#shugyo

The great irony of traditional aikido techniques is that they are fundamentally dependent on tori’s position as the aggressor.

It seems as though uke (the so-called “receiver” of the technique) would be the aggressor as they initiate a hands on encounter, usually exemplified in a wrist grab.

However, the purpose of the wrist grab, historically, is for an unarmed party to attempt to control an armed party who has deployed (and is attempting to make good use of) a sword.

Indeed, most of the root techniques of aikido are sword cuts, deployed after one’s sword wielding wrists have been seized.

In other words, tori is an armed swordsman, and uke is attempting to control their sword with empty hands.

This is why uke traditionally is so eager to seize the wrists, and to hang on to them, even following tori’s leading motions.

Understanding this dynamic fundamentally changes the feeling and energy of the position of both tori and uke. Tori is not merely defending themselves from a disadvantageous position, and uke is not merely aggressing- just the opposite is true in the classical kata.

It doesn’t really matter that uke may have initiated the encounter, and possibly have lost control of their original weapon, resulting in an unarmed continuation. At the point of contact they (uke) are ultimately on the defense.

Defense and offense, attacker and defender, leading and following, are ultimately all one unitary phenomenon.

Tori doesn’t follow, tori leads. They provide and control the opening and closure of the encounter. Tori doesn’t so much blend or harmonize as they create a dynamic that must be harmonized with.

Morihei Ueshiba famously noted that “Aiki is love,” and perhaps it is, but it’s love that bounds from a position of power. While not always expressly verbalized as such, that has always been the case- that I should take care of my “opponent” not only because I have the responsibility to, but because that responsibility is born of a capacity, the advantageous position, to not.

~JRP

The psychologization of the dharma in the west has not been an entirely negative movement. In many ways the marriage of psychology and mindfulness has been a fruitful one that has made Buddhist principles more accessible to the masses. Certainly the ongoing dialogue between observational science and Buddhist spiritual practice has helped to both verify and refine the transmission and translation of various doctrines and practices into a culturally accessible format.

However, this hasn’t been a movement without shadow. The conflation of the dharma with mindfulness alone, as the crown jewel of the psychological reductionist perspective has been a hindering force for many practitioners, who often come to conflate awakening with metacognitive awareness. That’s a grave mistake.

The dawning of metacognition is a substantial doorway, but a doorway nonetheless. It’s not the path made manifest. Likewise practice cannot be reduced to metacognition. Metacognition is a relatively early consequence of meditative practice, but it’s not samadhi, and it’s certainly not prajna.

Samadhi is often misunderstood as some kind of blank absorption into mindless being. This is a substantial pitfall, a trapping of the mind that the ego is all too happy to allow the practitioner to become infatuated with. Hanging out in “nothingness” after all is a safe space for the ego, wherein subject-object dualism can be safely maintained. After all, samadhi as it is most frequently reported is a state of “I” slipping away for a time, after which it can emerge from its bath in nothingness fully aware of its journeying, and often proud of it to boot.

True samadhi on the other hand, true meditative absorption into the heart of reality, is a manifestation of nondualism. It is the realization and effortless expression of subject-object sameness, and embodying of the true-self, which is limitless in time and space, while somehow yet identifiable through the singular body of one’s birth (after all, form IS emptiness and emptiness IS form). It is from this samadhic state that prajna, or the spontaneous expression of wisdom before thinking, can appear.

Zen Master Seung Sahn often noted that practitioners must find “correct situation, correct relationship, and correct function.” Situation, relationship, and function in spontaneous harmony and accord is, in effect, prajna arising from samadhi.

In this it may he further understood that samadhi is not a drop into some well of neutral blankness, but a conscious swim in-and-as the dynamic tension that may be interpreted through such terms as rupa and sunyata, purusha and prakriti, yin and yang, waves and particles, etc.

It is not with any degree of levity that Zen prescribes the essentials of great faith, great doubt, and great determination. We must have some degree of considerable degree of faith that our practice can yield resolution to the matter of life and death. We must uphold a continual resolve to push beyond the limits of what we hope to be the end of the path and into the real, doubting that the full picture has ever quite entered our conscious regard. And too, we must devote ourselves to persistence in this faith and doubt, understanding sadhana (shugyo) as the only path to true liberation and awakening.

~Sunyananda

The spirituality of martial arts (Budo) is not an obvious thing. No amount of outfits, other accoutrement, or religiously adjacent cultural customs can elucidate (let alone comprise) the actual heart of training.

Contemporary definitions define spirituality as that which concerns “the nonphysical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character,” with etymology uncovering the nature of spirit as “breath,” that essential yet often overlooked exchange of life giving gasses between our environment and innermost being.

In East Asia, the etymology of the word spirit (神) pertains to lightening, and the seemingly spontaneous manifestation of raw, overwhelming power in nature. The ancients saw lightening as coming strictly from the sky. Contemporarily we understand the visible force of lightening to come from the ground up. In reality, it’s both.

Budo is simultaneously an outwardly recognizable physical discipline and more subtly internal set of commitments and challenges. It is something learned from the outside in, but truly manifest only from the inside out. This meeting place between interior and exterior, between mental and physical is where the spirituality of martial arts abides.

Beginning with the common grappling between bodily compliance with the obscure physical demands of the arts (and the competition for attention and motivation with myriad other forces vying for our time) the spiritual path of Budo has its genesis as mere discipline, and its truest revelation in the spontaneous inseparability between technique and the dispositions, commitments, and activities of everyday life.

Budo is a pursuit that comes to occupy and possess one’s mind as much as one’s mind, when peeled back to its essence, comes to occupy and define Budo. In this, Budo is not simply a practice of combat or military tactics, but rather an orientation toward life that elicits awareness, acceptance, and harmonious accord with reality as it is. For this reason, aphorisms such as “Ken Zen Ichi Nyo” (拳禪一如) have come into being - “the fist and Zen are one.”

Conflict and peace are in constant relationship, seemingly a dichotomy until their dynamic tension is realized as a fundamental unitary nature. Life and death, and indeed all supposed opposites are also like this. Budo is a ground of intentionality where this fundamental unitary nature can be perceived and proactively engaged, with conscious attention and agency. What could be more spiritual, lest we confuse the constructs of belief and creed with true matters of spirit?

(Pictures from 15+ years ago, 10+ years ago, and 1+ year ago)

True spirituality (bukkyo), like true martial arts (budo), brings us face to face with the realities of life, and chiefly, with its limitations. In intentionally confronting mortality, suffering, violence, pain, and unknowing we can realize the confidence to actually enter into the streams of our lives already in progress, unburdened with the weight of fearing the unknown (consciously or otherwise) which keeps us so readily anchored to a half-life of ignorance, reservation, and even reckless attempts to break free from our molds.

As these fundamental matters are broached, and the ambiguity of their relationship to our being is resolved, through ongoing training in the midst of our daily life (shugyo) we can come to authentically entertain the nuances of love, joy, peace, awareness, and freedom. We can come to celebrate the would be ravages of time as the play of temporality, and to dance with its steps.

At its heart, such training is always about honesty, agency, and intentionality. Through it we can find meaning, narrative, and poetry that can withstand the gravity of reality, and persist as wisdom embodied.

~Sunyananda