Teachings,+The+Story+of+Love

=The Story of Love= (By Sam)(ael) (Return to Teachings) (Return to Wise Stories)

//There was once a great sensai in anciant Japan a thousand years ago. Back in the times when noble samurai roamed the lands not as warlords but as peace keepers, teachers, poets, and great ones. The sensai taught samurai and time and again turned out some of the best samurai. Even though he trained many who were from less wealthy or honorable families they eventually made great honor for themselves and proudly bore their swords until death. His requirements were very strict however.

A samurai hopeful would study and train with him every day for seven years neither seeing their family or allowed any of the privileges of the life they were training to live as samurai. Each day all of the oldest skills they would practice, again, and again, and again, and agina, and again, and again, and again for seven long years until they had mastered them. Nothing more he taught them but to make the Samurai code of Honor called Bushido flesh and blood a part of them.

Many did not remain or failed and left his Dojo without their honor. Time does not remember their faces or names. Even the people who lived then do not remember them. Now, though for seven years he trained each Samurai hopeful, few could he turn out in even his lifetime of a hundred years. Some few did stay and survived his lethal tests and almost cruel tasks and calmly knelt by his side until their seven years were up.

It is said that on the last day of those seven years the Sensai would send all of the younger samurai away and summon the single samurai to his Dojo. There the samurai would kneel patiently while his old master would carefully bring out a fine katana, the sword of the samurai. This Katana would eventually be passed down for generations, an embodyment of his very soul, the master would draw it once before sheathing it and giving it to his student.

The swords were masterwork gained at greatest expense. So bright and beautiful in the sunlight that they could blind the eyes, so strong and powerful that they could split rocks with the flat side, and so sharp that the samurai could perform the legendary sword test, 'cutting water' by dipping the blade in a stream without causing ripples.

As he gave the sword to his student he gave one last command. One final test. he simply said. 'Kill someone'. He would say no more but grow impatient by the moment as his command went uncompleted.

Some of his students would try to kill him as he commanded and he would mercilessly beat them, take their sword and send them away without their honor and without their coveted title. Others would with haste run into the nearby city below and slay a man. For their crimes they would be hunted and stripped of all their honor perhaps not understanding why their fate had fallen so. But a few chose another path and slit their wrists killing themselves because they loved the people more than their own lives. Those he saved. Those were the only samurai that left his Dojo with their honor.

As he had said from the time they had come to study with him their sword was their weakest weapon, made for only one opponent, their greatest and most feared opponent, to keep them seperated. And their greatest opponent was themselves. For an enemy cannot tempt any man as he can tempt himself. and enemy cannot destroy a man as he will destroy himself. Only a samurai of surpassing honor would be willing to kill his greatest enemy for the love of others.//

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