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SPIRITUAL AIKIDO
WEEK FOUR
We’ve spent the last three weeks looking into the Spiritual side of Aikido.
This week I would like to spend some time working on Zazen, or seated meditation.
I would also like to spend time tying in the spiritual side into the mental or psychological side of Aikido.
We must turn inward to discover who we are and what it is we are good at, this is Zazen.
Monks would sit in meditation for days, weeks and months pondering questions that could not be answered.
You’ve all hear the question, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Think about it for a while. Close your eyes, sit still, breath steady and think about it without interruption.
In the early days of the Meiji era there lived a well-known wrestler called O-nami, Great Waves.
O-nami was immensely strong and knew the art of wrestling. In his private bouts he defeated even his teacher,
but in public he was so bashful that his own pupils threw him.
O-nami felt he should go to a Zen master for help. Hakuju, a wandering teacher, was stopping in a little temple
nearby, so O-nami went to see him and told him of his trouble.
"Great Waves is your name," the teacher advised, "so stay in this temple tonight. Imagine that you are those billows.
You are no longer a wrestler who is afraid. You are those huge waves sweeping everything before them, swallowing all
in their path. Do this and you will be the greatest wrestler in the land."
The teacher retired. O-nami sat in meditation trying to imagine himself as waves. He thought of many different things.
Then gradually he turned more and more to the feeling of the waves. As the night advanced the waves became larger and
larger. They swept away the flowers in their vases. Even the Buddha in the shrine was inundated. Before dawn the temple
was nothing but the ebb and flow of an immense sea.
In the morning the teacher found O-nami meditating, a faint smile on his face. He patted the wrestler's shoulder.
"Now nothing can disturb you," he said. "You are those waves. You will sweep everything before you."
The same day O-nami entered the wrestling contests and won. After that, no one in Japan was able to defeat him.
Muju
www.zenguide.com
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