Thread: Shirata Rinjiro
View Single Post
Old 06-01-2011, 11:25 AM   #8
Alberto_Italiano
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 296
Offline
Re: Shirata Rinjiro

Quote:
Allen Beebe wrote: View Post

Here is a quote that I think typifies my remembrance of Shirata sensei:

Patience and gentleness are power
Nothing is so strong as gentleness,
nothing so gentle as real strength.

Power is so characteristically calm,
that calmness in itself has the aspect of power,
and forbearance implies strength.
Perhaps I am too susceptible to intellectual stimulation, and regrettably inclined then to read it through my own filters - for the good and wrong parts they may have both.

I think this Sensei, without any claim to speak on his behalf of course, was implying a thing that he did not state.
Because what he says is so true - but - but - but you don't begin with it, you arrive at it.

When you are in a fight, at first you are frantic and forceful. Only when the holistic experience of fighting as a phenomenon in itself is engraved into your mind as something composed of brutality, once you get acquainted with its night and thunder and its fire and flames - then you start mastering it.
Fire doesn't intimidate you any more. In any given situation, you not only have an arsenal of options, but you can foresee what is coming, becaus eyou know how the thunderstorm behaves.

then you are calm, you are self confident - you know that whatever an attacker may throw at you, you have been already there.
But, first, you need to have been there - many times.

Omniscience under fire comes only by a long attendance of fiery volcanoes.
  Reply With Quote