"Donahue, John - Sensei" - читать интересную книгу автора (Donahue John)

swished quietly as he knelt in front of the class. Even in this small
action, there was a decisive precision. He gazed at us, his round head
swiveling slowly up and down the line.

Other than his head, nothing moved, but you could almost feel the
energy pulsing off him and washing over you. He was the

most demanding of taskmasters at the best of times, but today we were
all tremendously apprehensive.

Yamashita was wearing white.

In Japan, white is the color of emptiness and humility. Many of us had
started our training in arts like judo or karate, where the uniforms
known as gi were traditionally white as a symbol of humility. Most
mainline Japanese instructors I knew frowned on the American urge to
branch out into personal color statements with their uniforms. The
message was clear: a gi is not an expression of individuality. People
wanting to make statements should probably rent billboards and avoid
Japanese martial arts instructors. They are not focused on your needs.
They are concerned only with the pursuit of the Way. You are free to
come along. But your presence is not necessary.

You have to get used to that sort of attitude. In the martial arts,
nobody owes you anything, least of all your teacher. The assumption is
that you are pretty much worthless and lucky to be in the same room
with your sensei. You do what he says. You don't talk back, You don't
ask rude questions. You don't cop an attitude that's the sensei's
prerogative.

In the sword arts Yamashita teaches, only the high-ranking teachers are
eligible to wear white. Yamashita could. He had done so in Japan for
years. But he didn't do it much here. If he was wearing white today,
it meant that he was symbolically adopting the attitude that he was the
lowliest of students. Humility is nice, of course. The only drawback
here was that, if Yamashita was being humble, it meant that, as his
students, we were somewhere way down in the crud with other lower forms
of life.

As we sat there eyeing him warily, I heard some very quiet sighs up and
down the line: we were in for a rough workout.

You don't get in the door of this particular dojo without having
considerable experience and martial aptitude. In the first place,

it's hidden in Brooklyn among the warehouses down by the East River. We
occasionally have trouble with our cars being broken into and stuff
like that, but then a few us go out and spread the word that Mr.
Yamashita is beginning to get annoyed. He's been in the same location
for ten years and has had a number of "conversations" with the more