Haiku Read Online Free PDF

to tell stories of my childhood. Even today, I cringe with humiliation as I recall how some of those stories seemed to embellish themselves.
    Self-awareness abandoned me, I would later say. But that statement was both self-pitying and untrue. Self-awareness did not depart of its own accord, any more than my stories embellished themselves. It was I who banished whatever challenged my new persona. I allowed adoring worshipers to gush about how merely being in my presence revealed the power of my
ki
. And each time I did so, I was strangling its very essence.
    My mother’s legacy of humility and sacrifice slipped away, a beautiful, hand-wrought kite carelessly released, as by a spoiled child whose parents would always buy him another.
    We do not value that which we do not earn. My mother’s kite of love still hovers, its string dangling. But it has flown so high that I must ascend the mountain of honor before I may reach for it once more.

21
    In the world of martial arts, innovators are viewed as inherently suspect; only those who practice the “old ways” are regarded as truly authentic.
    When I began teaching, the very concept of female studentswould have been unthinkable. In America, I maintained this barrier for many years. Such discrimination was looked upon as “traditional.” And, thus, elevated in status.
    I did not advertise—as in Japan, American students would find their way to me through word of mouth. My investors were soon repaid. That they continued to own a share of my “business” was a blessing. They handled all mundane matters, such as leases, suppliers of services, and payment of taxes, leaving me free to teach. Never did they so much as suggest any alteration in my methods or my standards. This I first took to be earned respect; later, as my entitlement.
    I changed nothing. I still refused to award “belts.” Students continued to advance solely through the hard-won respect of their peers.
    Nor did I permit my students to participate in tournament fighting, because preparation for such contests requires an entirely different concentration from what my style demanded.
    Only beginners were permitted to wear the gi. Once a certain degree of kinetic understanding was attained, all further training was in street clothing. Sparring was without regard to size or age. In life, one cannot select one’s opponents.
    “War” is a word commonly used in America to describe a sporting event. But when attacks are announced in advance, when the combat occurs within an arena, this is not “war.” By the time I learned that war between nations was subject to rules—the Geneva Conventions come to mind—I had already seen such rules violated so casually that I had learnedthe truth of war. The victors make the rules, as they later write the histories.
    Other styles concentrated on their rules. In my dojo, we trained to become the victors.
    In tribute to the harsh brutality of my own childhood “training” in the temple, I would never accept children in my school. Though I never relaxed that rule, barring females from training was less suited to American culture. Eventually, female students became part of the life of my dojo.
    Only in hindsight did I understand—and come to accept—that what I had viewed as incorporation of two cultures under the same umbrella was nothing more than the domination of my own ego. What joined the two cultures was not the study of martial arts; it was the study of
my
teachings.
    “Water seeps through spread fingers,” I would tell my students, leaving them to interpret what I myself did not understand. When the fingers are opened
intentionally
, the seepage becomes an unimpeded flow. This is why I call my demon by its rightful name: an invited guest.
    My “adaptation” coincided with the beginning of what I later recognized as my final descent from purity. For reasons I lacked the insight to understand, the female students were even more eager than the males to sit at my feet