Aikido: O'Sensei Morehei Ueshiba

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Aikido: O'Sensei Morehei Ueshiba

O'Sensei Honolulu 1961 Aikido, the Way of Peace, was codified by Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), known to aikidoka as O'Sensei (Great Teacher).

O'Sensei's life is an intertwined tale of strife and mood swings.

As a young man O'Sensei was an infantryman during the Russo-Japanese War. He ventured into Mongolia, eventually fighting both bandits and pirates. A lifelong study of martial arts cumulated in a career as an instructor in Japan's élite military acadamies.

But O'Sensei suffered from weldschmertz, he felt the pain of the world, and his accomplishments seemed hollow to him. It was only in the aftermath of a series of three visions that Morihei Ueshiba came to find his life's work.

John Stevens, in an introduction to The Art of Peace, described how the zeitgeist of O'Sensei's Japan frustrated him, and how three visions brought about Aikido as a counter to that frustration.

osensei-with-jo

Morihei was sorely troubled by the contention and strife that plagued his world: his father's battles with corrupt politicans and their hired goons, the devastation of war, and the brutality of his country's military leaders.

Morihei was on a spiritual quest and was transformed by three visions. The first occurred in 1925, when Morihei was forty-two years old. After defeating a high-ranking swordsman by avoiding all his cuts and thrusts (Morihei was unarmed), Morihei went into his garden. "Suddenly the earth trembled. Golden vapor welled up from the ground and engulfed me. I felt transformed into a golden image, and my body seemed as light as a feather. All at once I understood the nature of creation: the Way of a Warrior is to manifest Divine Love, a spirit that embraces and nurtures all things. Tears of gratitude and joy streamed down my cheeks. I saw the entire earth as my home, and the sun, moon, and stars as my intimate friends. All attachment to material things vanished."

The second vision took place in December of 1940. "Around two o'clock in the morning as I was performing ritual purification, I suddenly forgot every martial art technique I ever learned. All of the techniques handed down from my teachers appeared completely anew. Now they were vehicles for the cultivation of life, knowledge, virtue, and good sense, not devices to throw and pin people."

The third vision was in 1942, during the worst of the fighting of World War II and in one of the darkest periods of human history. Morihei had a vision of the Great Spirit of Peace, a path that could lead to the elimination of all strife and the reconciliation of humankind. "The Way of the Warrior has been misunderstood as a means to kill and destroy others. Those who seek competition are making a grave mistake. To smash, injure, or destroy is the worst sin a human being can commit. The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent slaughter - it is the Art of Peace, the power of love."

The idea that martial arts could be tools to healing and conciliation was a radical one. Up to that point martial arts were seen as ways of inflicting one's opinion on another. Sun Tzu's The Art of War and the Go Rin No Sho (The Book of Five Rings) consider conflict an inevitability, and provide strategems to achieve victory. O'Sensei came to consider conflict a hurdle to be overcome, sensing that our conflict with others, ourselves, and the environment around us would ultimately lead to ruin.

The divine beauty
Of heaven and earth!
All creation,
Members of
One family.

Aikido was his antidote to the ennui of never-ending conflict in our daily existence. Aikido is a positive act in a world full of negatives.

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