AikiDale on Aikido

I am now using the mnemonic AIM to convey the basics of the Aikido process.  It represents Adapt, Improvise and Master.  When we blend with our partner we are adapting to the movement; the environment, inertia, momentum, velocity, balance, muscular exertion and resultant vectors which comprise our coming together.  Having adapted to our situation we improvise an appropriate response.  Thus we learn to master ourselves; our fears, our anger, our daily conflicts, and, with a lot of practice, good intentions and a bit of luck make ourselves and the world in which we live a little better.

I see far too many teachers, let alone students, trying very hard to learn technique. There is a better use of one’s training time. Study aiki, learn aiki, be aikidoka not wazaka.

It is the very mind itself
That leads the mind astray.

-Takuan Soho

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
-Shunryu Suzuki
Suzuki was a Zen master.  The quotation is from his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
It occurs to me the more expert we become and the more we crystallize our style the more imperative it becomes to nurture the beginner’s mind, to maintain an awareness of the many possibilities available to us.  To not be so aware could lead to an expertly dug dogmatic rut.

http://www.aikidojournal.com/blog/2010/11/14/kanshu-sunadomari-sensei-passes-on-november-13/

A Zen pistol shooter  posted this recently and it is important enough to pass along here.  Sensei, coach, instructor, professor, master, teacher.  These are all guides.  The better ones point the way with more clarity perhaps than others but the student must accomplish the learning. Then forget the learning and be.  There is no dogma in the search for truth.  Thanks Brian!

“You yourself have to be the master and the pupil. The moment you acknowledge
another as a master and yourself as a pupil, you are denying truth. There is
no master, no pupil, in the search for truth.”

-Krishnamurti

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“You see, Elena, the whole trouble comes from treating your enemies like human beings. Don’t you see, my dear, that if you do that, they cease to be enemies? Think what that leads to—the end of patriotism, the end of war … It’s the end of everything.” From ‘Fire Over England’ 1937