Of course, in our society, public knowledge is important in regards to dealing with mundane affairs such as earning a living. Some people misconstrue a martial artist who says that public knowledge is unimportant. These people say, “A zen monk told me that public knowledge is unimportant so I won’t go to school.” What the zen monk meant was that it can’t help you obtain enlightenment. All the knowledge in the world can’t help with that. Public knowledge can be called second hand information, that is it comes from others, but it does help you exist in society.

The following incident shows how Ittosai achieved ki, and what steps he took to find universal knowledge, the knowledge of his self. One day as Ittosai was walking in the mountains, an old man stepped out from the trees and said, “You cannot come into this area.”

The old man had a staff (not a bo, but merely a staff for walking), and blocked Ittosai’s path. Ittosai felt funny. He felt a powerful force coming from the old man and although it wasn’t an evil force, it was pushing him powerfully.
Ittosai said, “Well I won’t use this path. I’ll go the other way.” But even having said it, he felt funny. He was carrying two swords with real blades but his principal weapons were the two shuriken he had. Still feeling funny, he stepped back and told the old man, “I’ll go down to the bottom of the hill and go up another way. “

The old man replied, “No! You’re not permitted in this entire area.” Ittosai tried to move but he still felt a force pushing against him. He was about fifteen feet away from the old man.

The man came towards him asking, “You want to attack me, don’t you?”

Ittosai just looked at him, so the man said, “You’re not skilful enough with the sword but you have another skill. Use your skill. It doesn’t matter because I’m not your enemy, I’m your friend. Use your skill and try to kill me.’’
Ittosai judged the old man to be in his late seventies, he was slightly stooped. He decided to throw one of his shuriken but the old man just stuck out the end of his staff, impaling the end of the shuriken on it. It seemed that the old man knew exactly where the shuriken would land. The old man told Ittosai to throw another one, but Ittosai realized that it would be useless.

The old man said, ‘’What you did was to try to position me. Each person has a certain distance at which he never misses; it’s just right for the shuriken or knife to flip over enough to hit point first. You had positioned yourself and all your vibrations (ki) gave away your position. So all I did was to stick out the end of my staff in front of me because I knew when and where you would throw it. Can you throw your shuriken at a moving target and hit it?’’
When Ittosai replied negatively, the old man continued, ‘’You know why? It is because you don’t now how to centre all your ki below your belly button (tanden). There’s a way of centering it, then you must make it (ki) flow into whatever you’re going to use, sword, shuriken, etc. The ki must flow from the tanden.”

At this point the old man revealed that he was really a woman (a very great martial artist). It shocked Ittosai even more to find that a woman had defeated him. Before he could ask her anymore questions, she said, “Do you know why I live in the mountains?”

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(It was the custom it that time not to initiate women into the martial arts, unless they were nobility and even then, they only learned the naginata for household defense. It was unheard of for a woman to go out and be a ronin, skilful with the sword or stick, that was because of the Buddhist philosophy in Japan at that time.)

She told Ittosai how to practice. “Do you know the momo? (Peach, in Japanese.) Get one and balance it on your finger looking at how it balances, then throw it into a fast moving stream where turbulence will sometimes cause the heavy part to tip to the top. When it tips, throw the shuriken. When you can throw and hit the peach, that’ s when you will have it (ki in the tanden).”

Ittosai asked her how to do it. She said, ‘”You must do it from here (pointing to her tanden, two inches below the belly button). If you had thrown another shuriken at me, I would have captured it and that would have been it because you’re not that good of a swordsman. You’re good, but not good enough; I would have killed you with my stick.” With that, Ittosai started practising the sword.

She also said that when women develop ki, they are more steady than men. She thought that it was because they were more emotional than men, thus it took more effort to be calm all the time and hold the ki in balance, so that when they finally did achieve it, they had terrific control.

She also told about the key that opens the door to private knowledge. With public knowledge the key is a college diploma. If you have one, you’re recognized as knowledgeable. With private knowledge (universal knowledge) there is no such thing as a diploma. The one thing necessary in order to achieve private knowledge is so important that if you don’t do it it’ll make no difference what else you do you’ll never achieve enlightenment – is meditation. You must meditate or else you’ll never make it. Meditation is also prayer. If you pray and really believe, you’ll produce a physical state similar to mediation.

Prayer has a calming effect and that is the process of meditation – calming the mind. Physiologically, the best position in which to meditate in is the lotus position. If you use a mantra or sutra when you meditate, it makes no difference if you don’t know the meaning of it. For instance using NAMU YOHO RENGE KYO (the heart of the Lotus Sutra). The purpose of the mantra is to keep your mind in one place to help you achieve focus. It is a helping device to make your meditating easier as it aids in your concentration.

If you sat down and said to yourself, I am the greatest, I am the greatest, it would have the same effect as a mantra that you couldn’t understand. It would settle down to your tanden the same but the difference is that if you know the meaning of it you might begin to argue with yourself. As in the case of the phrase, I am the greatest, you will begin to argue with yourself. So not having a meaning for the mantra will cause you not to fight as much, you will accept it. The Diamond Sutra is the sutra of emptiness and is the most suitable for martial artists.

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In China, there was a school called the Tien Tai (in Japan it was Tendai). It was founded by a man named Tendai. He had a student who went to Japan and spread his teachings. Tendai achieved enlightenment in thirty years through chanting. The sutra he used was always on his mind. His student took about twenty years and then there was a man named Nichiren (a very controversial person), Nichiren is the man some Japanese claimed created the divine wind (kamikaze) that destroyed the invading Mongolian army (a great typhoon wiped out their fleet). He allegedly did this through chanting NAMU YOHO RENGE KYO. Nichiren had this ability. He could go on the mountain top or anywhere else and chant NAMU YOHO RENGE KYO very strongly and through it make the wind blow hard enough to knock down trees.

The Japanese government was afraid to kill him so they exiled him – but he came back. Finally he told them about a forthcoming invasion. He chanted NAMU YOHO RENGE KYO for fifty-three days.

It took him that long to gather enough energy to make the big typhoon come and destroy the Mongolians. This sect claimed that continued chanting of the sutra will bring you enlightenment, provided that you do it in a certain way over a prolonged time period (years).

In their temple in Japan (Sokogakai), the Lotus Sutra is chanted around the clock twenty-four hours a day. There is a terrific vibration coming out of the temple, has been for hundreds of years. The vibration moves down into a nearby valley, very strongly. They claim that an average person can get in touch with that vibration (tap its energy) by repeating NAMU MYOHO RENGE KYO.

Your body will act as an antenna and pick up the vibration. This Japanese man living in Japan was doing a particular sutra which creates magic. He had doubts about it’s power although he was doing it all the time. (Mr. Kim says that you must have this doubt. If you don’t have it, that little bit of doubt, it’s harder to train. Every body will reach the stage where they’ll wonder whether or not the sutra will work for them.) So one day a crazy person, running amuck with a knife went straight for this man. The man thought he might as well do his magic, he was training all the time, so he made a sign called naomi as the crazy person went to chop him. The crazy guy froze. He couldn’t move. The police were called and when they arrived, they figured they’d have to carry the crazy man away. The Japanese man told them to grab the crazy man’s knife and with that he took off the spell by reciting a sutra. Needless to say the incident made the man a real believer in what he was doing.

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Ittosai practised what the old woman taught him and one day while riding along the beach, a group of men forced him to stop his horse. There were nine of them, they surrounded him. The leader told him that he wouldn’t be hurt but that he must surrender his weapons, clothes and money. He would be allowed to keep the horse. Ittosai knew that he could break through them with his horse, but two things bothered him, first, that they looked like dispossessed samurai and, second, that if word got out that he had fled he would be thought a coward. He felt it his duty to make a citizen’s arrest and make it safer for society.

He didn’t know how skilful they were, but he knew that the leader was just waiting for him to dismount. Ittosai knew that the moment he dismounted he would have a suki and could be attacked. He would be vulnerable and they could cut him down.

That would be the only time he would be so vulnerable. He had to think of something. The gang surrounded him so no matter which side he dismounted on they would attack him. So he grabbed the saddle horn and rose up as if to get off the horse, at a left forward diagonal (naomi) and as he did so, the person in that direction came towards him (probably the strongest swordsman). However instead of dismounting that way, he gave a sudden leap, jumping off one hundred and eighty degrees from it, landing at his right rear diagonal, as he did, he drew his sword cutting off the sword-hand of that man. He ended up killing six of them and severely injuring three. He realized then that he didn’t have to depend on his shuriken and realized what the woman told him about the ki. Your ki surrounds you in an oval sphere and spins around you. You can feel it from your tanden and your tanden does the work.

He realized that she had been telling the truth because he had been able to get rid of nine samurai.

There was confirmation of this story. A man who thought a tobacco seller looked like a samurai commented on it to him. The seller admitted to being one. The man asked, “Why are you selling tobacco instead of being a man-at-arms?” The tobacco seller replied, “In the old days, I was young and rash and joined a band of ruffians. We used to make a hell of a good living waylaying people on the beach until one day we waylaid this certain person. This is the result, I lost my hand.”

He held up the stump where his right hand used to be. This man then wrote about the incident and that’s how they found out that Ittosai was just as skilful with the sword as he was with the shuriken.

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