September 13, 2001

  • The Soft Way.  Let’s do it the Soft Way.


    Dr. Jigoro Kano, founder of modern Judo, was born in Mikage, in the Hyogo Prefecture, on October 28, 1860.  Shihan Kano never viewed martial arts as a means to display physical prowess or superiority. A pacifist, he studied them to find harmony in his dealings with others. In his youth Kano studied Ju-jutsu under Sensei Teinosuke Yagi, Sensei Hachinosuke Fukuda (Tenshin-Shinyo ryu) and after graduating from Tokyo University, under Sensei Iikubo (Kito ryu).
     
    His search for a unifying principle for the techniques he learned led Kano to Seiryoku Zenyo (maximum efficiency in mental and physical energy). To him, only techniques that saved physical and mental energy should be incorporated into a Do (from Chinese “Tao”, i.e., The Way).  The idea was to use the energy of one's opponent to defeat his or her aggression. He called his system Judo (“the Soft Way”) , and to  propagate it he founded the Kodokan (the "school to learn the way") at the Eishoji temple in 1882.  ...from A Brief History of Zen Judo


    Though Kano was a pacifist, he realized that if an enemy intended harm, death might not be avoided.  But the master of the Soft Way envisioned the death of an enemy not as killing, but as using the energy of the opponent to assist in his own suicide. 



    Like Ourobus, the ancient Gnostic symbol of a snake biting its own tail and representing the continuity of life,  the master would direct the deadly enemy to consume his own "tail", directing the enemy’s intent of death back upon himself, and thus fulfilling the continuity of death.


    What lesson can we learn from the Art of the Soft Way?


    1) Terrorists intend death and are prepared to die.
    2) But terrorists would prefer to chose their own way to take their own lives—intending death for us also.
    3) Understanding the Soft Way, we cannot change the terrorists’ will, but we can redirect the intent of death solely unto themselves.
    4)  Hence, we must assist all terrorists in this world into rebirth through self-contained suicide.  When they die, it will be because a) they have chosen the path of death, and b) we have redirected them to consume it themselves—alone.


    The greatest martial arts are the gentlest. They allow an attacker the opportunity to fall down.  


           –Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching


    To an outsider, when the art of Judo is exercised and it results in the death of an enemy, it appears that the Judo master has killed the enemy.  But to the Judo master, the distinction is critical: a life wasn’t “taken”—death has merely fulfilled itself.


    As we take it back to the terrorists around the world in the days and weeks to come, let us stay masterful of life and remember this distinction.

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