“The way to experience happiness is to let go of all worries and regrets.
Being happy is the most satisfying of life’s feelings.
Reflect back on all the progress in your life and allow the positive, creative, joyous thoughts to outshine and overwhelm any sorrow or grief that may be lingering there in the recesses of your mind.
Happiness is waiting there in front of you.
Only you can decide whether or not you choose to experience it.”
by Toshitsugu Takamatsu, 33rd Headmaster of Togakure ryu nin-po
By the time that grandmaster Toshitsugu Takamatsu approached his mid-eighties in age in the early 1970s, he felt that attaining contentment in life was the point of everything we do in life, including training in the martial arts. He wrote this “Essay on Happiness” as a comment on what is truly important in life.
It should be noted that he does not refer to toughness, the ability to hurt people, or the thrill of conquering others in order to make oneself more important. This statement of the value of life is then the essence of martial arts training as seen from the end of the career of one of the toughest battlers who lived in the wildness of the war years of Japan.
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