“The Art of Peace begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all that you encounter.” - Morihei Ueshiba
As the year comes to a close, it is helpful to remember that in training, and really in life, it is actually a process of subtraction rather than addition. We do not become strong by adding things to build ourselves up. We become truly powerful when we cultivate the skill of letting go. In Japanese, this process could be called bakyaku wo arawasu (馬脚を現す) or the process of “revealing one's true nature.” The Buddhist believe in this idea of honrai mu ichimotsu (本来無一物) or “Originally, there was nothing.” Honrai mu ichimotsu is a Zen reminder to free oneself from attachments and get back to “nothingness.” Nothingness is not apathy or being a nihilist. Nothingness and attachments are about freeing ourselves from the things that have accumulated over the years that we are desperately holding on to which are clouding our true natures. For each of us, the attachments and the natures we are revealing are different. However, what is the same is that we are all immensely more powerful and greater than we think, we just don’t realize it, yet.
When I was a student, Furuya Sensei would often admonish the students taking his ukemi by saying, “You’re too stiff.” Stiffness in an Aikido sense is when we tense our bodies out of fear or lack of training when taking ukemi. This stiffness affects how we move our bodies. A person whose body is “too stiff” cannot move with the technique which disables them from being spontaneous when being thrown. It is said that we can feel the confidence, or fear in the uke by how they grab us. Too much power or strength can cause the uke to get stiff which can be dangerous, and this overcompensation can also transmit the uke’s fear or lack of training. Therefore, the uke trains themselves to only grab strong enough to maintain the connection and give their partner the sense of a good attack.
In the process of carving the famous statue David, Michelangelo supposedly said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” Interestingly, in Aikido training it is essentially the same thing. It takes an entire lifetime to strip away all of our conditioning, preconceived notions, and fears and just move spontaneously without fear. Ideally, with each throw, we let go of a little something which gives us a truer picture of who we really are or reveals our true inner Davids. Miyamoto Musashi said, “Do nothing which is of no use!” Thus, in Aikido and in life, don’t build yourself up, learn to let go of those things which are of no use and learn to let go.
This is the last blog message of 2023.
Have a wonderful New Year’s and May Peace Prevail on Earth.
Sekai jinrui ga heiwadearimasu you ni (世界人類が平和でありますように).