Real Instructors Ought to Teach Their Students
by Themselves
The universal desire to become stronger, or at least to not be made a fool of by others, is not part of your reason but of your instinctive feelings. Shorinji Kempo is the highest form of self defense, and contains within it something not found in other martial arts. It is set up so that anyone who tries it can do it. All of you who are listening now were first attracted to this quality, and then you kept on going.
The basic curriculum is the way that we meet that desire to become stronger. If you practice in accordance with the Curriculum, you should be able to achieve at least Shodan. Once you are a Shodan, the path to making 2nd Dan is already opened up before you. It's the same as school, where you can't go to college without first graduating from high school. One day you look up and it has been three years, or ten years. hasn't that been your experience?
To instruct people so that their desires are fulfilled, and to have them discover for themselves what real strength is through a process of discipline - that will get your students enthusiastic. This kind of education can only be taught through your direct, hands-on involvement.
Leaving it up to your [senior] students is not good enough. After you return home from this seminar, you who are in charge of your own training halls ought to train your new people at least to the stage of 3rd Kyu.
It is in that kind of environment that real affection - perhaps it is better called love - between students and instructors will put down roots for growth. The bond is the result of face to face interaction, actually taking them by the hand and teaching them. Perhaps your lack of that sort of interaction has made a barrier between you and your students. They may even have come to hate and disparage you.
The excellence within Shorinji Kempo is entirely a product of the way in which we build up our own trust in others and get our partners to feel that same trust in us. We train at a level slightly above the student's; for a 3rd Kyu partner, we give them opposition at 2nd or 1st Kyu skill level. This is what I have been doing all along. I have been called a genius. I don't have any need to kick around with all these country kinds. Isn't it precisely because I have done so, however, that Shorinji Kempo has continued its existence for these last 30 years?
Traditionally, teachers of martial art in Japan set themselves up on high, emphasizing how strong they are, how important they are, and what a difference there is between themselves and their students. If their students catch up to them, their positions would be endangered; and that is why they set themselves up as if they were in an unreachable position.
There are fools who will have problems arise with their students and then complain in a corner that they were betrayed, but before they start complaining, I think they ought to examine just what their part was in the problem.
(August 1979, All Japan Instructors Seminar)
