. Gakumon was study, reflection, and preparation of “one’s inner self” and emphasized activity of study similar to sutta studies of Buddhist lineages (p. 475). Here, Tōju’s version of gakumon approached shugyō.

And then there is, Jinsai, a commoner from the Horikawa district of Kyoto, whom preached that that daily duties are opportunities for self-cultivation (Nishihara, 2019). To Jinjsai, daily duties (nichiyō) is not about defeating oneself, nor subordinating to mind as teacher (p. 475). Jinsai emphasized direct practice—修為 (cultivation / attainment); this mattered more to Jinsai than ideals and emphasized phenomena (p. 475). In these ways, Tōju and Jinsai emphasized shu[g]yō for all peoples.

Nishihara’s Potent Conclusion

In Nishihara’s own words:

The core of shūyō is “self-cultivation.” It is the act of disciplining the body, nurturing the mind, and elevating the self. It is not an attempt to influence others, nor is it something coerced by others. “To practice shūyō” is an intransitive verb. Furthermore, it largely overlapped with moral improvement, leading it to be described as “practicing moral and spiritual self-cultivation” (Tucker 1989).

It may resemble shugyō (ascetic training) or yōjō (health cultivation). Sometimes, self-conquest—detaching oneself from fame and profit—is emphasized; in other cases, social success is expected. What is important is that “self-cultivation” has not always been discussed using the specific word “shūyō.” This paper has defined the scope of shūyō by “reverse-importing” the English term cultivation. The problematic domain of “shūyō/cultivation” is broader than the Japanese word itself.

The connection between self-cultivation and politics was diverse. However, compared to yōjō, shugyō, and keiko, it is significant that shūyō has been strongly conscious of its relationship with politics. It was also related to morality. In that context, it is possible to understand shūyō as “disciplinary training.” However, the possibility of it resonating with what Foucault called “care of the self” is also worth noting.

Furthermore, shūyō overlaps with health cultivation (yōjō) in its desire for health and the nurturing of qi. By contrast, ascetic training (shugyō) never took health as its objective. Compared to shugyō, while shūyō remains within the utility of secular society, shugyō had a tendency (a possibility or danger) to transcend secular utility. Compared to practice (keiko), while keiko requires the “mastery of a craft/technique (waza),” shūyō did not pass through a “craft.” Within shūyō was the hope of the common people who had no opportunity to encounter specialized “crafts (culture).”

(Nishihara, 2019, pp. 481-482; trans. Google Gemini; references preserved)

Yuasa’s Shugyō

Yuasa (1987), a prominent philosopher of religion, locates shugyō within East-Asian “body schema” where tacit somatic memory carries practice(s) across years until skill “reverses” into effortlessness. This account is compatible with martial, artistic, and contemplative disciplines (Kurasawa, 2011; Watari, 2009). Historical debates on hongoku (本覚, “original enlightenment”) challenged whether Buddhism requires practice at all, whereas critics caution that when “already enlightened” is made absolute, shugyō risks being hollowed out (Sueki, 1992/2001; Tsujimoto, 2019).

Uchida’s Shugyō

In budō, shugyō is explicitly non-competitive self-polishing, where kata, ukemi, and austere training comprise ethical education and attentional refinement. Contemporary budō thinkers emphasize technical ascent and spiritual depth as mutually implicative which is a natural extension of geidō logic (cf. Uchida, 2023).

Discussion

Our perspective considers shugyō, in the same atemporal tradition of Nishihara. That is, seeing shugyō through confounds of temporal fixations. In this sense, an index of shugyō emerges amidst adversity and plumbing the depths during reflection where adversity is temporarily suspended, yet reverberates. Putting oneself in an ancient sense perception amidst contextual living in worlds devoid of even the earliest technologies to today’s world amidst limitless technologies, and interruptions, etc., shugyō does not just contribute to surviving, but also thriving in the inclination toward resolving strain and stress, not only in efforts of arts and crafts, in individual values and virtues, but also collectively, amongst various as had yet evolved into socially differentiating spheres of daily activities in societies.

This article had been inspired by lifelong study, and by daily exposure as an uchi deshi (and soto deshi) of Mitsugi Saotome Sensei. While Nishihara may have grounded shugyō toward rigorous self-cultivation in translation, the character taken as ”self” is a slippery word in Japanese. It’s not merely a self, it is a process, a being process, and this process is what meets the criteria of shugyō characteristically, and the conception of shugyō principally. In short, shugyō is a practice of deepening flow (i.e., joyful awe with immediate sensory feedback) paired with renunciation (i.e., restraint). This flow is continuously creative through harmony and rhythm that bring signal from noise, rather than eliminating noise to reveal signal. This is what truly creative and masterly works deliver. Shugyō even goes beyond mastery, and Shugyokai argues that shugyo is not limited to adversity, nor that its participants operate under an assumption of innate “contamination”.

For myself, a life of shugyō seemed odd, crazy, and wild, resulting in the latex creature you see here. For a period, the practice seemed destined for institutionalization, but language was forming around a rich randomly sampled landscape to describe a character and principle of shugyō. It is beyond grounding in self, in art, in group, and in brand. The name “shugyō” itself is not the name, it’s just an indexical pointing to… what pointing itself does, flow induction, and what in Pali is called iddhipāda as the four bases of spiritual power: (a) chanda (i.e., zeal), (b) viriya (i.e., effort), citta (i.e., awareness), and vīmamsā (i.e., investigation).

… steer[ing] proliferating searches toward practices that re-approach felt perfection—e.g., disciplined sensorimotor training, contemplative inquiry, and collective rituals that keep sense-making tethered to embodiment and community.

Space-Coyote & OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro (2025; edited for readability)

Five idealized traits of shugyō have now emerged, and these seem to be (a) embodied, (b) ethical, (c) ritualized, (d) communal, and (e) ordinary-sublime. This crosses with observed aspects of (a) disciplined sensorimotor training, (b) contemplative inquiry, and (c) collective rituals that tether sense-making to embodiment and community (Space-Coyote, & OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, 2025). Together, these axes of idealized traits and observed aspects are as a compact, tight, optimal, and effective refinement of what shugyō signs, indexes, and for some, when reversal demonstrates a path of ease, iconizes, but there is one thing missing: 武.

Shugyō requires renunciation. A renunciation that requires a kind of giving up that is altogether foreign in conventional worldly ways. However, I can share that this giving up is neither negative, nor positive, it is merely enlightening. At its mundane, it gives up on doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In the middling, it gives up on the idea that one does the same thing over and over, because that’s impossible. And in the supramundane, it gives up on taking that entire being doing things seemingly over and over, and giving up, as who ”it” is. It gives up on… and just writes this discussion, for renunciation is bu (武). Bu cuts out the extraneous bits (like katagami) and allow shugyo to leave room for a life worth living leaving the arts, virtues, individual, relations, societies, businesses, brands, and nations. And once shugyō, whether it is 修行, 修業, or shūyō‘s 修養, is practiced where 武 works to creatively halt (i.e., 武産合気) and allow beautifully interfering resonance(s) to remain, across a great sampled life, without gap, it then can be realized that shugyō is bu, and bu is shugyō, inseparable. Renunciation is exactly flow (i.e., liberation), and it all starts with right view.

Coda

Shugyō begins wherever you stand. The “hard” is not hardness but steadiness. Steadiness of breath, of bowing, of returning. Guarded from conceit, life educates life. The five traits named here—embodied, ethical, ritualized, communal, ordinary‑sublime—are not a checklist but a circle: any point is an entrance, and every entrance returns to care.

Between 修行 and 修業, 修業 serves lantern and 修行 as horizon. A lantern and horizon craft in service of cultivation. Keiko tunes the instrument; misogi clarifies the ear; jhana teaches the listening that acts; and budō makes character legible in motion. In geidō, technique ripens into presence, and presence into ease. Reversal is not retreat; it is skill becoming nature. Takemusu aiki reminds us that creativity and harmony arise together.

The invitation is modest: (a) keep company with forms until they keep company with you, (b) let rhythm gather what the world calls noise, and (c) share practice because bodies teach what words cannot.

Nothing heroic is required. Sweep floors; honor thresholds; thank water. When attention is whole, even the mundane gate opens onto the boundless. The floors sweep back, the thresholds honor back, and the water thanks earth.

For the benefit of limitless beings, may shugyō remain tender and courage precise. If there is a measure, let it be joy joined to restraint; if there is a sign, let it be harmony that leaves not a single thing out. Not an ending, only a turning in the path. Bow, and continue.

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Appendix I: Change Modification Log

15 JAN 26 - In preparing Japanese translation, some references have been updated and DOIs added after sources added DOIs.

02 JAN 26 - Brought Muller’s DDB references back in for a Buddhist section clarifying gyō after right-view.

29 DEC 25 - Corrected Nishihara's interpretation; added lesson boxes to include glossary; fixed a few typographical errors; refined discussion; added table for comparing shugyō and shūyō. Re-opened site search indexation.

14 DEC 25 - Reordered references.

06 NOV 25 - Updated with additional literature review, reformatted, added references, and polished discussion.

23 SEP 25 - Updated "shugyo" to "shugyō".

22 SEP 25 - Updated references from Tadashi to Nishihara to keep with APA 7 citation style.

12 DEC 25 - Added a section on the variations of shugyo and its usages on this site.

23 DEC 15 - Addended to illuminate delta Dirac function which is essentially lasing a candle for peak force[-power]. Then comes the spinning bar, but that comes later.

10 SEP 25 – Cleaned up opening for redability; “austerity” was a Grounded Theory research memo and might not be immediately interpreted correctly with respect to the subject, so this was moved to notes and expanded for clarity.