Like any number of budoka, my teacher had a profound effect on me. He was a Japanese immigrant who came to the US after the Pacific War wiped out his family business, leaving him with few prospects in his home country. After helping his family members become economically stable, he came to New York in the mid-1950's to start a new life. And he built one here, raising a family and teaching budo until his death in 2004.
I was fortunate to have known him for 18 years. Sensei was a samurai class descendant, though his family was not a very high-ranking one. Still, he was very proud of his heritage. He liked to say that swordsmanship was philosophy, and that, looked at properly, the practice of iaido could guide one's life. Through talking with him as well as the many stories that circulated about him, it was obvious that he was a man of his word, even if that word was sometimes pretty hardassed. Technical instruction for him was just the very beginning of iai practice; after that, we were supposed to find a way to apply the tough lessons inherent in the practice to our everyday lives. The sheer difficulty of practice would hopefully instill some level of stubbornness (in the good sense; i.e. persistence), and that trying to come up to some imagined, or even observed, level of skill would develop both patience and humility. We were supposed to show compassion, even if the result was not particularly satisfying; we were supposed to perform right actions for their own sake.
I came from an intact family, and, though I did not always agree with them, had enormous respect for both of my parents. My dad, in particular, also had a stubborn, honest streak. My mother was a very gracious woman who treated everyone equally, regardless of wealth or lack thereof. So the effect of my teacher was not a result of being deprived of adult role models like it sometimes is for others. Sensei was not a father figure to me; I already had one of those. So, he was neither a parent, nor a friend - he really was my teacher. Someone who could look at what I was doing in the dojo more dispassionately than a biased family member or a friend. He was the type of person who, when he called me on the phone, caused me to sit up straight, a quality I never felt compelled to exhibit with either of my parents. Not a day goes by that I don't think about something he said; or any situation that has arisen in my life as a budoka since his death that I could not think, "What would sensei think of this?" and hopefully gain some insight into a solution.
I have trained with some of his former students (all sempai of mine), and on more than one occasion, one or another has remarked, "I can see sensei in you." I am enormously flattered, but I have to remember: I am not him. I could never be him. Why does this matter? Because it is easy to accept the occasional comparison and think I am somehow becoming more (or different) than what I am. Because sensei himself would never care for the idea that the goal of my practice was to somehow be him.
I can't be him for a score of obvious reasons, of course, but the more subtle ones are also important - my time is different. I live in a different world. Not many people nowadays have the time or even the inclination to come to a dojo for a regular practice. In the first place, many people, even if they leave the office, never "leave the office." They bring it with them. Often that means the best thing is to go home, in case that important email comes up. Distractions like YouTube, with its endless clips of all kinds of budo, from the incredibly stupid (or just fake) to the incredibly brilliant are at everyone's fingertips, and, for some people at least, watching stuff is almost as good as actually practicing it. And for certain, a flesh-and-blood budo teacher can never be a match for a 50-year-old clip of Nakayama Hakudo, can she? When my teacher was training, that film clip was a rarity. Now, you can just dial it up.
There are some teachers who, even when the torch has passed to them, can never emerge from the shadow of their teacher. They try to imagine what their teacher might have done in every teaching situation. They object to things they think their teacher would have objected to, even though their situations are totally different. They refuse to change anything their teacher did. even rejecting innovations that might be useful to current students because "that's not how sensei would have done it." They may be pretty effective anyway, but I wonder when they will bring their own gifts to the practice floor? My teacher encouraged me to explore and investigate, and expected me to bring my discoveries to the classes I was teaching. He may not have liked everything (and sometimes he was very explicit in his opinion of what I was doing), but he knew enough to see the world changing around him. All the same, I find teaching budo very difficult, given all the distractions we now have. But, as a student of my teacher, I intend to keep trying.
No comments:
Post a Comment