2nd Kyu Essay

As I get closer to the end of the essays that I have already written, I can see the shifting and ripening of my perspective in Aikido and in my spiritual journey. Most of the challenges I encounter in Aikido have corollaries in my experiences with zazen. What is even more interesting is how understanding changes, from from "I don't get it" to "I get it", but from continuing to work with and refine an existing understanding.

this essay was written in June of 2006...

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Don’t Blink

My teacher once told me that Aikido is a martial art for marathon runners and not for sprinters. By my experience so far, this seems to be true. All the masters of Aikido or any art have worked at their craft for decades, elevating it to a level that goes beyond the ABC – 123 nature of the basic mechanics. I can also see it in my own technique. Although I could “do” Shiho Nage by the end of my second class, that feeling is not how it feels today and it is not how it will feel in 10 years.

Today’s world conditions us to want things instantly, and that can make this type of training difficult. But even if we accept that this training is a continuous process and that it will be many years before we reach a certain level, we can still be trapped. That distant level could become an excuse. It could lead us to act as though the training we do now is less valuable than the training we do when we are Nikyu, Shodan, Sandan, etc. This is ridiculous! What if we taught our children in this manner? What effect would it have if we started each kindergarten lesson by saying “you won’t really understand this for 10, 15, 20 years”? Before long many would stop trying, or feel inadequate

At my first seminar with Robert Mustard Sensei, he spoke about the natural power that comes from relaxing, using our whole body and keeping our center line power. He said “You don’t have to wait 30 years. You can get it next class”. I think I understand what he was saying. I also believe my teacher who said that Aikido is not for sprinters. These ideas do not contradict each other.

If we train as though nothing will happen until we are Shodan or Sandan, then we are neglecting the value of what we are doing now. We must be ravenous for the teachings, desperate to understand now, so that we are awake and receptive to insights that we may have, even if they are accidental. Much of this comes back to Shoshin (Beginner’s Mind). When we first begin, it is easy to keep this hunger, because everything is big and new and exciting. But what is more, beginners are not often deterred when they can’t do it. They want to try again. THIS determination must be deliberately cultivated as training and experience progress.

We enjoy Aikido or we would not be here. We want to get it. We want it to work. When we hit a plateau or are unable to repeat something done right our ego can get bruised. The bigger the ego, the bigger the bruise. “I SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO THIS! AAARRGHH!”. At that moment we are lost. Relax. Focus. Do it again. This is just # 11,264 out of a million repetitions we will do in our lifetime. Just let it come. Watch it closely. Be ready to see something.

3rd Kyu Essay

3rd Kyu was a very important test for me. In addition to doing the first precursor to freestyle, It marked a transition. Reaching brown belt really made me feel like I was in a long period of preparation for Shodan. There was an almost unavoidable sense of being goal oriented, as the Shodan test was such an important milestone in training. However, the period lasting from 3rd Kyu to Shodan is so long, it did become training, just to train. I found myself discovering and rediscovering my purpose in Aikido. This essay was written just as that settling was beginning.

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WHAT AM I DOING?

(Eyes on the Road)

My father was a very gentle and compassionate man. His perspective on violence had, by contrast, a character of finality. He had a number of stories about his time overseas in the Navy that illustrated this. He hated the idea of fighting in general, but I also remember him telling me that the only fair fight was the one where your opponent is unconscious and you can just walk away. I am certain that aspects of this influenced my interest in and the pursuit of the martial arts.

When I first saw Aikido, I was entranced by the power. The dynamic throws and the way uke seemed to writhe in pain when pinned. I wanted that power. Up to the point that I wrote this, my training has been focussed almost solely on the mechanics of the techniques. The more techniques that I could do, the more successful I felt. I hope this is changing.

Lemmon Sensei has always taught me that the principles of Aikido are the techniques themselves. As a result I have faithfully tried to develop my basic movements and apply them to my basic techniques. However, Mustard Sensei said something at his last visit to the Seikokan Dojo that helped me better understand the meaning behind Lemmon Sensei’s patient teachings. Mustard Sensei told us that the techniques we were practicing were not real. My first reaction was “Then what am I doing?”

One of the core messages Mustard Sensei was trying to teach us was that the techniques of Aikido are just tools to help us understand something. What? The easy answer is Aiki. The reason we practice the techniques is not to pin or throw and certainly not to hurt. It is to understand how to use our whole body as a coordinated unit. The goal is to establish a strong posture and move it while remaining in a strong position. We can then take uke to a place where their position is weak. As Mustard Sensei says, “We control uke with our posture”.

When we train, focussing on the end result of the technique, the pin or the throw, we are looking in the wrong place. We also tend to put our focus in the wrong place when we are uke. So often we resist shite or rush ahead, cheating him out of the feel. Worse yet, we sometimes fail to trust shite and focus only on protecting ourselves. Again, Mustard Sensei reminded us that “Uke’s job is to help shite understand the technique”. Uke must trust shite and give him their energy. I don’t think I really understood what that meant until this past summer when I had the chance to train with Mustard Sensei’s top student, Farshad. Through Farshad’s efforts as uke I could feel the appropriate positions and movements.

Our traditional understanding of power and martial contact says crush, resist, and destroy. Because of this we focus on the dynamic result of the throw or the pin. Mustard Sensei explained that this attitude is the work of the ego, and that ego blocks our path. If this is the case (and I believe it is) then answer is simple but difficult. My goal for the future is to become much less concerned about the end result of my techniques. Whether uke flies for me or not is not the issue. The relation of posture, distance, position and timing need to be my focus. If I understand my teachers correctly, getting these things right will ultimately bring me the desire result. (focus on the road, not the destination).

Now, if I can just figure out how to relax…

4th Kyu Essay

This essay has it's own preface. What I remember about this one however, is that it came at a time when I was been hit by the similarities of many of the teaching of budo.

the essay

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Stand in the Middle of a Teeter-Totter

Recently I attended a visitation for a young girl who had died in a car accident. Being a parent of two young girls, I found the experience particularly difficult. As I drove away from the funeral home, I became aware of a very strong appreciation for life that I am hit with immediately following such loss. It usually manifests as a deeper commitment to be a good father and husband. In that moment, I experienced a merging of two dualities, life and death. Duality is the great challenge in life. How do we reconcile life and death, strong and weak, hard and soft, or compassion and detachment?

In training, there are countless opportunities to encounter dualities. Hard and soft, or rather, tense and relaxed is a common one. Our goal is most definitely to be relaxed in our practice; but, with so much to be attentive to, this seems impossible. Robert Mustard Sensei noticed this in his past visits to our dojo, calling the lot of us a "bunch of gorillas". Showing some sympathy for this plight, Mustard Sensei also reminded us that without tense, we could never know relaxed. Although it was said in an almost off handed manner, that simple observation is the core teaching for anyone who seeks to study the way seriously.

In training, we will continually move between extremes. In our first attempts at Jiyu waza (freestyle) we will sometimes move too fast, and at other times not fast enough. As our pins develop we find a balance between a weak and ineffective pin and the arm wrenchers that test our training friendships. Most clearly we can see it in weapons practice. There it seems more difficult to get that correct distance. Close enough to breathe reality into the martial nature of the movement, but far enough to prevent injury. This interval is called Ma ai.

The translation of Ma ai is "proper distance". Ma means distance, and Ai means harmony. This is the same Ai as in Aikido (The way of harmony with energy). Harmony and balance seems to be the core goal of both budo and life. We want it now. That's our problem, fault, whatever.

What we must keep in mind is that we need to know and experience both sides before we can ever have harmony. Fast and slow, hard and soft, or life and death are all part of the same reality. We should not begrudge either, or we will never have Ai.