Aikido and the Responsibility to Care, by Darrell Bluhm

Darrell Bluhm Shihan (7th dan) began his Aikido training in 1970 as a student at UC Santa Cruz. In 1973 he spent two months living at the Iwama dojo in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan, training with M. Saito Shihan, as well as time training at Hombu dojo in Tokyo. In 1981 he became a student of T.K. Chiba Shihan and a founding member and assistant instructor of San Diego Aikikai. In 1983 he founded Siskiyou Aikikai in Ashland, Oregon where he has taught Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan for the past 37 years and the Feldenkrais Method for 24 years. In 2017 he was promoted to 7th Dan, by Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba. He serves as a member of the Birankai North America Senior Council.

Aikido Journal recently published editorials by Jamie Leno Zimron and Tom Collings. They address the challenges our Aikido community is facing due to waning interest in our art and the issues presented by the global pandemic. Both editorials also address the issue of Aikido’s martial effectiveness. I find both these editorials provocative, especially in how they represent different but simultaneously valid points of view. In pondering the ideas presented by Zimron Sensei and Collings Sensei, I feel compelled to add my voice to this discussion. I am especially interested in exploring how our understanding of Aikido’s martial effectiveness can help shape our responses, individually and collectively, to the challenges we face.

In her editorial, Zimron Sensei emphasizes the power of reconciliation inherent in the principles and practices of Aikido. She has spent many years using Aikido practice as a means for bringing people together across barriers of perceived enmity and historic conflict. I applaud her work and hope that others will join her in the promotion of peace and reconciliation through Aikido. In our everyday practice on the mat, we bring people together in ways that cross social barriers in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, class, etc. This is an important element in how Aikido contributes to the health of our communities. We should celebrate this and commit ourselves to the necessary work of addressing systemic racism, gender bias and other obstacles to creating a truly diverse and open community.

Collings Sensei shares his perspective on, the “inherent ugliness of violence,” derived from his work in law enforcement. In his editorial, he warns us not to trivialize real violence by means of sanitized and theatrical presentations of Aikido. I wholeheartedly agree. When we trivialize or glamorize violence, we insult the countless individuals impacted by domestic, sexual, criminal, and institutional violence, and we insult the art of Aikido itself. Collings Sensei has outlined a cogent and coherent university level Aikido program which employs the development of practical self-defense skills as a starting point for his students. Given his experience and perspective, this approach makes sense to me. I am looking forward to hearing from him how the program is received. I hope it proves to be a model for like-minded teachers within our community.

My teacher, T. K. Chiba, often described his approach to Aikido training as one committed to nourishing the roots of Aikido. In his own words:

“I regard Aikido to be more than just another art form, for its value transcends the boundaries and limitations inherent in the martial arts forms. If we treat it as simply a lovely flower of  the tradition meant solely for our sensual enjoyment, and we ignore or neglect the gnarled roots that dig deep into the soil to give life to the flower, we will lose something vitally important- the essential nutrition for our ongoing endeavor in the study of the art. In my view, what makes things healthy is the existence of opposing elements within a being that give rise to a lively tension and creative dynamism” (The Study and Refinement of Martial Awareness).

As part of nourishing the roots of our art, Chiba Sensei emphasized the martial importance of knowing what he called the three Ws: Where, When, and What. He expected us to be able to execute the proper distance, angle and positioning, the timing and choice of technique suited to a given circumstance. The atmosphere he created on the mat was structured to awaken our minds, training was never casual, but was permeated by a lively tension directed to the cultivation of what he called Martial Awareness. This he described as: 

“… a type of instinctive, spontaneous sensitivity which gives rise to action that is altogether natural. …this action cannot be planned or prepared in advance; however, it can be conditioned within oneself through discipline, so that over time it may penetrate the subconscious where it awaits to manifest itself in a spontaneous, instinctive response at the correct time” (The Study and Refinement of Martial Awareness).

Consider ukemi. Often, it is not our ability to execute ikkyo or irimi nage that serves to protect us in daily life, but our ability to take ukemi. I and many of my students have survived conflicts with gravity and hard surfaces with little or no injury due to the ability to act spontaneously and instinctively. Chiba Sensei used to refer to ukemi as “preparation for the unexpected.” Ukemi teaches us to deal with situations on and off the mat by listening with all of ourselves to what is happening in a given moment. This is martial awareness. 

The concept of “martial awareness,” as Sensei understood it and taught it to his students, strongly correlates with the concept of “adaptive capacity.” From Wikipedia: “Adaptive capacity relates to the capacity of systems, institutions, humans and other organisms to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to respond to consequences.” The ability of any organism to fit its niche, and adapt to changing circumstances, represents its “martial” nature. Here is what Chiba Sensei had to say in 1987. [From Aikido and Self Realization.Sansho: Aikido Journal of the San Diego Aikikai]

“There are many creatures with different attributes in nature. For example, lions and tigers have strong muscles and sharp claws and fangs, while weak animals such as birds are given wings to fly with, and hares hide themselves with fur that changes color every season. This is the greatness of nature’s law. Every being is given a life force and unique abilities accordingly, which are beyond comparison in terms of which is better or worse. In its own uniqueness, every being has its own self-worth, dignity and meaning….

“…now consider human society. Similar to the world of nature, each person has a perfectly unique existence and there are no two identical persons across time and space. Regardless of one’s specific personality, ability and life force, one’s existence is beyond relative comparison. Its meaning and value of existence must be found in itself. This applies to male/female — and other — relationships in human society, and also the relationships among various cultures. To my thinking, the reason for each individual being’s existence is found in this fact.

“No matter how hard a hare tries to become a tiger, it would be a waste of energy, and vice versa. One must awaken to the uniqueness of one’s own life and transcend it to the highest degree. I find the value and meaning of our lives in this task.

“Aikido is one of the many precious heritages of the human race to help actualize this task. It helps us reach the highest level of manifestation. It also helps us recognize the unity and harmony among diverse human beings as well as the dignity of each individual’s existence. This is accomplished through hard work and leads to the realization of one’s true self.”

​This is my fiftieth year practicing Aikido. In my youth, I was very interested in the martial effectiveness of Aikido, testing the efficacy of my practice in different contexts: the rugby field, sparring with practitioners of other martial arts, working as a doorman/bouncer in a bar. I still miss rugby and the friendships forged kicking, punching and grappling with my sparring partners, but I do not miss the violence that erupted too frequently at the bar. 

Over the past thirty years I have grown more interested in how our practice can serve to cultivate relationships of care. In our training, we cultivate care for ourselves, physically and psychologically, with the awareness that for most of us, the assailants we face are more internal than external, including habits of self-deprecation, fear, anger, self-doubt or internal physical disharmony. We cultivate care for each other through the reciprocal nature of our practice, the exchange of roles as uke and nage, the “whetstone and the knife together” fostering a paradoxical relationship of conflict and care between ourselves and our partners. We cultivate care for the principles and practice of our discipline, especially its transmission from one generation to the next. At this time this responsibility is of primary concern. Those of us who are elders in the Aikido community need to be especially vigilant to empower and support younger teachers who have taken upon themselves the challenge of sustaining our art into the future. We cultivate care for the dojo, which can then extend outward to care for our physical environment and the community of all beings human and other. Our ability to cooperate, to feel compassion, and to attend to the needs of others are what I believe are our greatest resources. 

Darrell Bluhm at Aikido Daiwa

Zimron Sensei speaks of Aikido as a medicine for a sick world.  Chiba Sensei addressed this topic often. His perspective was that any medicine if misused could become a poison. He believed if Aikido was used to promote ego and materialistic gain it would function as a poison, but if our community maintained “Shoshin” (Beginner’s Mind) and the traditional martial values of self-sacrifice, courage, discipline, and if it continued to honor O Sensei’s vision of Aikido as a creative force to reconcile conflict in a complex world, Aikido would realize its potential as an antidote to the illnesses of hatred, fear, vanity and narcissism — elements that are running wild in our world today. 

In my dojo hangs a piece of calligraphy brushed by artist and Tea Master Shozo Sato, that reads “ryo bo” and translates as “both forgotten.” It is a constant reminder for me to look beyond the world of duality, this and that, you and me, us and them, right and wrong and embrace the possibility of oneness. The virus that we are facing and responding to, via behavioral changes, such as social distancing, wearing masks in public, sequestering in place, does not recognize the human constructed divisions of nationality, gender, political affiliation, etc, although the poor and socially marginalized, are, as usual, more vulnerable. We must exercise our adaptive capacity to be creative, courageous and compassionate in response to the situation we face. Awakening to our uniqueness and recognizing the uniqueness of others while simultaneously perceiving the interdependency and unity that exist between all beings, human and otherwise is, I believe, the spiritual foundation of our practice. 

Darrell Bluhm

Read more from Darrell Bluhm’s at Biran Online.

9 comments

  • Fantastic and thoughtfully provocative essay re-emphasizing the critical nature of our dojo work and the enduring responsibility to continue training. Thank Bluhm Sensei!

  • Such a broad and comprehensive view of what aikido is and can be, reflects an amazing depth of understanding. Your five decades of training shine through. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts Bluhm Sensei.

    • Thank you Tom for your article, it was partly the stimulus for me writing mine. Thanks for your kind comments.
      Best,
      Darrell

  • I am sorry but I found this article egregious.

    I hope I may relay a different point of view, without insulting anyone’s intelligence. Let us set aside what everyone in the aikido world already knows, namely that T.K.Chiba was “known for his powerful technique” a euphemism Stan Pranin apparently coined (in his “Aikido Encyclopedia”) to describe aggressive, even destructive, aikido teachers.

    While no aikido teacher worth his salt, I suspect, would deny outright its philosophy of love, this article appears to argue that we should be compassionate with each other on the mat, without saying in what ways we are currently not being compassionate. It does not show us what needs changing but insinuates that there is something lacking in current aikido practices, without quite spelling out what those evils might be.

    How could aikido be other than compassionate..? I do not understand. Are we to make a distinction between compassion and love..? If so, the distinction is not made clear and I feel confused.

    I started to get even more confused when apparently relevant quotes from Chiba-san were used to somehow bolster this argument for greater compassion, when Chiba-san’s words don’t appear to me to be saying anything of the kind.

    Bluhm Sensei appears to have the same interests as me in making aikido more compassionate. So far so good, and I expected that he might point out what was wrong with aikido today and how it might be improved… but no.

    The quote from Chiba-san says that there’s some sort of need to equate individual uniqueness with cultural and sexual uniqueness…that there is some sort of differentiation at the life-force (energetic) level (whatever that means for LGBTQ+ people) which makes these categories distinct. Further: Chiba-san says that this uniqueness means no one in any one of these categories should try to become a member of any other, for fear, presumably, of some sort of energetic contagion, resulting in the horror of non-uniqueness!! Good grief..! A hybrid bi-cultural person like me (Half Japanese – Half Kiwi) must be anathema, energetically speaking… Do I get my share of compassion too..? Do I have uniqueness too..? Or, am I hopelessly category-contaminated that I have no pseudo-biological uniqueness left..?!?

    Fascists used to believe in this sort of thing, from Herbert Spencer down to the Nazis; in art, Italian futurists lauded “invention, modernity, speed, industry, disruption, brash, energetic, combative” as an article online states.

    During WWII, the Japanese Imperial Army believed in knowing directly through intuition, by-passing the intellect and the use of reason. The Japanese proclaimed they were superior to the West because of this; they were a higher order of human being, a superior race. As it turned out, history proved them wrong… Chiba-san appears to wants us to believe in something similar, that there’s some virtue in proclaiming the uniqueness of categories we didn’t know were so “energetically” separate. In the same breath, we are to “transcend our uniqueness.” Oh boy..!

    Wait a minute, first ‘awaken’ uniqueness, which doesn’t make much sense anyway, since we are individually already unique but, then, we must top up this nonsense, by ‘transcending’ it…? OK, let’s give Chiba-san some credit and try to follow this argument.

    We need to transcend our uniqueness because it’s somehow biological (at an energetic level we cannot see, mind you). This also presumes that Chiba, with his great but not so wonderful reputation, was a seer, which I find harder to believe than the moon is made of cheese. (Blue vein?)

    Although, I have never heard of hetero-normative gender forms being biological, or the sexes being only binary (since there are actually several genetic categories I gather, including hermaphrodites),

    Well, the problem is that this kind of argument from an energetic perspective may not be true at all. We do not have privileged access to the energetic field, as Chiba-san seems to. So we cannot see a) how males and females and individuals and cultures are separate “energetic” entities, and b) that they should not intermingle therefore, to avoid losing their uniqueness, and c) that they should, in spite of maintaining this uniqueness at the risk of losing it, they must, nonetheless, “transcend” themselves…

    What..?

    I’m sorry. I got really lost at this point. Transcend what we most want to prove..? Why..? Any reason for that..?

    This logic doesn’t make any sense. Let’s give it a shot anyway… OK, so, take something unique. Anything. Say Marilyn Manson, the singer. First, he’s a dude who’s given himself a female name. {unique} He dresses up weird and wears make-up {unique times two). He also makes music which is uniquely annoying to me (that’s real unique, since I like most music…{unique times three?}). The combo above would surely make the man unique. He stands out. Why, then, should he transcend his uniqueness, when his uniqueness is already a transcendence of the norm..?

    But none of the above has any connection to compassion anyway, so I just don’t get what Chiba’s illogical philosophy has anything to do with compassion. May I make a speculative suggestion..?

    The reason Chiba-san talks about uniqueness is most probably because in his day in Japan, there was precious little of it to be found. Japan is a conformist collectivist society, even today, where most kids must wear uniforms to school and individuality is suppressed in favor of group-think. It would only be natural for a creative person, like Chiba-san, to rebel against this in the name of uniqueness. That doesn’t make his philosophy of uniqueness unique in itself, it makes it time-bound and a product of a peculiarly creativity-repressed culture.

    On the other hand, it doesn’t sound particularly unique to talk about uniqueness in our hyper-individualized Western society. We have uniqueness coming out of our elbows…

    Maybe, we don’t need to transcend uniqueness or non-uniqueness, we just need to transcend nonsense.

  • No disrespect but the title of the article is misleading and . I don’t agree that people are born with different life force or different life force potential. It all comes down to intent. Is the intent to really achieve what O’sensei wishes for or is it to see everyone as a threat or everything in terms of the laws of the jungle? We could all have the same life force if energy was really shared and people did really care about all beings (especially by the practitioners of aikido). Observing a rabbit behavior and assuming that the person is a rabbit is already a biased predatory judgment. We have evolved to being human and humane. I hope more people will act like it. And a reminder that there is still nature versus nurture. Which one will you focus on?

    There’s a huge difference between law of the weakest and “law of the weakest”.

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