“As a samurai, I must strengthen my character, as a human being, I must perfect my spirit.” – Yamaoka Tesshu
Often times, it is easy to “think” we know something before we really do. In training, a difficult opponent to defeat is what we think we know.
Yamaoka Tesshu was born in 1836 into a samurai family and began studying swordsmanship when he was nine years old. He would eventually become one of the greatest swordsman of his time.
However, before Yamaoka Tesshu became a prolific swordsman, he was a young and brash student of Zen who traveled the country looking for instruction. One day, he met Ogino Dokuon of Shokoku-ji temple. Desiring to show his enlightenment, Tessu said, “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received.” Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing and just hit Tesshu on the head with his pipe. Tesshu instantly became angry. Dokuon admonished his so called enlightenment and said, “If nothing exists, where did this anger come from?”
Later, when Tesshu was 28 years old, he was defeated by the sword teacher, Asari Gimei and became his student. Tesshu was younger and bigger than Gimei, but he couldn’t overcome his teacher’s strong mental state. These daily defeats forced Tesshu to train harder than he had ever before. Tesshu did nothing but train and meditate and he trained so hard that he would sometimes awaken from a dream and force his wife to hold a sword as he worked out something that came to him in a dream. After almost two decades of diligent training under Gimei, Tesshu reached a place of true enlightenment while meditating. Later that morning when Tesshu went to the dojo, he once again challenged his teacher to a match. Looking at Tessu’s face, Gimei said, “there is no need.”
At some point or another in our lives and in our training, we will all be confronted with adversity and sometimes not just once. This might be a harsh reality, but if we can accept this reality then we can use it as means to develop ourselves. True mastery is the polishing of one’s spirit and that can only come as a result of daily diligent training.