Bits and pieces

In the equestrian world, non-riders, in a similar way like to think that horses are for sitting on and they can’t wait to hop on. They get dumped. If you don’t understand a horse from the ground up, you will never be a true rider, merely a bully with no understanding. In the few instances I’ve taught people to ride they do not get to sit on a horse until they are ready. If that takes six months then that’s what it takes. They first have to develop a relationship with the horse on the ground and get to understand and be understood by the horse. Just as with horse sense, Aiki sense begins from the ground up. Positioning is paramount in both instances. If you can’t catch a horse on open ground by drawing the horse to you, you are no horseman. Until then you do not really deserve to ride or be considered a rider. The true equestrian catches untamed horses like this as well. It’s nothing mystical, but a skill. There’s no need for hard chases, yards, ropes, pulleys and buck jumping. That’s for the unskilled.

“Zen ken shu!” my white-bearded painting and calligraphy teacher said to me one day. “Zen meditation is the sword is the brush! Understand one and you understand all. But you cannot come to understand one without the other two.”

The three principles of aikido are kokyu-ryoku, tai-no-sabaki, and ki-no-musubi. Each of these principles is used to properly train and execute every aikido technique.

So if losing the attitude, losing the blindspot, losing the stupidity is what Aikido helps one do, sure, add it to your list of things to try out. Move it up on your “bucket list” you should have made when you were a kid realizing that you ain’t gonna live forever and there are things you want to do before you die.

When we can’t run away, aikido can give us another way to respond, a way that is neither fight nor flight. Aikido says: “Don’t fight. Don’t flee either. Let go instead. Let go of the whole situation. Go inside it. Follow it through. Use only your intuition”.

In most ancient cultures, lasting thousands of years longer than the stultified, limping histories we laud so much because of a few gadgets, their story survived all manner of attrition because of something that transcends all gadgets: Respect. In these true civilizations based on higher, more noble values of contribution, rather than mere fear of lack, it was mandatory to be a well rounded, highly skilled participant of the mechanism of the group, tribe nation, whatever. As part of this, an initiatory schooling which combined connectedness with heaven and earth, all the directions and the Centre of existence foremost; multi-skilled warrior training, hunting, gathering, farming including natural horticulture or as now labelled permacultiure, animal husbandry, communication skills, social technologies of the era, sciences of the era, healing arts and all the attributes which have nowadays become considerably specialised, were mandatory learning before one could claim humanity. Storytellers became the historians of the tribal ways evolving into the archivists of today. Ability in all the required skills of the era were the expectation of a well rounded human being who considered not only all human beings, but indeed all life and creation as manifestations of the sacred.

Grading is a means of objectively evaluating one’s capacity and progress by one set of standards. However, I believe that such a viewpoint has no relevance to seeking the Tao. For how far and how deep one has gone are internal questions that only the practitioner can answer. I have come to believe that it is impossible to measure each person’s depth in their pursuit using a fixed standard.

To “get” Aikido you have to understand with your whole body. This means DOing. Aikido is a DO so we must do before we can understand.

Aikido is a Japanese martial art that includes techniques for bare-handed wrestling, using weapons, and dealing with the armed enemy.

We live, for the time being, in a softened and protected society. This may not last forever. How you comport yourself in the face of more, shall we say, feudal circumstances, greater challenges the future is to bring, remains to be seen. Will we, under similar circumstances, have the moral integrity and far reaching vision to intend to BUILD a world, a family of humanity, as the ancients displayed, starting out in really bad and primitive conditions? And to forge on despite all adversities that meet us? Who really knows.