The Nanka Kyudo Kai makes it's home base at the PJCI - Pasadena Japanese Cultural Institute.

Dojo

The dojo is a Place of the The Way.
Today we usually think of martial arts when we say or here the word dojo.
But the dojo was a temple building where The Way was put into arts and other practices.
Each one designed to help us on this path of The Way.

nin gen kei sei - to be human

In Zen we say we have no goal. We just do what the ancients did, living reality as it is. But there is such a writing that says the goal, if there is one, is nin gen kei sei "to be human, or become human." Perhaps we can twist this a bit to say to be humane. For the qualities of being human we mean by this phrase is like that, to be humane.

This means to be Kind, to be compassionate. After all Compassion and Wisdom are to be the two pillars of our lives.

Which is more important?

Our group was doing a ceremony for the local Japanese Community.
We were joined by a fairly large group of local Buddhist Priests from other temples.
One of the older Abbots asked me a question. "So you do kyudo with him too, right?" As he laid his hand toward my teacher. "Yes" I responded. "So, tell me then, in kyudo which is the most important the taihai (approach) or the Hassettsu (8 stages, of shooting)?

The Ogasawara Sensei all cleaned the dojo when they visited. When we took the mops from them, they just went outside and started raking and cleaning up; we couldn't stop them. Everytime we took ono job from them they found another.