The Aiki Academy

By Ralph Pettman

Can doing aikido make you Enlightened? Is the patient, persistent practice of this particular martial art likely to result in the ultimate epiphany: nirvana? Will intense, long-term study (all other things being equal) cause aikido students to experience Satori (with a capital “S”)?

The short answer is: no. Those who start learning the art in the hope that in due course they will achieve Spiritual Transcendence are almost certain to be disappointed. They are better off putting themselves in the way of a truly saintly person who can induce such awareness.

It is an easy mistake to make. At the beginning of a student’s career in aikido, it can have a mystical air about it. I know it did for me. There is much talk, for example, in books and by instructors, about becoming one with the universe. The art’s founder, Morihei Uyeshiba, was also a very spiritual man. His writings testify to his intention to develop a martial art of love not hate, compassion not aggression, peace not violence. They suggest that the art does have a transcendent sacral purpose. Writings like these suggest more than the art can deliver, though.

It is not that aikido makes false promises. It is more a matter of false expectations on the student’s part. The art does have high spiritual aspirations. It can and does deliver what can be called spiritual insights, especially when taught in the appropriate way. Uyeshiba never claimed that it would Enlighten its practitioners, though. As far as I can tell, he never said that aikidoka would achieve ultimate personal freedom and awareness. He never said it could cause Satori.

Why? First of all, it is worth remembering that aikido was devised only after Uyeshiba had had his own enlightenment experience. Accounts differ as to the details of this experience, but there is no debate about the fact that aikido was the outcome, not the cause. Uyeshiba developed the forms and philosophy of this art only once he had had his own personal moment of oneness with the universe. It was not the way he came by that awareness.

Aikido was the result of its founder applying his experience of enhanced awareness to the martial arts he knew best. This application led to innovations so compelling that many came to learn what it was he was doing, and how he was doing it. This application was aikido.

In trying to reproduce the forms of aikido, and in trying to abide by Uyeshiba’s philosophy, I know of no-one who has ever become Enlightened, however. I know of many accounts of epiphanies achieved while doing aikido training. I’ve had these little satoris myself. They are one of the great rewards to be had studying the art over an extended period of time. I’ve never met anyone, however, nor read of anyone, who cracked the sacral jackpot doing aikido. To the best of my knowledge, not a single aikido student, either in Uyshiba’s life-time or afterwards, has attained Satori by practising his art.

This is not to say that someone might not do so in the future. Perhaps my comments are simply premature. Perhaps the art will take a little longer than it has to date to have such an effect.

Comparisons with other spiritual paths are instructive in this regard. For example, I don’t know how long it took after Gautama the Buddha became Enlightened for the meditation techniques that he taught to have that result for one of his students, but by all accounts his techniques did have that result, and many times over, even in his own lifetime. Gautama the Buddha seems to have studied most of the local meditation techniques of his time. It is not clear which one caused his Enlightenment, or whether he induced that experience himself by making the innovation he subsequently taught to those who wanted to know how to achieve what he did. The techniques he subsequently taught do seem to have been singularly effective in helping others to experience Enlightenment themselves, though.

Like the Buddha, it is not clear what caused Uyeshiba’s Enlightenment either. Was it the outcome of his own training at the time? Was it the outcome of the innovation he made himself at the moment he had his epiphany (the story usually told has him avoiding a swordsman’s multiple attacks until the swordsman stops exhausted, at which point Uyeshiba steps outside, gold vapours issue from the ground, he realises in one luminous moment that an art of reconciliation rather than retaliation or retreat is possible, and he sets about creating one.) What we do know is that Uyeshiba’s luminous realisation, and the subsequent changes he made to his teaching of budo techniques, has so far been singularly ineffective in helping other to experience Satori.

In practice, I suspect that aikido is just too physical to Enlighten. Even those who train at the spiritual end of the discipline, even those who do aikido primarily as a meditation in movement, are continually having to turn their awareness outwards towards their partners. Even the most poised of practitioners, even the most calm and composed of aikido masters, that is, those who are truly able to move in the moment, will be distracted by the physical reality of what is a highly dynamic way of behaving. They will not be able to turn their awareness inwards enough to find the kind of detachment that Enlightenment requires.

Meditation is usually done under circumstances that minimise agitation. Practice is done in such a way as to minimise any opportunity to take attention away. There are walking meditations in Buddhist practice, and physical postures in sequence in yoga practice, but this seems to be as agitated a bodily state as these disciplines allow. Compare this to the running-jumping-standing-still that aikido practice entails, and one begins to get an idea of what a handicap aikidoka carry in the Satori stakes.

Enlightenment seems to require awareness and equanimity of a very high order. Spiritual Transcendence seems to require the practice of techniques that put the practitioner in a fraught-free environment. The aikido dojo, even a spiritually self-conscious aikido dojo, does not seem to be such an environment. Aikido practice actively challenges awareness with inputs that disturb tranquillity and promote agitation. These inputs can be met with serenity and composure, and in masterful practice, they are met this way. It is of the nature of aikido ukemi, however, that the kind of calm and focus that make Enlightenment possible is continually contested. Masters of the art are able to meet one or more attackers calmly and objectively. They are able to move with near-perfect detachment and equanimity. Enlightenment seems to require perfect detachment and equanimity, however, not the near-perfect kind. And this is why I suspect that aikido is a form of meditation that makes it humanly almost impossible to achieve such a state.

Someone already Enlightened could do aikido with perfect awareness and equanimity. O-sensei Uyeshiba did so, and no doubt Gautama the Buddha could have done so. But those not already Enlightened are likely to find in aikido no way to become so. It is just too hectic. With the best will in the world they find their composure compromised by the constant demands being placed upon them by the attacks that come from one or more partners. They find perfect equanimity impossible to attain. As a consequence, Enlightenment eludes them.

It is better to know this at the beginning. Then one does not suffer disappointment later on. One can then get from aikido what it does have to offer, which is a very great deal. One does not strive fruitlessly for something it does not offer, because it cannot.

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