Tips and Icebergs
As you know, the iceberg is supposed to be 10%, or 1% as some people say, on the surface, and the rest is hidden. The method of presentation, it’s not the only one, is to present just a small proportion and people can find out the rest of the iceberg. In this method of teaching, a number of illustrations or stories are given, but they’re meant as, so to speak, seeds to work on. Unless they change our lives, then they’re just entertaining stories. I’m telling some of these stories, because some of them have been helpful to me, and so I have confidence in them.
It’s necessary that like a seed, it should go into the ground. You know the Parable of the Sower in our Christian Bible, and there’s a famous painting of the ‘Sower Went Forth to Sow’, which has been adopted as the crest by one of the most famous Japanese publishers. It shows the sower with the pan of seeds in his dressing gown, but that’s not in fact, the way you sow. You make a furrow in the ground, you put the seeds in. So this is one of the riddles, one of Christ’s riddles, to which he didn’t give answers.
It’s one method of presenting by throwing out many different things. For one of them, perhaps, the ground will open – be opened, perhaps, through a crisis, and it will receive one of those seeds. In the seed, there is a potentiality, which can grow without limit. From that tree or plant, other seeds can come without limit, it can grow. It has to be received; it has to be something which can change our lives.
Supposing we are living under a dictatorship, a ruthless dictatorship, to which we’ve been perhaps, sent by our country. Now, you see something very pathetic, but, perhaps, I can help by breaking the law a little bit to relieve that terrible suffering. Well, now I do so. Then, I hear that the police are looking for the person who did this. Being successful, the stress has been relieved, but they’re looking for someone. They can’t find me, I know that – but I hear that they are making inquiries about someone else whom they don’t like. Perhaps they’re going to arrest him. Now, what do I do if they arrest him?
I asked the wise, old minister, perhaps, of the embassy. He said, “Well, of course, you’ve done wrong – but as a human being, I must admit, you’d be right. But if they arrest that chap, you can’t do anything.” You feel, “I should go and say that I did this.” He said, “No, it won’t do any good at all. They never let a man go once they’ve arrested him. It would simply mean two of you dying in jail.” You think, “Well what am I going to do? If I go home, I may spend my life thinking that, owing to something I did, another man has been arrested and died.” If I stay, and think, “Well, if he is arrested I’ll confess, although it does no good – then I shall be living on top of the high diving board, every morning thinking, “Perhaps today, perhaps today, torture and death.” Only two alternatives, both of them agonizing. Now, something has to arise, which is different from those two. We can say, “There are only two.” Either you can escape without saying anything, or you can make up your mind, if he’s arrested, you’ll confess.
There’s something else. The purpose of these stories is that there’s a seed in them, which if it’s developed, we will let a time like that suddenly show itself. We can say, “Oh, we don’t have crises like this in our lives,” – but we do. We all have these moments of agonizing, and important, choices when both sides are equally disastrous. We don’t know what to do. We choose one side and always, we have the agony of knowing about the other. Somebody is in great distress in this country, I haven’t got the money to save them, but I could swindle my huge company, which makes enormous profit. They would never know, and I could pass it across. If I do so, how can I ever speak about honesty, again? If I don’t do it, I’ve left that person in this terrible distress. Such things happen, and these stories have something in them.
The tip of the iceberg, as we know, is ice and below is this huge mass of ice, which is concealed. The tip’s not quite the same as the iceberg in nature, some’s got a bit of snow on it, might have a couple of penguins or a polar bear. But, in general, it’s the same above the surface and below the surface.
With human beings, human icebergs, it can be something a little bit different, a little bit deceptive. A British civil servant, I knew, was very high up – a man of great integrity of character, a very hard worker, a very good fighter. He retired and in his retirement he decided to develop his interest in Christianity; he attended the church, and did a tremendous lot for it. Then he discovered that there were some things in the service, which were not strictly traditional.
With his enormous energy and integrity, he discovered the right way of doing the service, and then he sought to impose this on the congregation; which he finally did by giving everybody hell, until they finally agreed. The vicar and the congregation said, “All right we’ll do it your way, it’s no doubt right,” – and he won. Then he fell very ill and a friend visited him in hospital. The friend saw this fighting face had now become peaceful. The old man was facing his imminent death, brave as a lion, and he said, “You know I feel I’ve fought the good fight. Now I feel my life is coming to its close, and I’m in the Lord. I’m in the peace of the Lord.”
Well, of course, when anyone says anything like that to you, and you’re rather busy you can’t help feeling, “Well I’d like to test this peace.” So the friend said to him, “Well, Dan old boy, it’s just marvellous, that here you are in bed. Supposing while you’re laid up they decide to change the service back again.” He said, “No, they promised me. They wouldn’t do that.” The friend said, “They could, couldn’t they?” He said, the old man reared up, and said, “I will fight it with every fibre of my body.”
Well, this is the case where the tip had become peaceful; but underneath that iceberg, there was the old lion spirit, and this can be quite a deceptive thing. Then sometimes you can get another case. I know nothing of the history of China, but I was once pushed into a sort of discussion between four journalists about modern China, Chairman Mao’s China. They had asked my other colleague at the BBC at the Chinese service who was an expert on Chinese history, but he fell ill at the last minute and they said, “Well you know Japan, take me to China.” I said, “No, I don’t know. I only know two things about China.” They said, “Well that’s enough, you go on.”
Well I went there, and it was a bit embarrassing, while they talked about modern China. The chairman introduced me, saying, of course, “He was Japanese service, but I’m sure he’ll say very interesting things to us about China,” and I just had to just simply nod while they talked about modern China. Then they spoke about the communist system, “Was this unique, or…” Well, then I produced one of my two facts. I said, “Well the fact is the whole communist system was tried in China, several hundred years ago under Wang [Shenzi?], and it only lasted about 20 or 30 years.” Then there was dead silence as if someone had quoted the Bible. Then the discussion went on and I just looked judicial.
Then they came to say about Chairman Mao, could he become the new emperor? Then I produced my second piece of information. I said, “Well, you see,” as if I was thinking about a lot of facts, and then I chose one, I said, “Now you take our game of Western chess, it’s played between a White King and the Black. They fight and one side wins. This is the way the dynasties have replaced each other in the West. One king fights another king, but in the Chinese chess, they don’t have two kings. It would be inconceivable to the Chinese mind that a conqueror could become a new king. No, the contest is fought between the king and a general.”
Well, then there was another hush, I didn’t have to say any more. They couldn’t be two emperors, that’s inconceivable to the Chinese mind. At the end of the discussion, the chairman thanked us all and thanked me. He said, “We felt most impressed by your scholarship. We felt it was only the tip of the iceberg, but…” [laughter] Well, there are a lot of cases like that. We’re swimming round holding up a little chip and there’s no iceberg underneath it. The visible form can be very convincing, but there may be no iceberg, it may be just a tip.
Now there’s a Japanese farce, a traditional farce; they’re played between the serious Kabuki players. It’s generally about one of the local lords, who’s always depicted as an absolute fool. It’s very democratic. Anyway, in this one, the local lord, he wants to go to the red-light quarters, but he’s completely under the domination of his wife. So one day, he says to her, “Enough of my dissolute ways, so contrary to the Buddhist teaching. I’m going to change. I’m going, every week to sit all night in Zazen.” Now in the winter, they brought in from China, the long robe with a hood to keep out the cold. His wife said, “Oh, I shall be looking in on you.” He said, “Oh.” Anyway, he gets into this robe at the beginning of the night, and she sees him into it. Then they know she’s going to just see her sister for 10 minutes, and the lord does a switch with his servant, and he says, “You’ve got to sit here all night in this robe while I go out.” The servant has to do this, and he sits there.
She comes back, she looks in, she sees this figure, in perfect form. She gets rather impressed. At about 2:00 in the morning, she comes in with some tea and she says, “Husband, it must be terribly cramped under there, just break a little bit and have this tea.” The figure doesn’t move. Well, then she begs, he says, “No.” “You can have just a tiny little break, they do in the monasteries, they have tea.” Well, of course in the end she pulls the robe, and she sees it’s the servant; so it all comes out. Well, then she sits in under the robe. He comes back in the early morning drunk, and he sees, as he thinks the servant sitting there, he says, “I had a marvellous night. I’ll tell you all about it.” This thing just sits there. [laughter] He begins telling, he says, “You needn’t sit like that now, it’s all right.” No, she just remains there. He begins his story. Well, we can see under the hood when it’s lifted up. He doesn’t notice, because he’s drunk and he’s telling his story. We can see under the hood; but I won’t tell you what happens when the coat comes off.
The point is, there is this form, perfect form of meditation. In the first case, the lord is doing it, to get an advantage; in the second case, the servant’s doing it, because he’s got to; and then the third case when she’s sitting there, it’s a demon. Now this is used as an illustration of ways to practise Zazen. One can practise it to get an advantage; one can practise it because one feels one’s got to; and one can practise it, sometimes, because one is a sort of demon. The form is the same. In one of the old, Zen texts – it’s about 600 years old – a very arrogant warrior official comes to ask a teacher about learning. He says, “I am a Buddhist and I feel I ought to know more about Buddhism. I propose a course of learning. Can you advise me?”
The teacher looks at him, he knows this is a very arrogant man. He says to him, “When a man has worms in the stomach, and he eats, the nourishment goes to the worms – they’re nourished, but the man himself becomes thinner and thinner and finally dies. The first thing is to take a medicine to get rid of the worms; after that, you can eat and digest the food.” He said, “You have got the worms of arrogance in you. If you study the Buddhist learning, it’ll nourish the worms, it will nourish your arrogance, you may become a famous scholar. That will be your arrogance. You yourself will get thinner and thinner, and finally you’ll die.”
The things which are acquired, even the holy practices and the holy knowledge can nourish our arrogance, sometimes our spirit of gaining an advantage, impressing people, and they can get stronger and stronger. The first thing the texts say, is an inner purification. This is the first thing that must happen. I might write a book about Buddhism, about non-egoity, but if I start signing copies of that book in the front, I’m going against the whole spirit of the book, which is about non-egoity – and now, I’m signing my name. Well, in that way, I’m showing that, however much I may know about it, and write about it in the books, I haven’t realized any of it in myself. In those cases, the teacher or the writer is teaching something which he doesn’t intend to teach. He’s showing what he really is; the book isn’t showing that.
The learning, the text says, can nourish our egoity. We should know one small thing well. There’s something to be said for the chorus girl, who when asked, “Would you like a book for Christmas?” said, “Thank you, I have a book.” There’s something to be said for it, to have one book and really to know it. There’s a saying, “If you have a restless character, you may have to do a lot of physical work. If you have a bad character, you might have to study deeply.” Well, I’ve done a certain amount of study, it doesn’t follow that it’s the other way round, that if you’ve done lots of study, you’ve got a bad character.
There’s an account of a man who used to recite the sutras. He was very good at this. There’s a certain way of pronouncing these sonorous, Chinese monosyllables. If the posture is right and his nervous relaxation is right, and the pronunciation is right, it can happen that it will produce a sort of vibration in him. Well, he was becoming expert in this. It said that the sutra reading fills the whole body. He thought he would try a rather little-known sutra. He used to read this every night. He read it in this way and finally, even if he read it very, very quietly, he could still experience it.
He used to do that. Then he had to make a trip for his company to a small village. When he arrived there, he did his business, and he had to stay overnight at the inn. He found to his horror, that due to some mistake, the sutra had not been packed. He didn’t know this sutra by heart, or anything like it. He immediately sent out to try and borrow a copy, but he failed. The temple was shut, the priest was away, and he didn’t know anyone in the village who had this rather unusual sutra.
He telephoned his teacher from the host’s room in the inn. He noticed while he was telephoning, that there was a man there, an arrogant handsome man, who was looking at him very contemptuously, as he was explaining the problem over the phone. Well, then the teacher said, “Well, you won’t be able to read the sutra, but instead of that, meditate deeply on the meaning of one or two of the phrases of the sutra.” He said, “I’ve always read the sutra. I feel it with the whole body. This is what I’ve always done.” The teacher said, “Well now you’ll have to do the other, going deeply into the meaning.” He rang off and thought, “Well, that’s what I must do.”
The arrogant-looking man went out, and after 20 minutes, after evening meal, he came back with a text wrapped in silk. He presented this very politely. He said, “I couldn’t help hearing your telephone conversation, and I remembered that a relative of my wife is an expert on the sutra. She reads a lot of them. I thought she might have this, and I went around there. I’ve got it and I’ve brought it for you. Please, use this for your recitation. Leave it in the inn, and I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
The reciter was very impressed and touched and thanked the man. The man bowed and went out. But just as he went out, he just turned his head and the reciter got some little uneasy feeling in that side glance; but anyway, he had the sutra. Then he was talking to the landlord who said, “You know that was most unexpected. His nickname here means ‘the devil’; and he’s tremendously opposed to Buddhism. He hates Buddhism. It was most unexpected that he should come.” “Why is the devil giving me my sutra?” That night he didn’t recite the sutra. He meditated deeply on the meaning. He knew that was what the devil didn’t want. The devil wanted him to recite it, full of his arrogance as he’d always been at reciting it so well, and not thinking of the meaning.
Another point is our judgement – are we judged by spiritual teaching, or perhaps a spiritual teacher? We judge on our own basis. There are a number of stories on this. There are also some from the West. We can’t recognize what we don’t have ourselves. How could we? We must have it to some extent ourselves to recognize it.
Some French scientists at the beginning of the century decided to test whether an elephant was musical. They went to the zoo, and they took a violinist with them who played a bravura passage from a composer who was then thought by the scientists to be one of the top composers of the end of the 19th Century, Monsigny. The violinist played this. The elephant listened for a bit, and then yawned and turned away. The scientists concluded the elephant is not musical. As a matter of fact, today, pretty well no-one’s heard of Monsigny. Most of us, if a bravura passage from Monsigny was played to us on the solo violin, would probably turn away and yawn. Perhaps the elephant had the best of it. The scientists weren’t particularly musical. They just chose a name that happened to be fashionable at the time, whose music, that we now know, is very poor. They concluded, because they were not musical, that the elephant couldn’t be musical.
In the same way, people who lacked spirituality would not be able to recognize the spirituality in the future. We can be put off by something irrelevant. I’ll give an example from my own experience. A Judo man was very expert, extremely expert of a particular small branch of technique. He was very, very good at it. He wasn’t an official teacher, but he used to go nearly every day to the Kodakwan; and he would practise there, and teach people who wished to be taught. He had something a little bit vicious about him. He used to not injure people. He never injured anybody, but he would hurt people just a tiny little bit. Those who practised with him had this experience. He would just hurt a little bit, no damage at all. Most people didn’t like to practise with him although there was so much to be learned from him.
After this experience, I thought, “No, I don’t want to learn from that man – he’s a bit vicious. But he’s very good at technique, you could learn some technique from him that would be difficult to find elsewhere. He’s so expert at that. But, no, I don’t want that – he’s vicious. He might infect me with his viciousness.” Then I think, “Am I ever vicious? No, I can’t be, because I’m disgusted by his viciousness. I don’t know. I might be. I might infect him.” Then I decided to practise and learn from him. It was an unpleasant characteristic of his, but it had nothing to do with learning Judo. I realized I was being put off by something quite irrelevant.
In the same way, people coming to a spiritual path have to decide what it is that they want, and not be put off by things which are entirely irrelevant. Things from outside can put us off; things from outside can encourage us. While they’re from outside, it doesn’t really solve any problem at all. An accountant who comes every year to do my income tax, he brings a printer and calculator. He sits there going through the papers while I try and work on the translation on the other side of the room. It would go ‘buzz, buzz’. You think, “Well, that’s the last.” There’s silence for a bit and then, ‘buzz, buzz’. You get on somehow but it’s extremely annoying. He was rather perceptive, and he said to me, “Every time this buzzes, you’ll be paying less income tax.” [laughter] Suddenly, it all changed. ‘Buzz, buzz’ – very good.
All those things are from outside, and a solution from outside is no solution at all. These things are not necessarily very elegant, but the illustrations can be striking. A stray dog runs up to the stone steps at the back of your house, and makes a terrible mess there, a fearful stench. You go out and look at it, “Oh.” Then you get some flower petals, and you scatter them on top. “Isn’t that beautiful?” – but all the time, there’s a terrible stench. Now this is a solution from outside, by putting something outside on to it. It seems to solve the problem. It seems to make something beautiful, but all the time, you know it hasn’t. There’s this terrible smell that invades your house. The real problem hasn’t been solved. The treasure has to be found in our own house, not brought from outside. While we put things on top, while we have outside thoughts and concepts and influences, we will never be established.
Most of us stand upright by looking at these verticals in the walls. While they’re upright, we’re balanced. They make special rooms in which these verticals, the doors and so on, are slightly on a slant; and people fall over, because they’re aligning themselves with what they think are vertical. The trained Judo man, whose balance is internal, isn’t affected at all. Most people align themselves from something outside. There’s no harm, perhaps, physically – but spiritually, if we do that, if we align ourselves from something outside, it’s always unstable, always liable to collapse when the outside environment is twisted or abnormal. The purpose of the teacher is not to provide you with true verticals to align yourself with, but to develop the inner sense of balance in yourself. We have to find something within ourselves.
When the Shinkansen, the so-called bullet train first came in Japan, it was a great triumph of technology, and a national triumph also. All the kids heard about it. They arranged from the country villages to have parties of children, so that they could ride on this train. Well, a teacher told me, one such party was arranged, but for some reason, some oversight, it was not explained to the children that they were going to ride on the Shinkansen, which they’d seen in so many pictures and photographs. They got on this train, and then they were shooting along and then they saw another one on another track, and the children all crowded to the side of the train, “Look, a Shinkansen. Look, a Shinkansen.” The teacher said, “Boys, you’re in the Shinkansen. This is it. You’re in it. You don’t need to look at that one over there. Look at what you’re in.”
There’s a treasure in our own house, which often we don’t see. We can say, “Well, how can there be?” One of the Indian stories is the merchants in some of the towns when India was the richest country in the world, were very strict about business ethics, and one man cut some corners. Well, then they used to stone them, throw them out of the city, and stone them; not kill them, but stone them and drive them out. They took everything he had, and they told him to stay outside the city, and held back his wife and child, and threw stones. A little boy, a son of one of the big merchants was there. It’s not often you get the chance to throw a stone at a grown-up. He picked up a sharp stone and threw it. It caught the man on the face, just missing his eye, and the blood poured down. Then they released his wife and child, and they all went away.
Now, he’s got nothing. He’s penniless, he’s disgraced in the sunset, the dying sun. He’ll have to go to the next city. He might have some faint hope of an uncle somewhere, but it’s a total destruction. As he hangs his head and looks down, he sees a gleam, the ray of the dying sun makes a gleam in one of the stones. He bends down and he picks it up, and it’s a great jewel. The rich merchant had a ring with a big jewel in it, and in the excitement he must have knocked it somehow, against the brick or something like that, and it fell out. The little boy, not looking, just grabbed the sharp stone and threw it.
There is a Japanese poem, “The stones which were thrown at me, when I picked it up, one of them was a jewel.” Now, this comes again and again. There’s something hidden even in the terrible experiences we have which, if we have spiritual sight and discrimination, we can find. I read a little bit from a translation about a book, which I did translate all except this little bit. It’s in the first Zen reader by Satsang. This little bit didn’t get translated because the publisher was in such a hurry, and he thought it was getting too long.
There’s an old saying in the Zen school, “When you come to pick them up, the very stones are gold. When the eye of the heart is open, then we see rightly that the shattered tiles that have been dropped on the road are shining with a gleam of gold. In our everyday life, to recognize the true worth of every little thing, every tiny fragment of what we are using every day to respect it; that gives life real meaning. In the daily life of Zen, everything is to be made pure, and exact, and elegantly simple. In our conduct, going, staying, sitting and lying down, as we say, we’re never to think of anything as trivial, but to find a great meaning in it. In using one’s personal things, we mustn’t use them casually, or forgetfully or wrongly or mistakenly, they must be used rightly. These days they talk about consumables, which of course is alright; but it’s not good to use, for profit, the consumables to acquire economic advantage for oneself.
Higher than use for profit is loving use of the things in the right way. It means to love the things we use. Even so, to love things because they are pleasant, because they suit me, still does not yet get away from self-satisfaction. There has to be proper living use. Then for the first time, there’s life in the handling of the things, and that’s a very fine thing; but it’s not yet outside the sphere of practical wisdom, we have to go further, and come to good use of things.
Now, for the first time, we come to follow the nature of the thing itself, when we use it, and we come to live virtuously. Again, one step, we must come to pure use, we must purify the things when we use them. Now, it is that their religious meaning appears. Nowadays, it’s fashionable to use phrases like ‘cleaning up society’, but it’s when we try to make things pure, uncontaminated, infinitely clear and noble, as we use them, that the seeds of religious life are sprouting.
Again, a step, we must come to spiritual use, to spiritualize the things as we use them. Now, it’s not just a thing, not just a material substance, but it’s of spiritual nature, spiritual essence, and it becomes radiant. When we pick them up, the very stones are gold. The thing is a blessing, is precious. Instinctively, we find a gesture of reverence in ourselves.”
The sort of example that’s given: we shave every morning from the true face imperceptibly – there’s a little sprouting of beard. Now, if I don’t shave that, then I may look very smart, I may be wearing evening dress, but every time I move my head, it will rasp against the hard edge of the collar. It’s very uncomfortable. I think, “Oh, well, I won’t wear a hard collar. I’ll wear a very soft cashmere scarf.” Then you catch it on that, and I find little bits of fluff all over my face. What a relief it is to shave the face clear. Now, one of the teachers said, “Use the sharp edge of criticism to shave the conceit from the true face” – when we’re shaving, to feel we’re shaving away the conceit and the prejudices.
I sometimes have to translate Japanese poems in the texts which I translate. They’re not so easy. Then some kind friends tell me what someone has said. He said, “In one of those translations, he’s got neither of them are absolutely right. That’s an elementary grammatical mistake in English. Poor old Trevor. It’s not that he doesn’t know Japanese, he doesn’t know English.” Then I think, “Oh, that’s a trivial point. It’s colloquial English.” I disregard it. Not at all, I pay no attention to criticisms like that. But gradually I think, “Well, if you look at some of his translations, they’re pretty careless. Aren’t they? As a matter of fact, he wouldn’t know a poem if you hit him over the head with it.” My whiskers have sprouted. I must shave them off with the sharp edge of that criticism – a great relief.
This cloth, it was quite a good cloth once, but it hasn’t been cleaned and it hasn’t been ironed, so it’s got these persistent creases in it. Well, our minds are acquiring creases and dirt all our lives. However you drop it will always have the same shape. This other one’s old. It’s not quite clean, but it’s been washed and it’s been ironed. It can take any shape – it’s free. Now, our minds fall into these creases. “I always do that. No, I never do it. No. This, yes!” “I will look at things scientifically”. And then other people say, “No, it’s to feel, to feel – that’s all it matters.” Then a very intellectual man says, “Some people are all for life, life; but I prefer reading.” These are creases and the spiritual training is purification and then ironing with a hot iron to take out the creases, then it can fall into any form.
There are a few other examples and I’ll just throw one more – perhaps the most famous poem in Japanese, is one of these very short ones:
“The old pond. A frog jumps in. The sound of the water.”
This is perhaps the most famous poem, and the whole of Japan resounded with it. It’s said that one day the poet was walking on the same path, and he happened to pass this old pond. He looked and he saw some frogs that seemed to be hanging about. Well, this is an example. When we do something great or good, there’s a tendency to want to repeat our effects; but the thing is to go. They say, “Do good,” and it’s added to that, “Do good and go.” I’ve even heard it in the form, “Do good and run.”
I’ll read the conclusion of one of these. Bukko, who was one of the great masters who brought Zen to Japan, he was a very short, a little man. The story about him, it was this. His pupils were mainly warriors, and at that time they were greatly respected men of commanding physique, and they rather despised little men. The teacher was persuaded to perform the esoteric ceremony of the Treasury of Space for 100 days. When he first went into the hall, his height was marked off against the pillar. When he’d done the 100 days he was four inches taller, so he was much more respected by the pupils. That’s the story.
Some scores of years later, another priest who was also very short, was told this story. They said to him, “How would it be if you perform the rites of the Treasury of Space, and then you would be four inches taller?” The priest said, “If I perform the rite of the Treasury of Space, how should my stature increase by four inches? It would more than fill heaven and earth and the four directions.” The enquirer said, “How can that be?” The priest said, “In me, there’s no long or short. When long and great, heaven and earth put into it, still do not fill it. When short and small, the tip of a hair can contain it. This is what is called the Treasury of Space.”
At a temple where I used to go to sometimes, Shoji-ji, one of the great training temples, the head monk told me, (I heard a lot of things), “If your mind’s disturbed, or for instance, you’re very bored, take a very slow deep breath until your lungs are quite full, then just hold it just for a second, then very slowly let it out.” Some Judo men are trained to observe the breath. On another occasion when I was, as I thought, saying some rather interesting things, I noticed that he was very, very still; and in this hall, at the moment, I seem to feel the hall itself is… so I’ll finish here. Thank you.
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