Everything in Black and White

Our dojo scored a world-first the other day when two high-ranking Japanese sensei conducted a class wearing ordinary street clothes, while all the students wore dogi and hakama! This drastic deviation in dress code came about because the sensei were here on holiday and had not intended to train. I persuaded them to take the class at the last moment and there was no time to arrange uniforms for them.

As we do not use the hakama to designate rank, all of our students wear it, including beginners, so the only legs without the correct covering on this occasion were those of the teachers. They were not worried, nor did they lose any respect from the students when they rolled up their sleeves, took off their shoes and stepped onto the mat. We had a very relaxed and enjoyable aikido session. It was a different story when I turned up as a spectator at a dojo in Australia and did not let on (not having been asked) what my rank was.

I was watching the class when one of the instructors came over and invited me to join in, even though I was in civvies. “We don’t stand on ceremony here,” he said, ushering me onto the mat and pairing me off with a huge, bearded fellow who looked most impressive in his nice white dogi and black hakama. I must have looked pretty scruffy in comparison and felt uncomfortable in more ways than one as it was mid-summer and I soon began sweating profusely.

My partner initially assumed I was a complete beginner and seemed annoyed to be stuck with me, then became quite angry when my first throw landed him rather heavily on his back. I had not done this deliberately but he was rather stiff and fell like a ton of bricks. A heated training session followed and it was a liquid Lynch that poured himself into a taxi to return to his hotel, though I had rather enjoyed myself.

It was the first time I had ever trained in street clothes (and incognito to boot) but perhaps I was in good company, as there are some old pictures around that show O-Sensei himself on the mat, without the correct aikido outfit, training in trousers and shirt sleeves. Times change, and it is now possible to pay over $500 for a deluxe aikidogi (jacket and trousers only, hakama not included), according to a catalog I have.

I was intrigued to learn, too, from a new book on the history of Japan-New Zealand relations, that several of the original handful of Japanese settlers who arrived in this country over 100 years ago were “jujutsu performers” attached to circuses! Many of them went on from these humble beginnings to become solid citizens. But what a contrast they must have been to present-day aikido instructors who demand business-class or first-class air tickets and a substantial fee over and above expenses when they visit foreign countries. One does not begrudge them this, of course, since it has taken a while to achieve this recognition. No doubt they can afford to wear deluxe dogi too.

On the other hand, many who have followed in the footsteps of Morihei Ueshiba, clearly have difficulty filling his shoes, and some of them would have the opposite problem with his hats, humility not being their strong point.

Because thou sayest thou art rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable and poor and blind and naked; I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see. Revelations

All of us involved in trying to teach aikido to others probably have moments of concern about how far we should attempt to imitate O-Sensei, when we know we are a long way from his level of perfection, both technically and spiritually. He was able to deal with all sorts of physical challenges with consummate ease and spoke about the deeper meaning of life with a conviction born of direct experience. When he says “Aikido is love,” it has a powerful impact, whereas when others utter these words we are often left with the feeling, “That’s all very well and good, but what does it really mean?”

Comparing what we teach with what we think the founder taught, it is easy to feel a bit of a fraud, as if we are “decked in borrowed plumage” or, as the Japanese expression has it, “doing sumo in someone else’s loincloth.” We can look the part and even talk the talk, but “walking the talk” is not so easy. It may be a measure of O-Sensei’s genius that this problem exists for most of those who came after him. I remember the late Doshu saying after a demonstration, “I have shown you how one might deal with multiple attacks, but I am not claiming that I can actually do this myself.” It seemed to me an example of honesty and humility we could all learn from.

Meanwhile we go through the motions, wear the proper white raiment, and achieve a certain amount of credibility amongst our students, even though we know that we are probably as far from the original aikido as the fading carbon copies of a blueprint, which become less recognizable with every generation. Thinking this way can be depressing, but it can also be strangely liberating.

Although I have become a disciple of the Buddha, my heart is not yet absorbed in enlightenment. I am like a prodigal son who has forsaken his father. I now see that in spite of my learning I am not able to put it into practice, I am not better than an unlearned man. It is like a man talking about food, but never eating and becoming satisfied. We are all entangled in these two hindrances: knowledge and learning, and vexation and suffering. I can now see that it is all due to our ignorance of the eternal and tranquil nature of true Mind. Pray, my Lord Tathagata, have mercy upon us all; show us clearly the mysterious enlightening Mind, and open our true eye of enlightenment. The Surangama Sutra

As they say, sincerity is a wonderful thing and if you can fake that you’ve got it made.

Unavoidably, aikido training is a kind of pretense. We are continually showing people how things might work, and thereby exposing ourselves to criticism from the contest-oriented arts (or sports), where at least you can prove something by winning or losing. The “security” obtained from winning a contest is replaced, in aikido, with total insecurity, since you can never win. And even when we try to convey the inner meaning of the training by quoting O-Sensei’s words we can be easily accused of “preaching.” This may be why many instructors develop hardened one-dimensional attitudes emphasizing the physical techniques alone. Others get pretty good at preaching, while virtually denying the importance of technique.

Both sides fail to see that the only thing that is black and white about aikido is the uniform. When we demonstrate the techniques we are pretending in that we are neither in a contest nor a life-and-death situation. And when we quote the old man, it is often with an implicit hope we will one day really understand his words or share his insight. If the extreme physical advocates (the black team) seem intent on making every technique “work” even though this is not possible, the spiritual extremists (the white team) throw themselves too far into the religious aspect and begin to look a bit silly, waving their Shinto wands.

How far is too far? From a recent reading of the book, The Great Onisaburo Deguchi (alias GOD?) it appears that taking literally the Omoto religion (headed by Deguchi) would be one example of going too far. Unless you are willing to swallow (as O-Sensei evidently did) the total teachings of a man who piled his hair up on his head in a hair net, called himself the Dalai Lama, Genghis Khan and the Buddha and liked nothing better than to ride around with a motorcycle escort!

The American expert on comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell, warned about the different approaches taken by different cultures in the search for truth. He felt it was important for Westerners to study the ways of the East, but that little was to be gained by a Westerner “wearing a turban all the time.” People tend to dislike anything that is not black and white and yet self-study is by its nature obscure and even hidden from first sight. Brought up in the marketing mentality, many potential students want to know precisely what they can get out of aikido, without giving much thought to the effort they would require themselves to even scratch the surface.

If they feel the art falls short of their notion of self-defense, then they want to know all about its “spiritual” content, and how one could possibly reach enlightenment by twisting someone’s arm. Faced with such questions we hardly know how to respond. The more we say the more we can get ourselves into deep water and the more like frauds we may feel. Unless, that is, we can make it clear to our students that we are not teachers, preachers, masters or gurus; that we do not have all the answers, but that, as instructors, we can guide them to some extent to begin a lifelong study, where the onus is on them to do most of the work.

We need not try and copy O-Sensei or anyone else but need to “internalize” the teachings to make them our own, and strive to nourish those distinctly human characteristics that are hinted at in the words of all great spiritual teachers, Ueshiba included. Students can read the sayings of the founder, look into the history of aikido, and make up their own minds as to whether this training is something that may help them on this mission. It is not supposed to be easy, or cut and dried. Nor is our life. Man lives in a permanent state of contradiction between his personal, outer self, oriented towards being productive and effective in a social context, and his inner life, concerned with developing his latent possibilities as a human being.

For most of us the outer self is so busy carving its niche, getting educated, and developing its personality, that it is hardly aware of the existence of an inner self. And our materialistic society does not place any premium on the latter whereas it saves its rewards exclusively for the former. But both aspects are required to make the complete man and most of us at some time or another have fleetingly felt this, though we may have just as quickly buried the feeling. Certainly it can be discomforting to see how far we have to go to develop any sort of inner being, but facing the truth of our situation is already a step in the right direction. There isn’t much room for an outsized ego in this and we should not be ashamed to admit the little that we know.

Students of aikido may be attracted to the art by vague feelings which are not easily expressed, and certainly not black and white. They need to respect this intuition and nurture it. At the same time, each must follow his own path, since there is no way self-knowledge can be acquired from someone else. We are all in the same boat, whether we wear fancy clothes or not, and though our bodies may be of vastly different shapes and sizes, under those black and white garments, we are of the same human flesh and blood. Thanks to the physical nature of the training, aikido instructors are saved from having to be simply preachers, but they need not deny that the training has any inner meaning.

Indeed we must do a better job of presenting the “Do” of aikido, in a way that will enable our students to recognize in themselves some aspect of a universal truth that the training can help them to access over time. To encourage our students to take up the challenge of being what they can be (or what they already are without being aware of it); to explore the real essence that lies beneath the mask of personality; to glimpse our true relationship to the whole of humanity (to see that we literally “fit in”), and to gradually deepen an awareness that we are a microcosm of the universe itself—all this is available to instructors and students alike.

The way is at our feet. Let’s encourage others to walk it with us.