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SPIRITUAL AIKIDO
WEEK ONE
Aikido is a very spiritual art by nature. The founder of Aikido was an extremely religious man and would spend hours after hours in prayer. The expressions of his religious nature can be seen through his poetry and in his belief of love and peace.
From the Aikidofaq website I read the following:
“Okui - The Secrets
1. Bu, the root of all that is, is the great spirit of the founding of our nation. This bujutsu, as a part of the Imperial Way (kodo), trains us in body and in spirit to achieve the martial spirit (buki) of Yamato-damashii (the Japanese Spirit) by means of AIKI ( a meeting of the Ki) with the multitude of deities (Yorozu no Kami). So we train to unite the truth, happiness and beauty of the sincere sole. Bu builds sincere people who have not the slightest vulnerability or opening since they have completely unified their sole and their mind. Therefor our aim is to mutually cultivate (ourselves) in both the world of appearances and in the world of essences and thus to take charge of this world of the present and bring to project harmony and beauty (our) Yamato-damashii (Japanese spirit).
2. In the narrow sense this means that we must perform austere physical training (Shugyo) with our bodies while our Kokoro (spirit/mind) remains ever mindful of what it means to be a "seeker" (shugyo-sha)
3. In the broadest sense this means unification with the Great Deity. The most important law of Bu is the need for shugyo that fosters the foundation for expressing the Holy Sole of a Surpassing Love of all that is manifested in this world. “
This month we will be studying the spiritual side of Aikido. What is it and how can we pursue it? We can not avoid touching on the religious side of man in order to better understand what Morihei Ueshiba was teaching us.
It will be important to focus on a few terms right now:
Shugyo meaning austere physical training, and Kokoro meaning spirit/mind.
I begin the year with the spiritual, because we must first focus our spirits and our minds before we can begin austere physical training. Learning Aikido is like going in circles, we start with the spirit so that we can end up with the spirit. We go from spirit, to mind, to body to get back to spirit.
We, in the American culture have often heard Mind Body and Spirit. It’s actually the credo of the YMCA and many other eastern arts. It’s a common goal throughout the arts including the religious arts.
The founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, spent many hours writing poems called Doka, (songs of the way). The following doka I found very appropriate for starting our training and our journey into the spiritual side of Aikido:
The Ki of the Great Origin
Is Full and abundant
The Heavens and the Earth, all Creation itself
From here began
(www.aikidofaq.com)
Let’s begin our training.
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