Decide why you are going and where you are going
It's true for both apples and tangerines, but one always spoils first. After that, they start to rot beginning with those next to the first one. It's like an infection, or like cancer. What you all have to do, is to not be that first rotten apple or tangerine! And the reason is not because doing so will make you money, or give you prestige; that kind of thinking is already rotten from the core. This path I am commending to you is one that I have taken and experienced. Returned home after the war with nothing, I worked and built a dojo, then bought the equipment for it. I didn't have tens of students come to me from the beginning. I began with one or two; the first several years were an investment. To put it in an extreme way, you take a loss from teaching. Yet it's not a loss. I found pleasure in doing it. That's why I could do it with all may heart. If I had thought to slack off because there were only a few people, that would have created something different from what was actually created.
I have been using the phrase, "return to the origin," and you should all be completely clear by now about the motivation I had for starting Shorinji Kempo. Rebuilding yourself, you rebuild society. You also become happy, but it is fulfilled by our wanting others to be happy. To do so, someone has to open a path: Shorinji Kempo started as an attempt to make people who would open the path, or in a word, leaders. I have no desire to assemble a bunch of small fry. I've said this from the beginning. So it's the same for all of you. If you think this is something just for your benefit, or for your profit, you're dead wrong.
Things are better for me, but I want to make them better for others. For that purpose, I need a large vehicle. Having five on board is better than one, and I expect that having a hundred is better than five. To steer such a large craft, then a lot of other conditions have to be met. You can't jump to that point right from the start, so you just make sure you guide people and put in the effort required to go forward. Having an answer to some theoretical question of whether you can or can't doesn't matter! I have come this far thinking in this way.
When someone walks 10,000 steps, he can walk in circles or walk toward Tokyo. Why am I going, and where? These must be decided clearly at the outset. At this point all of you have a good idea of your direction right? Yet, when you come along someplace where the road is under repair or it's broken down, you scoot off to the side. Do you see what I'm saying? The initial goal was clear, but there is a danger of it changing along the way. Ultimately we need to maintain our beginners' hearts. We need to reflect over and over again on why we have done things.
(February 1975 Branch Establishment Seminar)
