Sensei told me then (as he had before; as he would many times later) that he had been an obnoxious, short tempered kid, full of self-importance. He said that he owed his perspective, his sense of purpose, and his skills to the grace of hard and patient teachers. In particular he told me about the Aikido teacher, O-Sensei, who took him as an apprentice until he died. He said that O-Sensei was a difficult man; iron-willed, sometimes impossibly demanding, with a temper like a thunderstorm, a deep commitment to the kami, and preternaturally clear insight into the hearts of those he met. Sensei said that often he didn't understand why O-Sensei turned him this way and that. But he learned, and he learned well. He was still learning from his memory of that time.

I asked him if this kind of relationship wasn't dangerous. Are senseis perfect? Don't they have character flaws? Wouldn't you learn those flaws or be abused by them?

"Lou," he said, "you don't study a teacher's bad points."

Megan heard most of our conversation from the next room. When she came back in, she asked me if I was going to ask Sensei about our earlier concern. ("Sensei," I would have had to ask, "aren't you taking a lot from us--your students? Can't you be more frugal? Do we always have to give you what you want?") I didn't know how to answer her, because in a way, I'd already asked. In the same way he had responded.

Sensei knew that he was inconvenient. He had told me that he knew there were parts of him that were not exemplary. He had said that I didn't have to take my lessons from those parts of him. I believe that by his actions and his manner of speaking he had said that, for myself, in the relationship between us, I was the ultimate judge of what his bad points were. I conclude that even though he wasn't going to be sensible by our standards, Sensei was very much in touch with reality.

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