In Search of the Essence of Aikido

by Hoa Newens

As we prepare to launch the Aikido Foundations Course, we gathered our thoughts below to clarify the reasons wherefore and need of such a course.

WHY BOTHER WITH THE ESSENCE?
Why spend effort looking for the essence? Isn’t it good enough to come to classes regularly and just train?
It is indeed good to train regularly in classes; persistent effort inevitably leads to results. However, do we know what results to expect? Physical fitness, social interaction, self-defense, good feelings, spiritual experience are all valid goals that yield different results. Conscious decisions make a life, whereas unconscious action is merely existence. If we do not have a goal, we automatically assume the goal of the chief instructor at the dojo where we train. If this chief instructor is not aware of his/her goals in operating the dojo, then this person is not leading the students anywhere. At best, students may get some physical fitness, and learn a little about Japanese Budo and culture, and the school is a mix of gym and cultural club, not necessarily a place to train in the way, a true “dojo”.

On the other hand, the chief instructor may have a specific goal, and we’d want to know what it is to determine compatibility with our own goal. If there is no match, we should continue our quest to find the right teacher. If there is a good match, we should forge on and find ways to support the teacher. A dojo (道場) is a place to practice the “Way”, that is, the “Do” of Ai-Ki-Do. Aikido is one of the martial arts in modern Japanese Budo; these martial arts guide people along a path to become better human beings.

Even within this categorization, there is a wide range of possibilities for Aikido; witness the numerous styles that exist. Aikido is not just what is being taught at your dojo. It is beneficial for the average students to broaden their horizons by participating in a variety of seminars and recognize that there are as many styles of Aikido as there are teachers. Even within the same dojo that is affiliated with a particular lineage like ours, each instructor will express Aikido according to their personality, physique, and training background.

If we do not clearly identify what we are aspiring to and only continue to do what’s done in classes and at seminars, our bodies may benefit from good exercises, our mind and spirit may be somewhat stimulated but in the long run, there is no clear progress along the path laid down by the Founder. It is a bit like going to the gun range and shooting a rifle just for the thrill of it, not minding where the bullets hit.

It is okay to do Aikido just because the training makes us feels good, but that’s all we get, a short-lived warm feeling after class. In the long run though, all dedicated students will aspire to reach the level achieved by the Founder. They will want to merge with the art and become Aikido. A sincere quest will inevitably lead to the desire for the essence.

THE TRUE NEED TO FIND THE ESSENCE
A soul is born in the earthly realm to evolve. It wears the physical form and clothing of all sentient beings and evolves through friction against other sentient forms. When consciousness is present during the friction among these physical forms, the friction builds up the impetus to essentially send the consciousness to the next level of more refined energy. It is like an ant being trapped in a box and bumps into the box walls everywhere it turns; until its tiny consciousness notices that it can climb up the wall and get closer to deliverance.

The same process takes place in martial arts training, especially in traditional martial arts that allow human beings to grow successively through the physical, mental, and spiritual planes. The crucial requirement for this growth is the will of the consciousness to return home. If the ant was not aware of what it wants (deliverance from the walls) and of its ability to move beyond horizontal, then it would spend the rest of its life at the bottom of the box.

The longing of the soul within a human being to be whole manifests as a quest for deliverance, a search for the pure self. For a martial artist, this internal quest translates into dedication in training, for the martial artist knows that there is a better way of being. The dedicated martial artist jumps through the hurdles of the different states of being – physical, mental and spiritual, using his martial art to continually refine the consciousness. He resolutely seeks the path to the higher states until the soul is purged of earthly litter and finds itself in a pristine state. In this way the dedicated martial artist eventually discovers the true self through his quest for the essence of the martial art.

FINDING THE ESSENCE OF AIKIDO
O Sensei and each person who teaches Aikido naturally express the art through their own personality, individual physique and particular environment. Therefore, the art is necessarily colored by these unique circumstances that make up a person’s life. When it passes through the generations, the art increasingly acquires new layers of clothing, such that its appearance may become deceptive and misrepresent its soul. Then, how do we identify and reach for the true essence? Do we need to speak Japanese, learn Japanese customs, learn Daito-Ryu, learn Shinto religion, re-live O Sensei’s life experience?

The short answer is no, we just need to study and engage in serious training where we are right now. More specifically, study the Founder’s messages and teachings, and train according to these teachings, or under the guidance of the Founder’s direct disciples who have been with him for a long time, such as Morihiro Saito Shihan. We and many others have been fortunate to have this opportunity, but not all will succeed. To reach the quintessence, one would have to overcome tough hurdles along the way.

One major hurdle in studying O Sensei’s words is that they are replete with abstract notions and esoteric concepts. His lectures and teachings contain few practical instructions and are generally devoid of methods. Many of O Sensei’s direct students testify to this challenge. If one were to engage deeply in the study, it may devolve into an intellectual research project, which may yield interesting historical results and lead to an intellectual understanding of the origins of Aikido. However, this understanding is merely a mental image of its essence, not the real essence of Aikido.

The second major hurdle is that, despite his effort to preserve the original teachings that he received directly from his teacher of 23 years, it is inevitable that Morihiro Saito Shihan (as well as other direct students of O Sensei) expressed his natural self through the art. He was not a mere copycat of his teacher but a top-level expert in his own right, hence the art that he taught was necessarily infused with his personal background. Even he changed his teachings from time to time in tandem with his own growth, creating amusing confusion among his students of different eras who clung to the forms of their times.

This is what O Sensei had to say about Aiki techniques: (The Secret Teachings of Aikido, Kodansha International, 2007.)

In Aikido, the techniques are constantly changing, for change and adaptability are part of the essence of Aikido. I am always training and studying in that spirit, constantly altering the techniques according to the circumstances. Aikido has no forms. It is wrong to get caught up with forms.

Therefore, to distill the essence of Aikido one would have to transcend the minutiae of techniques. This is not to say that we should not have basic and standard techniques of Aikido; it means that we should go beyond the details and forms, and discover principles and relationships. At the advanced level, while respecting and honoring our teachers, we should bypass their personalities and their environments and drive straight into the core of the art. Then, we slowly find our way out from that core and develop our own method to teach others.
This path requires us to let go of what we learned from our teachers in order to get to the next level. It takes courage, energy, and trust in our higher self to make the jump. Lacking any of these three requisites, an otherwise dedicated teacher would languish in place while regurgitating the teachings of his/her teacher, which were a unique expression of that person, and the essence of the art will be forever out of reach.

The only way we know how to find the inner treasure is to muster all the courage and energy at our disposal to let go of our crutches and forge on with confidence on our own path, doing our best to follow the enigmatic guidance of O Sensei’s words. It is critical that we believe in the benevolence of the Aiki gods and keep the internal flame alive as we trudge through new territories, with no assurance that our quest will be successful.
As we venture into uncharted courses, we should take good notes, mark useful signposts and rechart the route for the sake of future generations.

THE ESSENCE LIES IN THE SPIRIT
Serious research on O Sensei’s life and the development of his martial art would reveal the fact that O Sensei was a religious man deeply involved in Omoto Kyo and devoted to Shinto practices. By all accounts, his meeting with the reverend Onisaburo Deguchi was transformative and he spent several years at the Omoto sect headquarters in Ayabe (near Kyoto). “Spirit First then Body Second” was a central teaching of Omoto which likely drove Ueshiba Sensei to take up various forms of shugyo (ascetic practices) that resulted in his enlightenment.

The spiritual aspect of Aikido training is evident in all of O Sensei’s lectures and writings, though one would have to dive deep into philosophical concepts and religious studies to get a glimpse of his messages.
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In Aikido, we first purify our spirit; second, we must set aright our heart. When using the body we employ the material dimension but must never lose our focus on the spiritual. (The Secret Teachings of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, Kodansha International, 2007)

We found that the Nidai Doshu, Kisshomaru Ueshiba described the Founder’s ideas and ideals in more down to earth language that is easier to grasp by the average person. For this purpose, we show relevant excerpts below from The Spirit of Aikido (Aikido no Kokoro, by Kisshomaru Ueshiba, translated by Taitetsu Unno, published by Kodansha International, 1987) that underscore the importance of spiritual training in Aikido.

The turning point came in 1924-25, . . . when challenged by a young naval officer in Ayabe, (O Sensei) experienced sumi-kiri, the clarity of mind and body that realized the oneness of the ki of the universe and the ki of self. He was in his early forties, and this became the foundations of his martial art. (P 98)
In 1936 the Founder decided that time had come to make the distinction between the old martial arts and his own clear, because of the philosophical and spiritual emphasis he had incorporated in his own art. Feeling that the essence of his new art was different from the old tradition of martial arts, he abandoned the term bujutsu and renamed his art aiki-budo. (P 99)
To fully appreciate the proclamation of the name aikido and understand some of the reasons behind it, including changes in the Founder’s thought, we must turn our attention to the establishment of the Aiki Shrine at Iwama in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo.
The idea of establishing a spiritual center for aikido came to the Founder around 1935. It was born from a deeply felt need to continue the quest for the truth of the universe through budo, and he wanted a special place for this purpose. (P 100)
The Aiki Shrine was conceived to pay homage to the 43 gods who protect and give procreative power to aikido . . . The Founder strongly believed that his prowess in budo came not from himself but from the gods that protected him and nurtured his ability. (P 102)
Aikido’s reputation and success today are due to the Founder’s decision to devote himself to a spiritual quest for the essence of martial arts in the hinterlands of Iwama. Master Ueshiba demonstrated by his own example that the prosperity of Aikido is not measured by the number of followers but by the depth and intensity of the personal quest for truth through training and practice. (P 104)
There is nothing more desirable than growth and expansion, but if our eyes are attached only to surface events and we lose sight of the essence of the Way of Aikido, then – just as a spinning top loses its momentum, its balance and sooner or later falls – our Way will lose its vitality, become divided, and eventually disintegrate. (P. 105)
 
Furthermore, in his book The Spirit of Aikido, (Kodansha, 2012), the Nidai Doshu explained the uniqueness of Aikido in these terms:

Ultimately, Master Ueshiba concluded that the true spirit of Budo is not to be found in a competitive and combative atmosphere where brute strength dominates and victory at any cost is the paramount objective. He concluded that it is to be realized in the quest for perfection as a human being, both in mind and body, through cumulative training and practice with kindred spirits in the martial arts. . . His goal, deeply religious in nature, is summarized in a single statement: the unification of the fundamental creative principle, ki, permeating the universe, and the individual ki, inseparable from breath power, of each person.

As can be seen from the Nidai Doshu’s wrtings above, O Sensei created his art of Aikido mostly as a spiritual practice, that is, a physical discipline that results in a spiritual enlightenment. He clearly intended that it not be a fighting art.

O Sensei had a clear spiritual ideal that is the backbone of his art. However, he did not create a system to transmit it to others. Therefore, a large part of his legacy is constituted of techniques that he taught and his obscure speeches and poems on spiritual ideals. The physical movements certainly reflected the inner aspect of the art, however he left it to the beholders and his students to devise methods of their own to bridge the techniques with spiritual understanding.

The Founder’s students took what they learned from him and created systems to fill the void in spiritual practice. His top student, Koichi Tohei Sensei, singled out the development and use of Ki as substantive content of Aikido teachings and established the Ki Society (Ki no Kenkyūkai) to further his work separately from the Hombu Dojo. Another senior disciple, Morihiro Saito Sensei, who declared himself a simple-minded farmer, chose to underemphasize the spiritual aspect (except for traditional Shinto rites) and focused instead on the organization of the technical curriculum, with special emphasis on Bukiwaza. Saito Sensei’s view was that we should follow O Sensei’s teachings closely and train diligently then we will find the right understanding.

THE MISSING RUNG
Traditional martial arts that have been passed down several generations have fully evolved and represent complete holistic arts that represent comprehensive ways of life, addressing all the needs – physical, mental, and spiritual – of human beings. Because of their nature, martial arts start from the physical and evolves through the mental to reach the spiritual aspect. This is a transmutation process that accelerates the evolution of denser energies into more refined states. These arts grow from the support of their natural milieu and often borrow from their socio-religious environment to shore up their core. For example, Shaolin Wushu of China evolved from a Buddhist temple setting and wears all the trademarks of such settings in their training methods. Similarly, Kobudo evolved from feudal Japan in which the samurai class dominated the martial scene, and thus display the hallmarks of such backdrops.

On the other hand, Aikido is a relatively modern martial art born in early twentieth century from various forms of Bujutsu. The founder excelled in various forms of jujutsu and kenjutsu, namely Yagyu Ryu, Daito Ryu, Shinkage Ryu, and so on by his own account, but was also steeped in the Shinto religion and its cousin Omoto. It was these spiritual influences that provided the backbone of the art that Morihei Ueshiba founded, Aikido. As indicated above, because of the spiritual grounding, the Founder adamantly distinguished his art from other forms of Bujutsu and named it Aiki-budo, now Aikido. Here is his view:

Up to now, old-time martial arts required years and years of practice before one could begin to understand the true purpose of budo. In contrast, the Aikido I have developed is a means to make this realization come quickly. That is the difference between old-style martial arts and Aikido. Those who are sensitive to the flow of energy, and in tune with their surroundings, are the ones that must take the lead by acting nobly and with determination. That is Aikido – to set a goal and to improve day by day. From The Heart of Aikido – The Philosophy of Takemusu Aiki, Kodansha USA, 2010 (p. 77).
 
Unfortunately, though he taught and passed down the techniques of Aikido, he did not leave clear teachings of internal practices that could lead his students to spiritual realization. O Sensei maintained that Aikido is the study of the spirit, and often performed his spiritual practices on his own. He would lecture his disciples on various spiritual topics without much practical guidance. His close disciples were left with their own interpretation and understanding. Thus, the spiritual core of Aikido was not integrated into Aikido training at the time, and except for a few misogi (purification) and kokyu (breath) exercises, no standard spiritual practices exist in modern Aikido teachings. Aikido has yet to mature and needs to continue to evolve.

In its present state, Aikido is missing a major rung on the ladder leading its physical techniques to the ultimate goal of unifying with the ki of the universe.

Many of O Sensei’s disciples filled the gap with their own version of spiritual discipline, with the result that there are no standard spiritual practices in mainstream Aikido. As we have pointed out in a different writing (Is Aikido a Martial Art?) a true martial art serves the totality of the human being, physical, mental, and spiritual, and must include the potential to elevate the human spirit toward the divine spirit.

On the bright side, we know that Aiki manifested on earth through O Sensei’s techniques, his oral teachings, and his life. Aiki has pervaded his entire being, so that we can find the complete Aiki within either the techniques, or the oral teachings, or the way he lived.

The secret of Aiki is buried deep in the techniques; to find it we must dive unswervingly into training, using O Sensei’s oral teachings as guideposts. This means training wholeheartedly and continuously while constantly striving to understand and follow O Sensei’s teachings. This is an arduous task since there is no guidance beyond the techniques and a few purification exercises, and O Sensei’s recorded teachings are far from comprehensible. It is a huge jump from Aikido waza to spiritual enlightenment.

Another approach is to glean from the methods of other well established and traditional martial arts with strong spiritual connections, such as the internal martial arts and internal energy arts of China. These are arts which have matured over hundreds of years of traditions and refinements. For this purpose, the countries, and cultures from where these arts originated are not relevant. Human beings are built from the same basic template everywhere on earth: a body with two arms, two legs, red blood, a brain, a heart, and God-given consciousness.

All human beings have the same physical, energetic, and spiritual bodies; the differences among human beings owe to the different geographies and cultures and are only superficial. Therefore, the rules and methods for training to evolve the human potential are the same. We should learn from each other; there are only so many ways of moving efficiently, so many ways of calming the mind, so many ways of controlling our emotions, so many ways of finding our true inner self.

We were fortunate to have had the opportunity to study and train in depth in the internal arts of Taichi (Wu Style) and Chikung for almost four decades while continuing our Aikido training. Thanks to this concurrent training of both the outer and the inner aspects of martial arts, we were able to develop a bridge linking the physical training of Aikido to what might be its spiritual goal of union of the individual ki with the universal ki
This bridge consists of essential internal practices and behaviors that connect the physical techniques of Aikido with states of being which are compatible with spiritual understanding.

We believe that these internal practices lead to the true essence of Aikido since they bring about the uniqueness of Aikido and are the vehicles to transport Aikido through the ages and across cultures and nations.

HOW TO RECOGNIZE THE ESSENCE
The essence of something is the absolute and indispensable minimum that defines its character, and that can be used to reproduce the totality of it.

In our quest to identify and extract the essence of Aikido, we find three lenses and related inquiries that help us sort wheat from chaff:

• Qualitative: What makes Aikido uniquely Aikido?
• Time: What essential skills and elements must be preserved to keep Aikido alive through the ages?
• Space: How can we make Aikido portable from one environment to another?

We applied these lenses to sort through our own experience in multi-disciplinary martial arts during more than five decades and extracted the practices that revive the spiritual linkage of Aikido techniques and form the foundations from which Aikido can be transmitted through the ages and through the cultures.

During our search we also noted that, though there are books that attempt to describe the essence of Aikido, no instruction program, training curriculum, or publications exist that guide the serious seeker to the realization of this essence. This lack was our motivation for developing a course that imparts this essence to qualified instructors for further sharing.

​THE FOUNDATIONS OF AIKIDO
The foundations of Aikido rest on simple core practices that are infused with its essence and that lead to the acquisition of skills to impart the essence of Aikido to others in any environment and through times.
These practices consist of four concentric elements:

The Spirit of Ai
This is the pervasive core that impregnates Aikido techniques with the Aiki spirit of harmony, and consists of meditation and purification practices that calm the mind and allow the inner self to emerge and meet with the universal spirit.
Ki and Kokyu
These are internal practices that connect breath, ki energy and the physical center and are the core practices of an internal martial art.
The Martial Bu
These are martial practices (tanren and shugyo) and codes of behavior that make Aikido a true Budo.
The Techniques in Do
These are the main techniques of Aikido which physically express the Aiki spirit. These include the basic Kamae; Tai Sabaki; Awase practices; core Taijutsu techniques; and core Bukiwaza techniques.

Each of these four elements separately does not reflect Aikido but all four together make Aikido. A special note must be made here about the meaning of Ai Ki Do.

In O Sensei’s recorded speeches, he often explained that Aiki came into being with this universe, referring to Aiki as the spirit of harmony that existed before everything else. It is not different from what the Taoists call the Tao. From this viewpoint, the name Aikido takes on a meaning slightly different from the standard translation of The Way to Harmonize with Ki: Aiki Do should be understood as the Way of Aiki, in other words, it is the manifestation of the primal spirit of harmony in the universe. When we look at Aikido in this light, we realize that the emphasis should be on Aiki, the spirit of harmony.

From this vantage, we can see that the popular view of Aikido has been overly focused on the manifestation, that is, the Do part, the techniques; whereas the true essence, which lies in Aiki, has been overlooked. Therefore, any real effort to strengthen Aikido must correct this deficiency and restore the focus on Aiki.
That is the primary purpose of the Aikido Foundations Course.
 
Hoa Newens
February 24, 2022
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