Ernest Cadorin
The Sword of Life and the Sword of Death
2020/01/04Choose Wisely
As practitioners of authentic karate-do, we often talk about how a non-violent solution should always be our first option when dealing with aggressive people. The incident I described in the previous post illustrates this ideology, and while writing it up, I was reminded of one of my favourite samurai stories.
There are several versions of this story*, but they all involve a samurai who encounters a monk and asks the monk whether heaven and hell really exist. The monk thinks for a moment, and then tells the samurai that he is too simple-minded to understand something so complex. Angry and insulted, the samurai draws his sword and moves to strike down the monk. The monk points at the raised sword and cries out, “Here open the gates of hell!”
The samurai pauses, and then slowly lowers his sword. The monk points at the sword once again and says finally, “Here open the gates of heaven.”
Such a dramatic end to an innocent encounter! And what a nice reminder that having good punches and kicks is important, but what’s more important is what we do with them – or in some instances, what we don’t do with them.
* A great version of the story appears in Sensei Konzak’s book Samurai Spirit.