"The self is the first thing, but not everything"
My Father was a kendo instructor at the end of the Meiji period. While I was still a brat kid I was put under instruction without ever being asked wither I wanted to or not. "Imagine I'm your father's worst enemy and come at me." "If you don't like it, come and get me." With phrases like that I had my lessons pounded into me. I also did judo. I did a lot of things, but in all of them anyone besides oneself was an enemy. Japanese who receive no other education could never be expected to consider the happiness of others. "Half for one's own happiness and half for the happiness of others," the greatest guideline of Shorinji Kempo; this philosophy was not born in Japan. It is not a product of Japanese education. It is my own saying.
A great authority on religion who was a university professor once said to me, "Sensei, you're a good man and a great man, but there is one thing about you that bothers me." "What bothers you?" I asked. "The phrase 'Half for one's own happiness.' Don't you think that putting oneself forward is a strange thing for a religious man, and a strange thing for an educated?" he replied. "Ignoring oneself and doing everything for the good of the world, the good of others'. That kind of saying sounds better. Teaching self concern is to totally out of line," he added.
I don't agree. People who do not treat themselves as important are strange, one's self comes first. But oneself is not everything. There are others. One should give half of one's consideration to others. If people would hope and seek for the happiness of others, wars would not merely cease at ones, but there would never even be a thought of one arising. Not to mention that disputes between husbands and wives and between friends and colleagues would cease.
The martial arts are not the way to create this. One cannot learn it merely by training the body. This is the lesson that, when I went to the Shaolin Temple in China, I was not so much taught as I was inspired to understand by the mural on the temple wall when I looked at it.
(Lecture at Kagami Biraki Ceremony in 1980)
