Allen Beebe

Here is the doka:
愛 [あい: AI] love, affection.
の
喜び [よろこび: YOROKOBI] joy, delight, rapture, pleasure, gratification, rejoicing, congratulations, felicitations.
の
道 [どう: DOU] (1) (abbr) road, (2) way, (3) Buddhist teachings, (4) Taoism, (5) modern administrative region of Japan (Hokkaido), (6) historical administrative region of Japan (Tokaido, Tosando, etc.), (7) province (Tang-era administrative region of China), (8) province (modern administrative region of Korea)

顯 (頁) ケン, あきらか, あらわ.れる manifest, display, evident, clear
靈 (雨) レイ, リョウ, たま soul, spirit
神 [かみ: KAMI] god, deity, divinity, spirit, kami.

It reads:
Ai (Love) no Ki (Joy) no Do (Way)
Gen (Manifest), Rei (Spirit), Shin (God)

It is a Doka written by O-sensei and also one of two Doka written for me by Shirata Rinjiro sensei on the first day I met him. I often contemplate the two Doka (the other being, Masa Katsu A Katsu, Aikido) because I feel that, not knowing that we would have a 7 year relationship, Shirata sensei wrote down the essence of what he knew about Aikido so that I might have it "up front." This is in keeping with the pedagogical structure I learned form him which was: Give them everything immediately and then lead them to discover all that they have been given.

With the above in mind, please allow me to share the following . . .

I enjoy reading, "Listening to Your LIfe, Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner"

Today's entry seems relevant:

"Love * September 10

The First Stage is to believe that there is only one kind of love. The middle stage is to believe that there are many kinds of love and that the Greeks had a different word for each of them. the last stage is to believe that there is only one kind of love.

The unabashed eros of lovers, the sympathetic phila of friends, agape giving itself away freely no less for the murderer than for his victim (the King James version translates it as charity) - these are all varied manifestations of a single reality. To lose yourself in another's arms, or in another's company or in suffering for all men who suffer, including the ones who inflict suffering upon you - to lose yourself in such ways is to find yourself. Is what it's all about. Is what love is.

Of all powers, love is the most powerful and the most powerless. It is the most powerful because it alone can conquer the final and most impregnable stronghold which is the human heart. It is the most powerless because it can do nothing except by consent.

To say that love is God is romantic idealism. To say that God is love is either the last straw or the ultimate truth.

In the Christian sense, love is not primarily and emotion but and act of the will. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling. You can as well produce a cozy emotional feeling on demand as you can a yawn or a sneeze. On the contrary, he is telling us to love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to work for their well-being even if it means sacrificing our own well-being to that end, even if it means sometimes just leaving them alone. Thus in Jesus' terms we can love our neighbors without necessarily liking them. In fact liking them may stand in the way of loving them by making us overprotective sentimentalists instead of reasonably honest friends.

When Jesus talked to the Pharisees, he didn't say, "There, there. Everything's going to be all right." He said, "You brood of vipers! How can you speak good when you are evil!" (Matthew 12:34). And he said that to them because he loved them.

This does not mean that liking may not be a part of loving, only that it doesn't have to be. Sometimes liking follows on the heels of loving. It is hard to work for somebody's well-being very long without coming in the end to rather like him too."

With Love and Joy from a fellow traveler,
Allen