"Counting other people's sins, doesn't make you a saint." - unknown

Long ago Sensei showed me a rather harsh review of his book Kodo and something he said stuck with me all these years.  He said, "It takes a tremendous amount of courage to create something and very little courage to criticize it."  Martial artists can be critical people, especially as beginners, but as one progress in their training humbleness ensues.  Humility and humbleness are the real indicators of one's "true" ability.  The reason why is that the more one trains, the more they see how small they are compared to the bigger picture and how little they really "know." There is a saying in Buddhism, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."  How can one be ready if all they do is criticize others and point out every little flaw?  I am a very judgmental person and I consistently work on it - it might even be my worst character flaw.  Here is something that I use regularly in my own practice to help keep me in the right perspective.

Like me, every person is good and only doing the best that they can. Like me, every person is suffering and going through their own stuff.Like me, every person human and human beings make mistake.

Every person deserves kindness, compassion and forgiveness - just like me.

Life is too short to be unhappy.  Give people a break...they are doing the best that they can...me too.

Simplicity that is deep understood

To get good at Aikido really isn't that hard.  We make it hard.  To get good is to simply apply these principles: Rigorously drill the basics Maintain a regular consistent practice schedule Pay attention to what is being taught

Santiago, Jorge and Javier arrive from Spain today

The first of our guests will begin to start arriving today.  Please come to practice and make them feel welcome.

The proper way to grab

Lately I have noticed that many of the students are not grabbing the opponents properly.  This could be due to the possibility that they are unaware of the correct way to grab in Aikido.  The proper way to grab is to use the tenouchi.  Tenouchi (手の内) means the inside of the hand.  To grab using the tenouchi means that the emphasis is placed upon the pinky and ring fingers which form an imaginary circle with the thumb or more importantly the thenar eminence at the base of the thumb.  Now this doesn't mean the middle finder and pointer fingers are not used - it just means they are "de-emphasized" as the primary grippers (In the West we tend to grab more with the pointer and middle fingers).  The tenouchi style is the same method for holding a sword but in Aikido we also emphasize the "connection" by keeping the palm in connection with the opponents wrist or arm. How one grabs is important because the orientation of the grab will dictate how power will be not only generated but also used too and therefore creates the option for which technique is used.

Your attitude determines your altitude -John C. Maxwell

The one thing which cannot be taught is attitude. I read this and thought of you... ATTITUDE by: Charles Swindoll The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.

And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes.

Please take care in what and how you say things, do things and most importantly how you think because your attitude determines your altitude in not only the dojo but in life too.

Are you prepared?

"Victory favors neither the righteous nor the wicked. It favors the prepared." - Unknown Regardless of what martial art we do, the training gives us options.  If we don't train regularly, how will we be able to take advantage of the options?  Humans are different from beasts in that the beast knows only one thing and only has basically one option - whatever is in its nature to do.  What differentiates us as humans is that we have a mind (consciousness) and thus have the ability to choose.  But, how can one choose from the plethora of better options if one doesn't have any?  Before anyone can walk away, they have to know that they can.  In order to change, one has to be prepared to do so.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown"

Last night I saw this piece Al Jazeera about the iemoto (hereditary succession) that was really done well.  The story follows a 30 year old  young man who is in college in Canada and who is in line to become the next head priest of his family's temple.  He is line to become the 24th generation head priest of an 800 year old Buddhist temple in Kyoto.  The story deftly illustrates what it must be like for some to inherit such a huge responsibility (something I know a bit about).  I was struck by how supportive his siblings were toward his plight and how two of them were ready to step in if he ended up turning down the position.  The position of head priest or hereditary grandmaster comes with a heavy price.  A line from Shakespeare's Henry the IV adequately describes this young man's struggle, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."  I totally get it. Watch the 25 minute documentary by following this link: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/viewfinder/asia/2013/06/2013625112631305367.html

Is your mind full or mindful?

Question: What should my state of mind be when I do Aikido? Answer: One's mind should be in a state of calmness.  In Buddhism it is referred to as being in a state of equanimity.  In swordsmanship it is called the "non-abiding" mind.  In sports, it is called, "being in the zone."

This place of equanimity is the highest state of training.  One might say it is the goal of training.  The non-abiding mind simply means that one's mindset is in a place where it does not stop, but that can be a bit too allegorical.  This idea of equanimity really means that one's mindset is to do nothing more than merely observe and to definitely not "react."  From this place of observation, one can act accordingly.  This place of the non-abiding mind is where one acts appropriately and therefore mindfully.  To react is to become aroused and thus act mindlessly.

By reacting we generally choose poorly.  All of us have experienced this at one time or another.  For instance, we have all gone to the market on an empty stomach and end up making bad choices or getting our feelings hurt and lashing out at other people.  The objective of training is to give us options.  By being in a place of mindfulness we can better chose the appropriate action.

Thus, we can see that mindfulness is the goal of training.

Japanese cultural festival at Pacific Asia Museum

Sunday, April 12, 2015 Activity Schedule of Japanese Cultural Festival Silk Road Story Time: 10:30am & 11:30am Art Activity: 10:00am - 12pm Spotlight Tours in the Galleries: 11:00am & 1:00pm & 3:00pm Japanese Minyo folk dance, performance by Kotobuki No Kai: 12pm Manga Drawing: 1:00pm - 2:00pm Contemporary Japanese folk music, performance by Minyo Station: 2:00pm Calligraphy Activity: 3:00pm - 4:00pm Japanese calligraphy and watercolor, performance by Shoran: 4:00pm

USC Pacific Asia Museum is located at 46 North Los Robles Avenue, Pasadena, California 91101. (626) 449-2742.  http://pacificasiamuseum.usc.edu   Open Wednesday - Sunday,10 am - 6 pm

The Cherry Blossoms are beginning to bloom in Japan!

Generally, the blooming of the sakura or cherry blossoms signals that spring has arrived.  This year, Japan had an unusual amount of late snow fall which causes the sakura to bloom later.  The blooming of the sakura is a big deal in Japan.  The daily weather report starting around March tries to forecast on when the sakura will bloom.  When they do blossom, people flock from all over Japan to see them.  Every park has a season long (1-2 week) event where people camp out and party while sitting under the cherry trees.  This is called hanami or flower viewing.

さまざまの事おもひ出す櫻かな Samazama no  koto omoidasu  sakura kana

How many, many things They call to mind These cherry-blossoms! -Basho

The cherry blossom is a favorite motif in Japanese culture.  It is said that the beauty of the sakura is interrupted by its short life span and that the falling flower is reminiscent of a head being cut off.  This imagery brings home the impermanence of life and how we are sometimes cut down in our primes.  This impermanence is the driving force to live our lives in the present moment and well because we don't know how long it will last.

Are you ready?

When we take up a stance this is referred to as a kamae (構え) in Japanese.  The kamae is the physical ready stance or posture that one takes when facing off with an opponent.  The kokoro-gamae (心構え) is the posture one takes mentally and physically.  In Aikido, one's kokoro-gamae should be that of harmony.  Nothing should disturb this harmony.  Not even the attack.  The first stage in any altercation is to create harmony - harmony within ourselves and harmony with our opponent.  Before the attack, we are in harmony with our selves and when we are confronted, that harmony still remains and we then harmonize with our opponent.    This is mindful movement.  Anything else is mindless.   

Zen story about anger

Zen story: Yamaoka Tesshu was one of the greatest swordsmen of his time and was a layman who had almost embraced true mastery in Zen. Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.

Desiring to show his attainment, he said: “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, and no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received.”

Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.

“If nothing exists,” inquired Dokuon, “where did this anger come from?”

Mastery takes many decades if not a life time of study and perseverance.  Any person who says, "I am" is probably not.  Aikido is the same way.  To master it is to realize its greatness.  In realizing its greatness, we are realize the vastness of what we don't know and are humbled.  It is like the parable of the rice stalk from Kodo: "The young rice stalk stands straight, proud and strong.  As the rice stalk matures and becomes wiser, it "bows" its head towards the earth in humility and respect."  So true indeed.  If one wants to show true mastery, don't talk about how much you "know," but instead demonstrate how much you don't know with humility and humbleness.   

Basics, basics, basics

In 1958, the Green Packers were the worst team in football with a 1-10-1 record. In 1959, the team hired Vince Lombardi as the head coach. On the first day of practice, Coach Lombardi called the team together and held up a football and simply said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” All the players, being professionals and who had played football their entire lives, looked around quizzically. Lombardi paused for a moment and explained, “As a team last year we were horrible at the fundamentals of the game of football. Nobody here knows how to block and nobody knows how to tackle. All I saw last year was grab, grab, grab!” From there he outlined his strategy for the coming year, “What we’re going to do now is go back to basics and we’re going to learn, drill and practice the fundamentals until we become better at them than anyone else in the game. If you do this with me, I will make you champions.” In that first year, Lombardi punished the players and drilled them to exhaustion with the fundamentals of football. He expected nothing less than absolute dedication and a 100% effort from his players. That first season saw the Packers immediately improve to a 7-5 season with its rookie head coach being named coach of the year. In 1960, the Green Bay Packers won the NFL Western Conference for the first time since 1944.  From that first year, the Packers not only went on to win nine post-season games but eventually the first two Super Bowls as well.

Vince Lombardi knew that in order for his players to be successful they needed a foundation of skills by which to stand on.

Training in Aikido is no different.  The reason why we drill the basics over and over again is so that those movements become ingrained or "second nature."  Sensei always quipped that, "You can always fall back on the basics."  One can have all the athleticism, potential and opportunities, but without mastering the fundamentals they will be lost.  A paraphrased quote of the philosopher Seneca reminds us that, "Luck is where opportunity meets preparation."

If one is to look across the board at any one who is good at anything, I will bet they all have a solid foundation of the basic skills and Aikido is no different.  You want to get good at Aikido?  First master the basics.

Dalai Lama to visit CA in July

The Dalai Lama will be speaking at the Global Compassion Summit in July.  The tickets go on sale today at 10:00 AM. https://hhdl80.org/

Life

Ah, so true.  Mother Teresa's words about life mirror O Sensei's feelings.  When we can open our eyes to her words, we can see this abundance every where we look.  This idea about life is all around us.  I even saw/heard it on the hit TV show the Walking Dead when the new character Morgan said, "Life is precious." Sensei was a big fan of Mother Teresa.  So much so that he kept a framed picture of her on the wall in the dojo.  I enjoy reading this quote that she wrote about life reguarly.  It is too bad that we have to be so short sighted.  Take a moment and read her words and take them to heart.  Life would be so much better if we all did.

Washoku - Japanese cuisine

There is an interesting movie that is going to be shown at the Laemmle in Pasadena for a limited time.  The word wa 和 in Japanese means "harmony" and shoku 食 means meal.  Combined they are how the Japanese refer to "Japanese" style cuisine.  The usage of wa is interesting to me.  The Japanese have this idea the food should have life and thus have a sense of harmony.  Harmony?  It's food that you eat, right?  Yes, but to the Japanese it is more than that.  The food should have an aesthetic quality about it in order to be called "washoku."  Eating is not just a circumstance in which one finds themselves gobbling down McDonalds.  Eating is how we live and thus we must give the event a certain sense of respect.  Washoku is that aesthetic quality one brings to a meal with respect to the environment, company and ultimately the food.  Every aspect of the meal down to the smallest detail is given the utmost attention.  This attention gives the meal a certain sense of harmony.  Washoku is hard to explain in mere words.  For lack of a good explanation, it is a feeling that the host tries to impart and a feeling that overtakes the guests as they experience the meal.  From the trailer, Washoku - Beyond Sushi looks to explain this difficult Japanese cultural phenomenon. https://vimeo.com/120836566

For more information: http://washoku-film.com/

Be mindful

This is so true.  The same goes for what it means to be a "good student."  Everyone knows the difference between right and wrong.  Just as everyone knows what is "healthy" to eat and what is not.  The teacher should have to continually tell you "no."  We are all, for the most part, grown ups and can act accordingly.  “Yaiba ni tsuyoki mono wa rei ni suguru” means that the greatest warriors surpass all others in etiquette and decorum.  From an 1856 newspaper article from England: Mr. Wiseman then cautioned his young friends as to the habits they contracted in early life:—”Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” You sow an act, you reap a habit (acts repeated constitute habits); you sow a habit, you reap a character; you sow a character, you reap a destiny. Let them, he said, cultivate habits of industry, application, and order, and they might rely upon it, with God’s blessing, they would succeed in life.

Please be mindful about not only what you say and do, but in what you think.  It really does matter.

Kirareyaku - the art of being killed on screen

Ever seen this guy?  Chances are you have but never knew it.  He has been killed over 50,000 times on screen.  His name is Seizo Fukumoto and he has made kirareyaku or the art of spectacularly dying on screen into an actual art.  His signature move is the Ebi-zori or prawn bend and it usually comes when the star needs a close up.  You also might have most recently seen him in the Last Samurai as Tom Cruise's silent bodyguard.

From the Guardian: Fukomoto has played the kirareyaku in samurai movies and television shows stretching back to the 1960s. He began acting at the age of 15 in the Japanese equivalent of Hollywood, Kyoto, and is now considered one of the nation's top exponents of the role. The actor's signature move is the "ebi-zori"or "prawn bend", which involves arching of the back, twisting and convulsing during a screen death. Fukomoto says he invented it to give himself extra screen-time, because the convulsion results in the kirareyaku's face being turned to the camera just before he falls to the ground.

Speaking to NPR, Fukumoto stated "Whenever we die, we have to do it in a way that is unsightly or clumsy, not graceful and in this buzama (clumsiness) we find beauty. To die in an uncool way is the coolest."  Fukumoto show us that we can bring a sense of grace and art to whatever it is we are doing regardless if it is glamorous or not.

Want to read more about Seizo Fukumoto? http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/12/japan-most-killed-samurai-stuntman-seizo-fukumoto-prize

Sometimes it comes down to the etiquette

I recently read an article that I thought people might enjoy. Karen Crouse of the New York Times reports that Mickelson's coach at Arizona State was looking for recommendations for getting Mickelson a caddie when he turned pro in 1992.

He looked to Mackay who was caddying for somebody else at the time. "Mackay mentioned a few candidates, and described their strengths, but he had to cut short the conversation because his player showed up. Mackay wrote Loy a note apologizing for having to hurry off, and included his phone number in case Loy had any more questions."

The hand-written note.  What happened after that? "Mickelson saw the note and appreciated Mackay's gesture. He told Loy he had identified whom he wanted to carry his bag. When Mickelson made his first professional PGA Tour start, at the 1992 United States Open, Mackay was at his side."

Mickelson has made over $75 million on the PGA Tour. Even if we estimate on the lowest end of things (7 percent of earnings with no base salary...and it's almost definitely higher than that), then that was a $5.25 million note from Mackay to Mickelson's coach.

Always send hand-written notes.

Source: http://www.cbssports.com/golf/eye-on-golf/25100797/phil-mickelson-and-his-caddies-5-million-note

Doing the right thing at the right time is the indication of a well trained "good" student. To become a "good" student requires that the student have a good heart and that the student have an earnest desire to improve.  One MUST possess both of these qualities.  If they don't then they will only go so far.  A good teacher or practitioner will recognize a well trained student.  Mickelson recognized how good Mackay was just by this one seemingly benign gesture.  That seemingly benign gesture employed at the right time is what separates the good ones from the great ones.

What is it supposed to feel like?

What does Aikido feel like at its highest level?  It is hard to describe the feeling.  I have only been thrown down this way as an uke a few times in my career and it's not a level I have attained as a nage either.  The DVD cover to volume 4 captured one of the times.  I attacked Sensei and then felt completely weight less for what felt like a long time and then gravity just took me and I came crashing down like a ton of bricks.  It felt like Sensei lifted me up somehow and then dropped me off a building.  Oh and I sustained a concussion from this very throw too.  I saw this fountain at Downtown Disney which best illustrates the feeling of being thrown by someone with a high level of skill in Aikido.  The splat at the end of the video is what it feels like.  As if someone turned off the power or pulled the rug out from under you.  You have no control and just go down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1ulHr1nHuw&feature=youtu.be

You can see this same feeling when O Sensei throws all these guys down all at once at 1:18 of this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V7NHLlmT3Y&feature=player_detailpage