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What Ueshiba Sensei taught
While Sensei
felt deeply about this underlying principle of budo, he never really taught
us anything about it in concrete terms. When we were training he would come
around and tell us to “put some power into it.” And yet, when he himself
demonstrated techniques he was totally relaxed! What he said and what he
did, in other words, were completely different.
He also used to say
fantastic things like, “The gods became like smoke and entered my body,”
and “In all the world, past and present, even among saints and wise men,
there has never been anyone who could understand what I say, and even I
myself, though I am saying it, do not understand.” Now how in the world
were we supposed to make anything of talk like that!?
Sensei was as solid as
a rock but also very relaxed, and that combination made him extremely
strong. He had mastered relaxation by completely integrating it into his
body.
If I had not been
fortunate enough to meet Ueshiba Sensei, I probably would have lived my
whole life without ever knowing about this type and degree of relaxation.
I’m very grateful to him for showing me that.
I never paid as much
attention to what Sensei said as to what he did. You could ask him all the
questions you wanted and never understand his answers. He would just show
you and say something to the effect of “It’s done like this.”
Eventually I also met
Tempu Nakamura Sensei, from whom I first heard the words, “The mind moves
the body.” Hearing this I thought, “That’s it! That’s all there is to it!
It’s so simple!” I started looking more closely for that kind of thing and
indeed discovered that Ueshiba Sensei would move his opponents’ bodies by
leading their minds (kokoro). And he did it while completely relaxed. It
would have been good if he had simply taught us that, but he never did.
After thinking about
it for a while I realized that for the mind to lead the body, and in order
to lead your opponent’s mind, you first have to be capable of controlling
your own mind. I set out with great enthusiasm studying how to do that. In
other words, I had discovered that unifying the mind and body is a
fundamental underpinning of aikido.
Nevertheless, because
Sensei kept saying things like “Pin your opponent strongly” when he taught,
people misinterpreted his meaning. When he died, the kind of aikido he
wanted to pass on to us simply vanished.
The “Four Major
Principles of Mind and Body Unification” that I teach now are actually
things that Ueshiba Sensei demonstrated with his body. The Shin Shin Toitsu
aikido that I teach is the aikido Ueshiba Sensei wanted to teach.
In a great deal of
aikido today, the collusive way in which people practice allows ineffective
techniques to be passed off as the real thing. Such aikido will only be
criticized and ridiculed. People take advantage of the fact that there are
no matches in aikido and allow themselves to train in collusion. The result
is that they lead themselves into self-satisfaction, conceit, and
arrogance. With Ueshiba Sensei’s death, true ki and the principle of mind
and body unification vanished from aikido.
Guiding
Principles for Aikido practice
Aikido is
criticized as fake, especially when people go around demonstrating using
only their own students, not letting anybody else try, and this is a
consequence of the fact that the principle of ki has been lost from aikido.
It is mistake to think
that aikido is a path through which you match your own ki with the ki of
others. Ueshiba Sensei said, “Five and five for ten, two and eight for
ten.” In other words, aiki is merging your power of two with a power of
eight to get a power equaling ten. Or matching your power of five with
another power of five to get a power equaling ten. Ueshiba Sensei said that
is an essential principle of aikido. However, I have always said that
aikido is matching your ki with the ki of heaven and earth, rather than
with the ki of other people. There is only one heaven and earth, and if we
merge our bodies with that, then all people will come to merge with us.
Our minds and bodies
have been given to us by heaven and earth, and when we are able to unify
our minds with our bodies, the power of heaven and earth comes surging out.
This energy is inherent in everyone. What I teach is how to polish and draw
forth that energy.
Aikido prohibits
matches because permitting them would result in a departure from the true
meaning of budo. On the other hand, almost everyone has some sort of desire
to improve, as well as to compete; these are what stimulate us to make
efforts and give us hope that we can develop ourselves.
Aikido prohibits
matches because matches are concerned with the issue of winning or losing.
There would be no problem if matches were not about victory and defeat, but
rather about how much we can unify the mind that we have been given by
heaven and earth to discover our fullest potential as human beings. With
this in mind I established what we call the Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido
Competition, an event not for displays of circus-like techniques or other
curiosities, but rather an opportunity to test this mind-body unification
that anyone has the potential to attain. This event is not limited to Ki
Society members; anyone can participate. But those unable to unify their
mind and body won’t get very far in the competition.
I’ve taught mind and
body unification to people like baseball star Sadaharu Oh and sumo wrestler
Chiyonofuji. The fact is, there is nothing to lose in practicing it, no
negative aspects whatsoever. The other day I was even teaching the Yomiuri
Giants baseball team.
All I hope to do is
teach mind and body unification. I want people everywhere in the world to
have the opportunity to make their lives—which, it goes without saying,
they only have one chance to live—meaningful through the spirit of Shinshin
Toitsu Aikido.
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