GOING FOR A WALK IN THE WORLD: The Experience of Aikido By Ralph Pettman The dream that makes us free is the dream of an open heart the dream that there might be one world lived together while living apart. This calligraphy was done by Shuken Motomiya, an old and much venerated Zen monk. When he did it, he lived in a temple at Fujinomiya, at the foot of Mt. Fuji. The character means “Dream”. A lovely piece of calligraphy that was brushed especially for this book The complete book is about 20,000 words. It is licensed under a Creative Commons license, so please feel free to reproduce it, with due attribution. Ralph Pettman Going For A Walk In The World TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................................... 1 WHAT IS AIKIDO? ....................................................................................................................................... 2 WHAT IS AIKIDO FOR?............................................................................................................................... 5 CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM\.................................................................................... 8 ENDS AND MEANS ................................................................................................................................... 10 A WAY TO HARMONY WITH THE UNIVERSE......................................................................................... 12 THE PHYSICAL DIMENSION .................................................................................................................... 15 SEXISM AND HOMOPHOBIA ................................................................................................................ 19 THE MENTAL DIMENSION........................................................................................................................ 21 DEEP WEIGHT ....................................................................................................................................... 22 THE CENTRED SELF ............................................................................................................................. 24 EXTENDED STRENGTH ........................................................................................................................ 26 BODY EGO AND BRAIN EGO ............................................................................................................... 29 THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION.................................................................................................................... 33 A KIND WORD AND AN OPEN FIST ..................................................................................................... 36 CONFLICT AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION .......................................................................................... 39 STRESS MANAGEMENT ....................................................................................................................... 41 THREE DIMENSIONS IN ONE................................................................................................................... 44 AFTERWORD............................................................................................................................................. 47 ABOUT THE AUTHOR............................................................................................................................... 50 LICENSE..................................................................................................................................................... 50 Ralph Pettman Going For A Walk In The World INTRODUCTION Doing aikido I often feel it's more a matter of aikido doing me. My partner and I take turns at being attacker and defender (this is standard aikido training procedure). Our movements get faster and more open, the ebb and flow seems to intensify, and we begin to lose any sense of time and place. There is a feeling of renewal and this feeling begins to grow as new energy seems to rise up within us and through us. Moments like these are very affirmative and very invigorating. They are very creative too. The whole experience is a joyful and a liberating one. Every moment feels comprehensive and alive. From a distance we look like we are doing a kind of dance. Aikido is a dynamic art and when it is done in free-form the locks and throws follow each other in rapid succession. Trainees come together and move apart, their "hakamas" snapping and swirling. ("Hakamas" are the pleated culottes that black-belt students wear over their judo-style training suits). Like a dance the movements can look rather contrived. They can confuse those who have never seen aikido before, not least because what the onlooker sees is actually a training method, not a form of combat. There is no winner or loser in an aikido class or demonstration. What you are watching is a lesson in sensitivity. Training partners are not trying to prevail. They are trying to become more aware. The self-defence capacity they get is almost a by-the-way one. Compassion, not combat proficiency, is the point of the training process. I have talked to many people who do aikido and they give very different answers when I ask them how it feels. I have given one brief account above. Here is another by a friend of mine: "It must have been about a year after I started. I was being thrown ... when for a tiny second there was a sort of endless expansion. I had the sensation of floating in a place where there was no up or down, left or right, and although I was aware that such things still existed, they no longer seemed relevant. For such wells of renewal do we train!" 1 Ralph Pettman Going For A Walk In The World WHAT IS AIKIDO? Aikido is a modern Japanese martial art. It was created in the 1930's and 1940's by a Japanese martial artist of rare skill and dedication. His name was Morihei Uyeshiba. He died in 1969 at the age of 86. I never met him. All I know about him I've learned from what he wrote, from demonstration films he made, from films made about him, from books by his students, from conversations I've had with some of those he taught, and from practising the art he bequeathed. Uyeshiba was a farmer, a soldier and a master of many traditional Japanese fighting arts. He was also a very religious man who looked long and hard for an answer to life's mysteries. The answer he finally found inspired him to create aikido. He came to this answer over a long period of time, though there does seem to be one moment that was decisive for him. Accounts differ as to what happened at that moment. All of the accounts agree, however, that Uyeshiba was being attacked by a swordsman. While the attacker tried to cut him over and over again Uyeshiba found that he was able to avoid the cuts without having to fight back. This incident seems to have marked a turning point in his life. In a book later written by Uyeshiba's son there are a few sentences, by Uyeshiba himself, about that key incident. "At that moment" he writes "I was enlightened". At that moment he believed he understood the true source of every fighting art. That source he called God's love. What did Uyeshiba mean by "God's love"? From his writings, in this essay and elsewhere, it is apparent that for Uyeshiba "God's love" meant "the spirit of loving protection for all beings". Such a spirit, he said, was everywhere. For him it filled the universe. He felt that he had come to embody it himself and in doing so he felt that the whole cosmos had become his home. The earth and the moon, the sun and the stars had become his personal domain. In one luminous instant, he had felt it all. The sense of universal love, Uyeshiba said, was a uniquely liberating one. "I had become free" he later wrote "from all desire, not only for position, fame and property, but also to be strong". This freedom was not detachment. It was not the objectivity and lack of passion of someone who doesn't care. It was non-attachment, which sounds the same as de- tachment, but isn't. Non- attachment means objectivity minus emotional concern. Detachment means objectivity plus emotional concern. Detachment means standing off from everything, like someone aloof. Non- attachment means being free to love all beings with understanding and compassion. Using this feeling of freedom and love Uyeshiba began to synthesise all the fighting arts he knew - a synthesis so original and so compelling that it became a whole new martial art. Using his new-found awareness Uyeshiba began to research his knowledge of sword, stick, spear and unarmed fighting techniques. He began searching for natural ways to move. He began looking for loving rather than hateful ways, protective rather than aggressive ways, ways that encouraged 2 Ralph Pettman Going For A Walk In The World reconciliation not counter- attack, ways that fostered a universal sense of space and time rather than a local sense of swapping threat for threat. Uyeshiba was far from the first martial artist to have had such a realisation and aikido is far from the first martial art to be built upon the principle of love rather than hate. Aikido is one of a long list of alternative martial arts. This alternative tradition has always been more than physical or mental. It's always been part of a spiritual quest that sees in the martial arts a way of enlightening the soul rather than simply overcoming an opponent or remaining calm in combat. To quote Uyeshiba, to