22 The Road I Walked Alone Dr Shinichi Suzuki N o matter what we look at, I think the first step toward the highest human ability is an effort to look at it correctly. Man's real progress, I think, rests on observing things while attempting to develop the ability bestowed only on mankind, to penetrate the truth of great nature, the logic of the heavens, the visible and invisible. Therefore, I believe it is very important for us educators to aim at fostering human beings to have this insight. Luckily, I woke, when twenty, to a phrase in a book by an early 19th century agronomist, Ninomiya Sontoku: "Read not ten thousand volumes; explore the logic of the heavens." From that day I followed this teaching to "penetrate the truth of great nature yourself, don’t just read books," turning my eyes to everything before me and to the natural world. Then, first of all, tall zelkova trees came into my eyes. I saw that their several thousand leaves each grew little by little, that each became bigger moment by moment. I began to marvel at them, thinking, "what is this?" And as I became aware, it was not that the leaves alone were growing bigger: all the branches and the big trunks, too, were growing thicker each moment. They were constantly growing and moving. I have changed into a being capable of seeing how the zelkova trees moved every instant. Then I considered what was causing such a wonder. I became aware that "it was the workings of life; it was the beautiful power of life given to the zelkova trees" --an awakening within myself to the wonderful workings of life. I thus advanced toward an ability to be surprised by the miracle of life. From then on, I turned my eyes to living things one after another, and marvelled at everything I saw. My eyes were open. This enabled me to know the great power and workings of life. Surely, it was a must to know the beauty of life. This became the most important question in my life. From age twenty on, I gradually mastered the habit of looking ever more closely at whatever I saw. Seeing how a baby drank the mother's milk and rapidly grew, I was no longer content to say that it was a matter of fact, but began to spontaneously think about what was causing such a wonderful thing. My eyes fell on the wonderful workings of heaven-endowed life. I became a person who experienced awe toward life as a truly miraculous fact. It is astounding for the world in general to have no questions about this fact of life, brought up with the commonsense which takes the place of thinking and which deems it "a matter of fact." I have often written in self-criticism, "Do not sleep in commonsense," I sincerely think that it has been important to me to foster "the ability to correctly look at things." In addition, another wonderful teaching to me since youth was that of karma which always finds a cause wherever there is a consequence. As I look back, the road I have taken since age seventeen or eighteen has been a life of pursuit for reading the logic of the heavens, the karma. In other words. I have walked alone while seeking its cause whenever I saw a consequence. The quest for causes became my habit. Then came a day when I almost jumped with consternation becoming aware of the fact that children the world over were growing with an excellent ability to fluently speak their mother tongues. What a superb ability every child is growing with, how is it possible, I thought. That day I talked to people: "Children all over Japan are fluently speaking Japanese." No one was surprised, but laughed saying, "Isn't that a matter of fact." Some even seemed to worry about me, thinking I was going mad. I thought it sad that they laughed without even heeding the discovery of such a grave fact. However, probably it couldn't have been helped since their attitude was deeply rooted in long-held commonsense. In the long long history of mankind from its beginning until contemporary times, children have always grown with an ability to speak fluently. How careless, may I dare to say, that no one ever noticed this fact that has constantly existed before our eyes. It was too much before our eyes, too much "a matter of fact," perhaps, for us to think about it, even while raising children to speak fluently. Since the day I was awakened to this most important fact, I have devoted myself to a study of the conditions and teaching method by which babies learn to speak. Probably I was the first to be shocked by a discovery of the high mothertongue ability of all children. I owe this discovery to Ninomiya Sontoku who taught me to read into the logic of the heavens. Over forty years since then, I have continued to study "the teaching method by which every child grows." Today, marvel at the musical heights to which we can guide children of four or five. Life's power, its workings-how unlimited and how wonderful they are. I came to know clearly that the force of the zelkova trees which fostered all of their hundreds and
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