The characters/ideograms mean, “Through-body-eye.” The first character means, “Pass through; avenue; traffic; commute,” the second character means, “one’s station in life; person; somebody,” the third character means, “eyeball.”
This is used by Sensei Michael C. Clarke in his personal dojo down under and reflects one of his tenants of his philosophy, i.e. “To remind him to look beyond the superficial of karate, to apply not only common sense, but good judgment to when it came to things he was asked to do or believe.”
As a further explanation as to why Clarke Sensei chose this term for his philosophy the following quotes is presented, “I (Clarke Sensei) came to understand that the karate world is full of people with agendas, with beliefs and opinions: sensei was asking me to look beyond the words people use, and to pay more attention to their actions.”
I also liked his statement, “People today are all too quick to ‘Consume’ karate, but few seem able to ‘Digest’ it.” He goes on to comment about the necessary ingredient to achieve “Insight,” i.e., Emotional Intelligence. EI in that one must achieve the ability to monitor, critique and be open to their own emotions, to label them correctly and to use them to guide our thinking and behavior, i.e. Tsushingen.
When I contemplate Clarke Sensei’s term I can see why the title was, “When you look, what do you see..?" It smacks for many of the ken-po goku-i, i.e. the eyes must see all sides, where the literal meaning is just the cover for that book for it is about seeing beyond the “Cover” of the book that is karate. All sides is more metaphorical in nature where we must see the side of an adversary, the side we hold and the side that the tribe requires of its members and as they relate to others outside that tribe.
It is about seeing all the sides of our socio-emotional self. The sides of the human, monkey and lizard for us and our adversaries let alone for all those we encounter in our lives. It is seeing things that are outside our cultural belief systems and learning to recognize, accept and learn those other cultural beliefs in an effort to create a balance, i.e. a person’s unbalance is the same as a weight.
When folks consider a person’s unbalance they tend toward taking a person down through disruption of their bodies stability regarding their weight and gravities influences. Little do they consider the weight of one’s mind or mental mind-set/state. You can unbalance a persons mind-set so that avoidance of violent conflict is achieved.
This term and Clarke Sensei’s philosophical perspective regarding how we see when we actually look, i.e. like actually actively listening over just hearing, to achieve a fuller life and a fuller understanding toward that philosophy we gain from the practice of “True Karate.”
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