TO THE READER
A root that stops drawing water does not simply rest. It begins to kill the tree it was meant to feed.
We tend to think of loyalty to a tradition as a matter of guarding it, walling it off, keeping it pure. Mitose taught almost the reverse. The surest way to destroy something you lo...
TO THE READER
The most valuable thing a man owns is sometimes the thing he did not reach for. And the surest way to fail a test is to know you are being tested.
There was a document that changed the course of an entire art, and it spent part of its first afternoon in a waste basket. This was not ...
TO THE READER
A man decides he is ready to die, and instead of despair, what fills him is calm. Not resignation. Something closer to freedom.
We spend enormous effort avoiding the one outcome that is certain for all of us, and in the avoiding we make ourselves easy to move, easy to frighten, easy...
TO THE READER
Two men can stand in the same place and see two different worlds. One sees walls, bars, and hard men. The other sees beauty, and means it.The difference between them is not the place. It is the seeing.
There was a man who had lost his freedom, his name, and very nearly everything el...
TO THE READER
There is a comfortable place you return to without noticing. A favorite technique. A preferred side. A distance where you feel safe. You have rehearsed it for years, and it feels like mastery.
It is not mastery. It is a bubble, and you are living inside it.
The trouble with a bubble...
TO THE READER
You can know a thing perfectly and still be unable to live it. This is one of the quiet tragedies of being human, and the martial arts are full of it.
There are men who can explain peace with such clarity that you weep, and who cannot get through a single afternoon without conflict....
TO THE READER
There is a particular kind of help that arrives from a direction you were not watching. It comes from someone who owes you nothing, who belongs to a different camp, who has no stake in whether you succeed.
When that help comes, most people are suspicious of it. They start looking fo...
TO THE READER
Most people, when they love something, protect it from the truth. They build a version of the story that flatters them, and then they defend it for the rest of their lives.
There is another way to go about it, and it is much harder. You go looking for the people who can tell you tha...
TO THE READER
A man sat in a prison cell for a crime he did not commit. He could have said so. The truth was on his side, and there were people willing to fight for him.He did not fight. He told the people around him that he was guilty. He said it plainly, and he let the verdict stand.
Hanshi has...
Kosho Chronicles Issue #20
To the Reader
The void is something that is nothing. And something that is nothing can be everything.
Sit with that for a moment before you read any further. If it makes sense to you right away, you are not thinking deeply enough.
Kosho Chronicles Issue #19
To the Reader
You could never touch Mitose. He always touched you.
I watched this happen over and over. Someone would reach for him, try to grab him, try to strike. And he was never there. Not because he was fast. Because he was already somewhere else before they started.
Kosho Chronicles Issue #18
To the Reader
I push my students hard. I want them to become so much better than what I could conceive them being. I push them constantly toward perfection. And I do that for a selfish reason.
If they get better, I have to get better. That is the only way I can stay ahe...
