Through the Eyes of the Master: A Conversation with Funakoshi Sensei on the Other Side

By Francisco Estévez

A Karate Do instructor is victim of a violent street assault that sends him into a coma. While unconscious he has a near death experience where he finds the profound happiness that eludes him on this earth. Reluctant to return to his body he is granted one of his most unattainable dreams: to meet the founder of Karate Do, Gichin Funakoshi Sensei, a figure who has had a remarkable impact on his life, deceased then for 41 years.

His dialogues with the Master will have a profound personal effect and great influence on his spiritual renewal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Aug 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483672106

Francisco Estévez

Whilst still in his adolescence, Francisco Estévez discovered in Budo the path that enabled him to channel his drive for inner development and self discovery. He joined the Foreign Service of Spain and continued his quest for knowledge studying in dojos in Europe, Asia and the United States. During his postings in Central America, he opened dojos first in Costa Rica and later in Nicaragua, teaching in both for the length of his tenure. Currently in Luanda, Angola, he continues his study of Karate Do. In 2003 he received in Tokyo the rank of 4º Dan, by Hirokazu Kanazawa Sensei.

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Copyright © 2013 by Francisco Estévez.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013913413

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 08/14/2013

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Prologue by Mario Cebrián

Introduction

The Beginning

Looking Back

Nervous Breakdown

The Assault

I Arrive At The Other Side

We Have A Mission

My Encounter With

Master Funakoshi

Masters, Instructors,

And Swindlers

The Dojo

Kumite And Self-Control

Sports Competitions

Kata As Expressions Of Life

Spiritual Dimension

And Hidden Powers

The Inner Master

I Decide To Go Back

The Message

Back To My Body

A Little Blue Crab

Epilogue

Brief Biography Of

Master Gichin Funakoshi

Dojo Kun

Shoto Niju Kun

Notes

Dedicated to Hirokazu Kanazawa, who made me realise that Great Masters are not a thing of the past.

And to that small group of people who, through the years, have enriched my life with their love and unconditional friendship.

To them: Thank you for always being there!

Original title in Spanish: ‘Mi dojo la Tierra’

Translated by Mayca Estévez

Edited by Andrew J. Dyson

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

From the time this work was published in Spanish ten years ago, both martial arts followers and non-followers have continually encouraged me to make it available to the English-speaking community. The project has been postponed countless times, mainly due to the time needed to complete it.

I am therefore very grateful to my sister Mayca who eventually took up the task and has successfully produced this English translation.

My gratitude also to my friend, Andrew Dyson, a very busy man who, however, always found time to patiently, chapter after chapter, edit this work.

Last, but not least, my thanks to my wonderful and patient wife Miwako who, from the first day she took up karate, has been my best student. Without her assistance, particularly during the time in which I had to combine my work with teaching karate, this book would never have been possible.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I have known Mario Cebrián,¹ protagonist of this story, for a long time. I know him very well. Our initial encounter took place in Japan, where he arrived before me with the aim of furthering his studies of Karate-Do.² In order to survive, he, like many other foreigners did with their native languages, was teaching Spanish to Japanese businessmen. When I joined the dojo³ where he trained, I had no idea that a fellow countryman was also practising there. Sharing nationality in an environment so different, even hostile at times, forged a bond between us. We soon realised that we viewed martial arts and life in general under very similar prisms. We found solace in our mutual company, which served to lessen that intense feeling of solitude and isolation that occasionally engulfs all Westerners living in the land of the rising sun. The many different situations we were to experience together through the years to come, first in Japan then in various different countries afterwards, significantly strengthened our friendship. I was desolated when he informed me that he had decided to move to the USA as the Japanese authorities had declined to renew his visa. He was not prepared, he told me, to return to Spain before having satisfied his thirst for knowledge about other countries and cultures, and he felt he still had much to see and accomplish.

Chance or, as he prefers to call it, destiny brought us together again just a year later, when he moved to Houston, where I had been transferred because of my work. He confided to me that he was really fed up with the harsh climate of the northeast of the USA and with the anti-Hispanic feeling he had encountered there, so he was now seeking a warmer environment, not just for his body but also for his spirit.

I recall his joy at opening a dojo in one of the semi-suburban areas of the city, and the tremendous enthusiasm with which he undertook, from the very first day, the task of imparting karate under the philosophy of our common master in Japan: ‘Karate-Do for all and for all your life’.

One cold winter morning, while we enjoyed a cup of coffee in one of our favourite cafes, he told me that one of his sixty-plus-year-old students had just won a great competition. When I probed him further about where this contest had taken place, quite surprised by such an achievement by someone of this age, he explained, with a gleam in his eye that betrayed a full inner satisfaction, that the victory had taken place on many different levels and that his student had not defeated other karateka.⁴ His triumph had been over the alcoholism that had dominated so many years of his life. That was the kind of champion he was interested in moulding.

To describe Mario Cebrián’s complex personality in just a few words is no easy task. If I had to highlight a trait in him, I would say that he is predominantly a seeker—one who also possesses abundant doses of nonconformity—who did not hesitate in breaking all ties with the world around him when he considered it had become artificial and vacuous. Obstinate to a fault, on occasions, the quality I have always most admired in him is his perseverance in pursuing the goals he sets for himself. A very good friend of his friends and thoroughly trustworthy, he will go out of his way to lend a hand in all circumstances.

I witnessed part of the events told in this story, and I regret the fact that my friend’s characteristic natural discretion kept me ignorant of the seriousness of the personal drama he was undergoing. But Mario is the sort of person who will not share his problems, not even with his closest friends or family, if he believes that, by doing so, he will add another burden to the one we all carry every day.

When I visited him in hospital where he was recovering from the street assault he had recently suffered, he asked me to help him to take some notes of something he wanted to remember in minute detail. I could hardly imagine the nature of what I was about to hear. It was equally surprising to see a somewhat baffled but elated Mario repeatedly having to break off from his story when overtaken by emotions he could hardly contain. At times, I too had to interrupt my note taking for the same reason.

Months after having been discharged from hospital, I put it to him that he ought to write about his experience and share it with others. He opposed this idea vehemently, saying, ‘And who do you think could possibly be interested in the tribulations of a karate instructor?’ or ‘Can’t you see, they will believe these to be the ramblings of a fool?’ It was not easy to make him see that, although some people could think like that, his experience had had such a positive and regenerating effect on him that it could possibly have the same effect on many others, and, if only for that reason, it was worth giving it a go.

Finally, I overcame his stubborn resistance when I offered to do the work myself since, after all, I had been the first person he had trusted with his extraordinary experience. I had taken abundant notes at the hospital, and I even kept a copy of the tape recordings of his story. Before I left the USA, we had long conversations on the subject as well as on the additional details of his life that I would need to complete my work.

The last time I visited him in the country where he now resides, I brought him a copy of the draft that would later become this book. He read it a few times and, after making a few adjustments and cutting out some parts of his dialogue with Master Funakoshi⁵ that he considered too personal, he agreed to its publication. The only condition he put was that his real name was not to be used as he could really do without appearing as an ‘enlightened one’ among the international community of karate followers, where he has many acquaintances and friends. He further contributed by writing the prologue and epilogue of this work.

I am sure I am right in thinking that, although what my friend experienced will be interpreted differently by each reader, it can, at the very least, stimulate all of us who have chosen Budo as a path to our inner soul, to reflect upon the enormous responsibility we all share to maintain pristine and pure the wonderful legacy we have inherited from the past, and which can so greatly contribute to peace and harmony among men.

PROLOGUE BY MARIO CEBRIÁN

Before I experienced the events that took place in my life and which are now the subject of this book, my knowledge of so-called near-death experiences⁶ was limited to what I had casually watched in a couple of episodes of the American TV series Unsolved Mysteries. The possibility that death was not the end of it all or of the existence of an immortal soul in each one of us, is a subject that had never gripped my attention or interest. My stance on these questions could be considered at the very least as sceptical, my existential concerns more focused on finding a meaning for the here and now. All that changed for me on an autumn night, and I would like to believe that something could also change for those who read this book whether adept at martial arts or not.

When I first related my experience to the author of this book, whilst lying in a hospital bed, overwhelmed by an unremitting emotion for what I had just gone through, I found him so knowledgeable and understanding on the subject that I was naive enough to believe that everybody else would be equally accommodating. How wrong I was! The few people with whom I would later share what was undoubtedly the most important event of my life offered all kinds of ‘rational’ explanations: hallucination, pleasant dream in an altered state of consciousness, semi-hallucinogenic experience provoked by the medication administered in the hospital, the brain’s natural reaction for having been momentarily deprived of oxygen, etc., etc. These reactions made me reflect seriously on the subject, reaching the conclusion that perhaps what had happened was meant just for me and that nobody else would ever understand it. So I decided never to speak of it again. Only the insistence and powers of persuasion of my good friend, who offered to write this book for me, eventually changed my mind. I have agreed for my experience to be told because, as he assures me, it could help other people that, like me, have either lost their way in life or perhaps find themselves among those dark shadows that seem to engulf us when we reach the conviction that our path on this earth has no purpose or value whatsoever.

How or what provoked this experience or the nature of the plane in which it took place are questions that have long since stopped troubling me. For me it was unequivocally real, and that is all that matters. Not only did it give me the necessary impulse I so badly needed to go on living in those faraway days, but it allowed me access to a plane of existence that not even in my darkest moments I could have ever imagined possible. I feel highly privileged for having lived what I did and am happy to be able to share it through these pages.

INTRODUCTION

The establishment of the Meiji era in Japan (1868) marked the beginning of a modernisation process for this society that would shake some of its most solid foundations.

The abolition of the Samurai caste,⁷ that would follow a few years later, did not bring about, as one could have expected of a nation that after numerous civil wars was finally enjoying a long period of peace, the decline of its arts of war, generally known by the term of Bujutsu. On the contrary, martial instruction, far from becoming extinct, prevailed as a key element of the integral education of the Japanese people who were not willing to condemn to oblivion a legacy so deeply rooted in their spirit and culture.

Books—that even centuries after having been written have continued to influence the thought and soul of Japan—such as Hagakure,⁸ where the highest ideals of the legendary samurai are embodied, or others published years after the above-named caste no longer existed, such as Bushido,⁹ have contributed to keep alive that martial spirit because they contain ethical guidelines perfectly compatible with the daily lives of the ordinary citizen in non-war periods.

However, the disappearance of the Samurai caste would be the key factor that would force Bujutsu, an elitist heritage of the warrior class until then, to forego its exclusiveness and slowly evolve into what it is today known as Budo, or Way of War. This new conception of the martial arts would enable its spread amid all social levels. Although, maintaining its intrinsic combat arts’ identity, the focus had now been shifted from physical supremacy when confronting an enemy to an inner awakening and spiritual development of its followers.

Decades later and once World War II had ended, the Japan-based United States’ High Command—which paradoxically had at first prohibited the Japanese people from practising their fighting arts¹⁰—was quick to realise the valuable contribution that the learning of martial arts could bring to troop training. It would be they who would be instrumental in the transmission of martial arts that, although initially meant for the benefit of their soldiers, would later propagate to all levels of American society. This, combined with a slow but steady pilgrimage of oriental instructors towards America, Europe, and the Arab countries, would hasten the spreading of Budo throughout a great number of countries worldwide.

As a result of this, today, in virtually every corner of the planet, people of different age, sex, religion, or social status go through a dojo’s door at certain times of the day and exchange their daily attire for a white garment in order to devote themselves to arduous martial arts training for an hour or more. If we were to ask each one of those people what is it they are looking for when they were drawn to follow this path, their answers would undoubtedly fall into multiple categories: self-defence, physical exercise, security, coordination, self-control, resolving self-esteem issues, Japanese etiquette and ritual, etc. We would probably also find, some unable to single out a specific reason, they have embraced Budo obeying that natural urge that drives most human beings to overcome the feeling of imperfection with which we are all born. However, were the same people to be asked about the benefits that martial arts training has brought into their lives, their answers, at least among those who have gone through the initial stages of learning, would almost inevitably be very similar, if not identical: a physical well-being accompanied by a feeling of internal harmony, which has meant not just a personal transformation but even a different way of contemplating and appreciating life.

One may ask why then the world of Budo is still today so poorly understood. Why do so many people still look at martial arts schools as centres of almost dark, sectarian, and destructive teachings? Why a legacy so pure and enriching to human development left to us by the masters of