I saw this on a website for akido..
http://wadokaiaikidorichmond.com/blog2/
Thought I would just post it here, for others to see..sorry if you have seen it before.
The Killer (a martial parable)
Into the dojo one night walked a man who said he wanted to train. I asked him the usual questions. The first one is always, why do you want to train?
I expected the usual answers. I had heard most every reason in my time as a teacher, and I had well-practiced responses to all of them.
Instead, he said, “I want to kill someone.”
The certainty of his tone and manner made it clear that he was not joking. I told him that we did not teach how to kill. If that is why he wanted to train, he would have to seek elsewhere, but no true budoka would knowingly train him to that end.
I was prepared for him to challenge my decision. Instead, he merely asked if he could observe the class.
I was strongly inclined to show him the door. But how many others had come to the dojo and asked to observe? I did not know what had been in their hearts and minds. How many might I have turned away if I had?
He sat in the visitor’s section for the duration of the class. When we bowed out, he waited for me to step off of the mat and again declared that he wanted to train.
Again, I was inclined to refuse him. But why do we train? If all students were perfect, dojos would be empty. Perhaps in training, I reasoned, he would find a way to reconcile whatever pain and anger had convinced him that killing was his only solution. Perhaps he would discover the better way we all seek through training.
I told him that if he wished to train, he must first make to me a promise. He must train for one year, and attend every class. During that time, he must not act on his decision.
Every session, he was there. He trained earnestly, but it was clear that he was not physically gifted. He was clumsy and tired easily. The most basic techniques often seemed beyond him, and frequently he would be the last to finish a drill, alone on the mat, braving the scrutiny of the class as we waited to continue. It was plain that training was very difficult for him. But he never made excuses, and he never gave up.
My initial trepidation faded. He was in all observable respects a model student. But then, I would remember what he’d said that first night, and become wary once more.
I often wondered why he bothered to train at all. If he wished to kill someone, there were far easier ways to do it, as many methods as the mind can invent. I could only conclude that for him to train day after day to learn how to kill with his bare hands, his anger must be great indeed.
As the months passed and his skill increased, I began to deeply question my decision. Was I, by training him, complicit in his plan? Was I endangering my students? Often when I watched him executing a technique, I pictured him taking it to the extreme. On occasions when he became aware of my scrutiny, he would only bow and smile, and then continue.
His presence in class sharpened my own teaching. I was careful to stress that ours was an internal path. We did not train to do harm, but so that we might better understand how to resolve conflict without causing harm. By understanding and making peace with our own demons and frailty, we can better understand all people, and so make the world a better place. We train so that by the time we have learned how to injure another, how even to kill, we will have learned that there is a better way.
He knelt on the mat, listening, occasionally asking a question no more or less remarkable than those the others asked. I would choose my words carefully when answering, speaking from my heart, knowing more than I ever had what was at stake.
After six months, we held rank testing for the beginners. When I announced the candidates, his name was among them. He was as physically competent now as any of his peers. By accepting him as a student, even knowing what I did of his motives, I could not in good conscience hold him to a different standard than I did the others.
There were tests that afternoon that were more graceful, dynamic or technically proficient. But none demonstrated that authority that his did. Confidence and calm suffused his every motion, and his technique, though unexceptional, was sure and strong. For the first time, I watched him without thinking of his words to me that night he first entered the dojo. Measured against the hesitant, apologetic fumbling of his early days on the mat, he had clearly grasped something very fundamental, and had been transformed.
I joined the others in rising to my feet and applauding at the end of his test, longer and with more enthusiasm than we had for the others. He bowed deeply and with great humility in return, his eyes shining with gratitude.
We gathered at a restaurant that night to celebrate. After the meal, I noticed him sitting alone at the bar. I joined him and recited the well-rehearsed words of congratulation that I had offered to so many other students after their tests.
He thanked me for allowing him to train. He would never be able to repay me for what I had taught him, he said. But he wouldn’t be returning to the dojo.
My misgivings returned in a great wave of renewed dread. I had allowed myself the vanity of thinking I had succeeded in changing his mind. Since his test, I had been congratulating myself on a job well done, thinking myself a fine teacher. I became angry, as much at myself for my own blind pride and ego, as at him.
“Don’t do it,” I said. I would call the police that very minute, I declared.
He regarded me as if I was crazy. I became more angry, that he would think me so stupid that he could pretend he didn’t remember what he’d said, and that I would be so stupid as to forget it.
And so I reminded him of that night. That he had confessed that he wanted to train so that he could kill someone. That I had accepted him as a student despite it, hoping that he would learn the better way. I thought that he had understood, I told him. But now it was clear that he had learned nothing.
He stared at me as I spoke, and when I was finished, he laughed. The sound stung me. He saw that I was incensed, and quieted at once.
“He’s already dead, Sensei” he said. “We buried him this afternoon.”
He was a perfectly ordinary man, raised by loving parents, now with a wife and newborn child, both of whom he cherished. He had a respectable job and did all the things society requires of us to be judged honorable and competent, and obedient to its laws. But like so many of us who live in this world, he felt empty. He did what was expected of him but in his heart, he had grown to loathe what he felt he had become.
He had never been physical or assertive, and was easily intimidated by those who were. He did not call attention to himself, did not cause a fuss, endeavored to be considerate of others, even if it meant allowing them to walk over him while pursuing their own desires. He was a decent man, living a decent, dutiful, and wholly unremarkable life, resigned to mark time to his death.
“I didn’t want to be that man,” he said. Before he died, he resolved to see if he had more. If he could be more.
It had taken more courage than he had ever mustered to walk into the dojo that first night. If he was to train, he would do so with complete honesty. He would strip himself of his history and expectations. He would open himself to change. He would weather criticism and pain and injury and self-doubt, but he would not give up.
This is who he wanted to kill. The man he was, so that he could be reborn as the better man that his deepest heart told him he could be. His test that afternoon had been the funeral he had sought all his life.
“Now I know, Sensei” he finished. “I never was helpless. It never was others who made me feel and act the way I did. It was always me. And now, that man is dead.” He raised his glass. “May he rest forever in peace.”
I touched my glass to his, humbled. Since our first meeting, I had wrongly judged this man. His own words had set me on that path but out of fear, I had never bothered to seek beyond them. If I had, perhaps we could have avoided the misunderstanding.
But the confusion was never his. It was mine. He had come to the dojo with clear and honorable intent. In my hubris, I had failed to see that this man, whom I had judged so thoughtlessly, so harshly, and so wrongly – this man understood even better than I the reasons why we train.
He’d gotten a new job, my unexpected teacher, in another city. A better job, which he never would have had the courage to pursue if not for the lessons he’d learned in the dojo, he said. That is why he could no longer train with us. And before we said good-bye that night, he made me another promise, one that I did not solicit. Whether on the mat or off, he would continue his training, he said. Not for a year, but for the rest of his life.
We never know who will walk into the dojo, or what is in their heart. If we knew, would we train them differently? Perhaps it is in not knowing that we become better teachers, for then we are obliged to treat everyone the same.
If we are mindful and honest in our instruction, it will resonate with all students, just as mindfulness and honesty resonate with all people. If we keep our cups empty, we will more easily see what it is in addition that each student needs. In so doing, we ourselves are taught – student is teacher, and teacher is student. This remains the proper way.
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Chris
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