a time, the young men grew to respect him, drawn by the bond between sensei and student. But their leaders watched with suspicion, their eyes bright and their hands fluttering as they murmured to each other in the throaty language of their home.
He was still an outsider, and while some of them trained with him, the group elders never fully trusted him. They demanded proof, a test of his effectiveness. It was a tradition from the isolated desert camps where so many had gotten their early training. The old teacher thought them foolish—such tests were wasteful. A good test was a dangerous thing, not to be undertaken lightly. And in an art that dealt with life and death, a flaw in technique would be disastrous. He felt contempt for the leaders—they were like impatient children eager to try new toys. They ran risks for no good reason. For men who sang the glories of an ancient way of life, they seemed to have forgotten patience. He shrugged inwardly, knowing it could not be helped. Their cause was not his. He was using them as surely as they were using him. The test would go forward as they wished, but he would shape it to ultimately serve his purpose, not theirs.
He had smiled grimly at their request. His face was a round one, although lined with age. His teeth were uneven and pointy, and his face was almost comical until you looked in his eyes. The more gifted of his students could feel the invisible energy roiling out of him as his anger flared in a brief eruption.
“You wish to see proof?” he had said, his eyes narrowing. “So. It is easily done.” He had selected his best students, pointing them out one by one with the iron-ribbed fan he habitually carried. They were solemn-faced, these young fighters, under the dual gaze of the sensei and the senior member of the brotherhood.
“To defeat an enemy,” the old man taught, “is not just to shatter his body. You must destroy his pride as well.” It was a dictum he had thought long and hard on. So he told them how they would go about the attack to prove themselves to the senior men.
In a crowded city, a kidnapping is strikingly easy to effect. And some of the men he trained had financed themselves in the lean years through just this means. When the targets had appeared, it was relatively simple. Their route was known beforehand. The panel truck pulled up and the targets were snatched away like so much walking laundry. The smothered cries and flurry of arms were swallowed up in the jostling noise of the streets.
But he had not come all this way merely to refine their approach to abduction. The targets—two U.S. servicemen—were delivered to an empty warehouse. A video camera recorded what followed. As their captors cut their bonds, the victims assessed their surroundings, rubbing wrists and eyes. The Americans scanned the ring of expectant faces. Their eyes widened as the fighters approached them—they were soldiers and sensed the approach of battle. The realization that they had been kidnapped for a purpose more sinister than ransom dawned on them and they set themselves for what was to come.
The council of elders reran the video to watch it again. Things of this nature should not take long, and the old sensei was glad to see that his students had learned at least that much. The attack against the soldiers had been unleashed with maximum force, like the great winds of his home islands that swept upon the unwary, churning the sea and sky into a maw hungry for destruction.
In the video footage, after the bodies lay broken and still on the ground, the old man saw himself approach. It looked as if he were checking for a pulse. The camera’s angle could not detect the paper he had slipped beneath one body. Which was as he planned. The footage ended and he left them to their self-congratulations and returned to his quarters.
The moon shone on him. His eyes captured sparks of light and glittered there in the shadows. He moved silently, drifting across the floor like the fog that gathered in the mountain hollows. He approached the sword rack. His daito, the paired long and short swords of the samurai, rested in their stands. The scabbards were dark and highly polished, but they felt warm as he touched them. The blades gave off an energy of their own. He could feel it. His ancestors told tales of weapons so inherently evil that they drove their owners mad. The old man knew of this ancient force, but he believed that it could be bent to a will that was powerful enough. His will.
His muscles were warm with the comforting ache of good use. But he knew his time was short, that the days burned away with finality. He needed to goad his victims into the trap while his strength was still with him. The video killings were the first step. Before he made the long trek to a strange land, the old master had pondered strategy for countless nights. His rage burned like an ember smoldering in the ashes. And, finally, a plan had crystallized, like some occult jewel emerging from a furnace.
The old man bowed before the wooden rack that held his swords. He lifted the katana, the long sword, and drew it from its scabbard. The blade was a milky white in the moonlight. The men he now trained had no use for the old techniques, and that was fine. The old man still had much to teach them. He made them into weapons of a different design. But he still held onto the old ways, and the discipline of his ancestors was both a challenge and a comfort in this strange place. He worked the blade through the darkness in exercises that were centuries old. The sword cut through the air again and again as his spirit fed on a new certainty. And, as that insight came, the sword sang a new song in the growing darkness.
With a final swoop, the katana was returned to its scabbard. Night spread like spilt ink and the camp grew quiet. The only noise was the rustle of leaves and the static-like chorus of insects. It had begun. He would test himself one last time. To revenge what had been lost. The old man closed his eyes and, motionless, could feel the silent weaving of his plan as it came together.
Yamashita says we’re surrounded by subtle vibrations—the energy the Japanese call ki that fills the world like an electric charge. If you’re adept, you can feel it buzzing in your head and playing along your skin. I’ve seen my sensei, a being alive to an invisible world, stop in mid-technique and let his eyes gaze inward as the surge of ki washes over him. And I’ve felt it, too, but not as intensely. The experience of ki is tactile and aural and inexplicable, all at the same time. But it’s elusive: for many of us, the sensitivity comes and goes. It’s just as well. Everyone needs a break.
I sat in a corner desk in the reading room of the Dharma House, logging in books. The air is still here. Not much aggressive energy. There was the low level hum of chanting from a distant meditation room. The scent of old incense drifted through the air, soft, diffuse and almost undetectable. For me, the press of ki is a thing most often associated with danger. And the Dharma House is a refuge of sorts, so I was off my guard.
A wealthy and eccentric Manhattan socialite had created the place as a center for the study of Tibetan Buddhism. I knew the head lama, a remarkable teacher and mystic named Changpa. Not too long ago, we had shared an experience that still troubled him—even holy men have nightmares. He had given me a job when the university let me go, letting me serve as a type of librarian for the center’s expanding reading room. It was a good deal for all concerned: Changpa was able to follow the Buddha’s admonition to be compassionate. I got to pay my rent.
Those who came to the Dharma House were different from the people I worked with in the dojo. Here, they were often fragile and frightened: thin, pale young men with scraggly beards; women with wet, wide eyes and drab, formless clothes. Changpa stretched his arms out in welcome to them and there was an almost chemical reaction when he did so. The tension in their shoulders melted away, their faces grew calm, and their movements less jerky. It was an amazing thing to see: the spectacle of human unfolding under the guidance of a master teacher. It was part of what I enjoyed about working there.
I was a seeker, too, but of a different sort. If Changpa was like a soft breeze, a nurturing wind to his disciples,
