What is budo?

What is budo? What is a budo sport?

Stefan Stenudd provides guidance in his book 'Aikido, the peaceful martial art'.

”The sign for Do is made up of a head and a broken step. Someone pauses mid-step to see which direction the step will take. In the same way we pause in our rush through life and wonder what is the best direction to take. We perhaps do not need a clear goal but we must have a direction in order to move and to get anywhere in life. Most of all it is about the spiritual journey, towards enlightenment, perfection or whatever goal you have set yourself.
 

But the next day, what do we do then? Of course we continue training. And every technique must be practised with total dedication as if it were the only technique that day. And the same goes for each technique.

The pupil who practises kyudo (archery) should only have one arrow in his quiver so that he can concentrate fully on that one shot and not think of the next one.

All Japanese do have the same philosophy. Shodo, the way of calligraphy, is the road to zen through the drawing of characters. One draws one character with complete concentration without thinking about the next one. Then one draws a new character with exactly the same level of concentration and the previous one is forgotten. And then the next one…”

Types of budo like karate are not primarily sports but in the modern age they have slowly been secularised or ”sportified” if you like. Therefore karate is practised more as a sport than budo. Therefore the expression ”budo sports”.