Essays From The Master

In a bar in New Orleans that is no longer open a young man with long hair and torn jeans sits. A cane rests by his side visible but the man makes a point to take up as little room as possible. He does not speak loudly if it all, he keeps to himself, people look at the cane and the lack of bravado and assume the man to be no threat and likely retarded. The man has ordered one drink and has made it last hours and is now counting something, maybe the time, by turning the glass. The man does not appear to be paying attention to any of the people in the bar those that had noticed the man forget about him, that he was even there at all. On the dance floor a man stands out as does his girl, both are clearly too wealthy for this type of bar, both are drunk drawing the eyes of all. The drunk gets loud and shoves his girl; most people do not care and thus choose not to notice. The drunken man moves to hit his girl and a loud noise is heard as a glass hits the table, the man with the cane appears to have fallen. The sound breaks the momentum of violence and all look at the man with the cane, the cane slides into the feet of the drunken man causing him to move back from his girl. The man with the cane has to crawl to get his cane and this makes the drunken man laugh; the man with the cane starts to get up and in the process knocks into the drunk and he falls. The man with the cane stumbles, he rises causing the cane to hit the drunken man seeming to incapacitate him. Bouncers come and learn that no fight happened but a drunk was an issue but that the accident stopped it.

In the above account no kata were used, no stances or strikes were applied and yet violence was ended and the source of the violence was negated. This is the same as using the suggestion of movement to make a target move but used in a different way. The drunken man was not attacked rather the man with the cane simply was getting what was his and the effect on the drunk and his girl was what it was. The drunken man never felt a threat from the man with the cane and thus had no reason to defend himself against one that he felt beneath him; in feeling above another the drunk had no defense against what happened to him. If the target perceives an attack its body responds so that one need not attack, only create the idea of being attacked in order to attack without any use of force. Likewise by creating the aura of no threat one gives away nothing to the target to put the target on guard. Threat is a kind of fear, actual violence does not have the same impact that fear does because violence is finite the threat or fear violence causes can be infinite.

Martial arts and sciences are more than moves they are tactics that can be applied in infinite ways, they are a way not of violence or death but of personal harmony and preservation of life. In Kenjutsu one stands with a blade or boken and strikes, the force of the strike through the air has an impact all its own because it can be seen and felt by the one facing the swordsman. What is felt from the force of a strike is a phantom strike or cut and if it is done right the target will sense a wound even if there is no actual wound. With a phantom cut the wound is in the mind, which causes fear which the body feels as threat making other parts of the mind look for injury that can result in the mind creating pain when the body is not injured at all. One that grasps this concept is never without power and the ability to prevail over any situation if one has the will to use this concept.