perception, and reaction time. It was a craft that insisted on minute attention to the vivid present. There was little room for doubts or distractions. And if you’re fully immersed in the here and now, how could you be wondering about anything else? It was a mystery. In fact, Yamashita, my teacher, was a contradiction himself: a master of the moment who lived with memory swirling around him like some bitter fog. Maybe he hoped his blade would ultimately cut through it. Despite all his activity, his mastery, the rock-solid self-confidence he projected in the martial arts training hall called a dojo, I’ve come to learn that in the quiet times even he had doubts.
But I never doubted him. Not really. The secret manuscript his old friend Mori left to us, the tale it told, helped me understand Yamashita better. And appreciate him more fully. He never spoke to me of the life he had lived in his early years. Mori filled in the gaps—an old story that reached me long after the author himself was dead. But the strands it revealed were alive enough; they uncoiled into the present, the skein rolled out, unraveling but still intact. In the end, it ensnared both my teacher and me. Looking back, I’m not sure I would have wanted it any other way. For in some strange sense, our lives had become joined; no longer two strands, but one.
A splicing of two skeins that continue to unwind.
Chapter 1
He arrived at the dojo as the training session was ending. We were all soaked with sweat and the heavy blue quilted tops we wore were pressing on our shoulders like the weight of Judgment Day. The visitor carefully slipped off his shoes, placed them neatly to one side, and bowed. It was a good bow, the kind you see from someone who’s been in a dojo before. He moved like a martial artist too: smooth motion that hinted at years of labor in the precise economy of violent action. He stood at the rear of the room as the training session came to a close. He was still and watchful. Only his brown eyes glittered under the high lights of the training hall.
They’re so self-contained, the Japanese. You think after all these years I’d be used to it. But at that moment, I just wanted to reach across the room and smash his face in. I didn’t, of course. Partly because my teacher Yamashita has trained me better, but mostly because it was what my visitor wanted, and why give him the satisfaction?
I called to the class to line up and they flowed into a long row with the unthinking ease of repeated practice. In the Japanese martial tradition, every training session begins and ends with a ceremony. It’s a reminder of who we are and what we are doing. That sounds like a simple thing, but my experience is that we’re all hardwired for distraction and delusion. The Buddha pointed that out. So, for that matter, did Jesus. I hate to have to admit the nuns who tortured me all those years in Catholic school were right about anything. Yet it’s true, and the need to focus on purpose and identity is a real one. So martial arts students in the dojo line up at the end of every class. They stand in rank order and face their sensei, their teacher.
That’s me.
I knelt in the formal position, carefully setting the white oak training sword down at my left side. I nodded and the students sank down as well.
The dojo captain, the most senior student present, called out “Mokuso!” the barked command to meditate. It’s just one of the more interesting contradictions of the art I practice. It was a command to be like empty vessels, bereft of ambition or aggression, an order to clear the mind and become one with all things. But, of course, every one of us in that room had spent the last two hours achieving, learning the finer points of killing someone with a sword.
There’s a lot written about the martial arts: all these complicated ideas about transcending the self, a dense thicket of words and description. It’s cool and calming, the promise of an experience of measured beauty, like water flowing. Alluring, but not completely accurate. Just so much clutter. Step out with me onto the hard floor of a practice session. No incense here, just the smell of heated bodies; no chanting, simply the grunt of effort and the thwack when a blow hits home.
And losing the self? Please. There’s sublimation, for sure. Training is a heavy yoke. But look around at us. The reasons we train are varied, but in the end they are deeply and depressingly similar. Skill gives us control and the illusion of a manageable universe. Achievement brings approval. Effort is penance. Safety. Love. Forgiveness. We chase what everyone else is chasing. We’ve just figured out a really complicated and dangerous way of doing so.
But it’s what I know. So that day when the lesson ended and I sank down into seiza, the seated posture for meditation, I tried not to think about the visitor. The feel of the hardwood floor, the warmth of my folded legs, the ebb and flow of controlled breathing, were all experiences that had been part of my life for so long that the sensations were old friends. I can move into seiza in any dojo in the world and feel I am home. OK, add belonging to the list of things we seek.
But I couldn’t give myself over completely to the experience. He was there. My Japanese visitor with the good bow and knowing eyes.
Visitors are rarely good news. Yamashita’s school is one with a daunting reputation. Martial artists train for years just to get a crack at being considered for admission. Visitors seeking to join us are eager and polite, but a pain anyway: there’s all that testing to put them through to see if they have what it takes. It’s necessary, but it interrupts the training process. And we’re all about training.
The uninvited guests are even worse. They show up at odd intervals like young gunslingers, swaggering into town, looking to make a name for themselves. They’re eager too, but not as polite.
And I get to deal with them.
Which creates another break in training. And I take my teaching seriously. I used to feel a certain apprehension when challengers sauntered in, asking for a “lesson.” These people are usually dangerous in a commonplace kind of way, and I’ve learned you should never underestimate their potential. It only takes one slip, one millisecond of distraction, to fall. So over time I’ve learned to leave all the worry behind and just get on with it, channeling my irritation into action. It’s not pretty, but at least it’s over quickly.
Like the cage fighter who came by one day, shaven head and square jaw, sleeve tats snaking up both arms. He had slabs of muscle covering him like warm armor. He wore the baggy fighting shorts of a Thai kickboxer.
“We don’t have to do this,” I told him.
He had a mean smile: “Sure we do,” he told me.
He shrugged his shoulders and rolled his head, snapped some tight punches out into the air and took a few test roundhouse kicks. Then he got ready to square off.
I came toward him, the oak sword in my hand. He gestured at it. “What gives?”
I shrugged at him. “We use swords here.”
His eyes narrowed and his mean face got even meaner. “Come on, man!” I could tell he thought I wasn’t playing fair, but that was not my problem. The dojo is an orderly place, and the austere lines of traditional Japanese architecture make it seem like things should be placid there. Another great illusion. It’s a box like any other, although it’s filled with dangerous things. He was a fighter used to being in a cage, but even in that place there are rules. In Yamashita’s dojo there are rules of a type but only one really important one: real fighting has no rules.
The bokken I carried is a hardwood replica of the sword used by the old warriors of Japan. The oak shaft is a symbolic sword and a real bludgeon-like weapon. You can kill someone with one of these things. I should know.
The cage fighter circled me warily, protesting. “No one said anything about weapons.” His taped hands were held
