Karatê-Do as your own life

Abstract

Karate came to Brazil through the Japanese immigrations and nowadays containing more than one million of practitioners. However, Physical Education’s courses rarely have disciplines linked to fights, resulting in some distance between the professional from this area and the universe of martial arts. The objective of this study was establishing a perspective from comprehension of the phenomenon Karate from who lived it. Based on phenomenology, we interviewed 10 Senseis with the question: What is karate to Sensei? From their descriptions we make the following categories: a) Karate-Do as your own life (Senseis affirmed to be Karate an intrinsic practice of live); b) Educating and Self-Educating from Budo through Karate (they expressed to be Budo a possibility to teach and learn besides the fight); c) From Fight To Way (Senseis affirmed that a lot of them began the Karate while a fighting method and later, they started to comprehend it as a way of self-knowledge). We consider that Karatê-Do, understood as wisdom of life or way of living, although it has characteristics and similarities with the philosophy, does not possess its foundation in the logical of occidental’s thought, differently finds itself centered in the eastern wisdom that privileges the understanding and contemplation of the world through the daily personal experience.