The Aiki Academy

There is one spiritual well that waters the whole world. It is fed by a spring of pure water. It is the water of compassion. It is the well of love. All people want to drink there. It is, whether we know it or not, our deepest need. Nothing else will meet this need. Nothing else brings true peace of mind. Nothing else brings real happiness.

Many people draw from this well. Many beliefs and faiths hold out cups to the thirsty.

We often pay whatever is asked for the chance to drink from them. Many of us are desperate. Many of us also live in cash economies, where money is an important measure of worth. We believe that money is the only way to get what we want. If we don’t pay, we think we’re not getting anything worthwhile. And the more we pay the better we believe the solace will be. This isn’t so, but there are plenty of entrepreneurs ready to behave as if it were.

Spiritual commercialists sell something they get for nothing. This can make for a very profitable business. Aikido, too, has often been commercialised in this way.

Aikido is not one way any more. There are at least thirty different schools of aikido by now. Uyeshiba’s early students followed the example he set but each did so in his or her own way. They emphasised different aspects of what they had learned. Each took a different approach to the art.

Some of these approaches were not aikido. Their teachers used the name of aikido but they were doing something else. Some had developed something new. Some had gone back to something that was done before aikido was invented. And some of these schools became very commercial. The people who ran them were more interested in making money than fostering human awareness and a feeling for people as one world family. They used the language of aikido but they did not practice what they preached. They made profits from the need that all people have to live happy and meaningful lives.

There is nothing new in this. If we look at the history of arts like aikido we see the same pattern again and again. We see, for example, someone who struggles to understand what is true and beautiful and good. Such a person studies the work of other great artists. They look far inside themselves. They meet many obstacles and they end up overcoming them. They end up making a new kind of art. They invent a new way.

What they find or what they see is not new. Many pilgrims have gone before them. But how they talk about what they have found or seen, or how they show it to others, can feel new. It can be truly inspiring. It can be so fresh and alive that others want to share the same vision. They become disciples. They feel with great force the significance of what they are told or shown.

These disciples then they go off to show what they know to anyone else who’ll listen. “This is what I felt” they say. “This is what is real”. They tell the truth as they see it. But each tells the truth in their own way. Everyone is different and for each disciple “the way” is different too. Each has their own idea of what they were shown.

Sects spring up. There are arguments about what the great teacher meant by what he or she said or did. Different disciples use the same words but they often mean very different things by them.

It’s like the old story of the blind men and the elephant. One blind man feels the elephant’s trunk. “An elephant is like a great snake” he says. Another blind man feels the elephant’s leg. “An elephant is like a tree” he says. A third blind man feels the elephant’s flank. “An elephant is like a wall” he says.

Disciples often act like these three blind men. They research their art, and what they find they then proclaim to be the whole way. They teach new students and these new students act like blind men too. These students start groups of their own. There are more and more ideas about what seems real or true. Like ripples on a pond awareness runs out from its historical source.

Why don’t these disciples get together? You’d think they would. You’d think they’d share their wisdom to build a clearer picture of the whole art from the part each knows. But they are proud. They really think they understand the whole. They really think they see. They don’t believe that they live in the dark.

Finally another person comes along with the same gifts as the great teachers who have lived before. Like those teachers this wonderful individual studies and struggles and finally finds a new way so fresh and alive that many others want to follow it. Many others come to study the new/old knowledge. These people go away to teach and the cycle is repeated again. This is the way it is all over the world. This is the way it’s been for thousands of years and this is the way it’ll be for thousands more.

Some of those who teach are self-deluded. Some are out-and-out cynics, using what they know because it makes them a living. They are not interested, whatever they say, in making a better world. They are not interested in opening minds and helping others to know more about harmony and love. To them spiritual teachings are mental goods in a world market-place and it’s mostly a matter of selling spiritual commodities at whatever price the market will bear.

Some sell aikido this way too. The sincerity and the integrity of aikido teachers is not always easy to assess, especially if you don’t know much about aikido. But it is common-sense that those who want to raid your pocket are not going to give you a greater awareness of non-material matters.

What such teachers say has to be seen in the light of what they do. Though their words may seem to meet your needs, it’s still worth asking some key questions: what example do they set? Is their example one that will make me more free? Do they live by the principles they preach? Are they what they say they are?

Spending money is not the way to enlighten the spirit. Nor is following a con-artist, however convincing the con-artist may be and however heartfelt the desire to be led.

Irimi Nage

“Irimi nage” is the name in aikido for a range of “entering” throws. It is the most comprehensive of all the aikido techniques. The movement of “irimi nage” follows that of a spiral, opening out as it rises up

The wheel of stars wherein we dwell,
swallows in flight and the swinging bell
know this feeling

they know well
the driving might
that fills the fist,
the opening hand,
the turning wrist
that moves without thinking that
“this I should do!”

making a one
of a conflicting two.

I use the words
but words are not things,
they try like caged birds
to sing like life sings

but they can’t

they can’t

how could they know
that hearts have wings.