Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote:
Hello Brad,
Indeed. In a number of places, Ueshiba refers to kotodama as involved in creation. The quote below is from Masahisa Goi, but Morihei Ueshiba believed the same thing.
2. 五井先生は、言霊とは、文字や音声にいずる想念以前のひびき、即ち光そのもののひびき、神である、音声や文字に出た時はすでに言霊の役目、働きが果たされあとのものである、と説明して下さいました。
Goi Sensei wa, kotodama to wa, moji ya onsei ni izuru sonen izen no hibiki, sunawachi hikari sonomono no hibiki, kami de aru, onsei ya moji ni deta toki wa sudeni kotodama no yakume, hataraki ga hatasare ato no mono de aru, to setsumei shite kudasaimashita.
Goi Sensei bestowed on us the explanation that word-soul was prior to words and voiced sounds, in other words, that word soul was the deity that vibrated light itself, and that the time that it came forth in sounds and letters was the remains of the previous working of word-soul.
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The origin of these thoughts is likely Honda Chikaatsu, who informed Onisaburo (Kisaburo, then) in the ways of
chinkon kishin, and the
ichirei formula and the principles of
kotodama. Others he also instructed directly who were initially involved in Oomoto and then departed to go there own way in turn, such as Tomokiyo Yoshizane (Shindo Tenkokyo).
I am coming to conclude that Japanese speakers live in mortal fear of the unintended pun (
imikotoba) which is an almost unavoidable hazard in their language -- and therefore go to great lengths, both to initially avoid unfortunate associations, and then to create clever multi-layered "good" associations when something particularly important is being said, lest it be tainted by an unwitting, unintended bad association. Their grammar is therefore built up slowly and not definitive until the end of the phrase -- all to ensure that the sense is not being taken badly in the hearing before the thought is concluded (and possibly needing an emergency last-minute qualifier
). Like the layers of cloth armor -- deceptively thin and soft individually, but stacked and stitched together can stop a blade or cushion a blow.
For this reason, it seems to me that teasing out even the thinnest associations and connections seems worthwhile, as long as it ties back in some concrete way to the training.
The alternate reading of
odo 小戸 ( small door/gate) as
odo 小渡 the "narrow rivermouth" or "ford" (notably
tachibana no odo no ahagihara) is given by Abe Sensei from Ueshiba's discourse on Kojiki -- where he relates Ueshiba saying that aikido was born from "the thrashing of Izanagi" in the waters at that place.
Honda Reigaku, from which both Tomokiyo's and Onisaburo's thoughts both stem, puts
otodama 音魂 (sound-spirit) in preeminence and
kotodama as the human intention effecting the play of
otodama in human circumstances. In Oomoto, this distinction seems compounded into the
kotodama concept, whereas people who have come from a different line (notably Koichi Barrish) see things like
otodama playing a prominent role in physical terms -- he has spoken of using the "echo" of
atemi. This is a point that "resonates"
quite well with me and my own sensibilities in practice.
Tomokiyo saw
otodama as a whole-body sense phenomena not limited merely to purely auditory meaning, but of two types of sensation, (he uses ears
mimi) -- hearing with
kunitsutama (earthly-spirit) and
amatsutama (heavenly-spirit). In this way, Tomokiyo advised submitting the body to the sensation of a regularized rhythm such as sound of rain, a waterfall, or even a simple clock to regularize and resensitize the body's internal and external connections to a coherent rhythm.
The connection to
furitama,
funetori,
tekubi furi and the oscillatory/spiral paradigms of aikido training seem quite obvious in this light.
Taking all of this concretely, I can put some plain physical interpretations on all of those images overlaid onto one another, which directly relate to the nature of physical connection and the principle of sound as sensed vibration in various aspects of the body sensitive to vibration -- among them: the behavior of eddies and vortices, and the effect of shears in constricted flow at a discontinuity (a narrow rivermouth), and the effect of the Huygen-Fresnel principle on sound wave propagation/diffraction through an opening in a barrier (a "small gate"). All of those can be shown to have application in a cognate principle in Aikido training considered as a biomechanical system. Thrashing in water at a narrow place in a stream adds more eddies to interact with the eddies already being continually thrown off by the constriction.
Tomkiyo extended his own thought on
Honda Reigaku, and held that
otodama the "sound spirit" was the "particle" or fundamental constitutent of reality -- more basic even than the electron.
Otodama he specifically identified as the basis for
ichirei shikon.
FWIW -- this observation plays a good part in my consideration of angular momentum/moment as tying western physics to both the Sinified "ki" system, and to the Kojiki myth system as ways of understanding these principles in a physical way.
Ichirei as the basic oscillation potential/action, and the
shikon as the four characters or types of that action/potential in a given relation or interaction, if you will -- the four 90 degree (juiji 十字) phases of a full 360 degree oscillation or rotation. Considered in purely physical terms, they are defined on a sine curve: Aramitama (maximum positive phase) Nigimitama (falling through zero); Kushimitama (maximum negative phase), and Sakimitama (rising through zero). There are other metaphysical understandings (as Barrish also demonstrates from his perspective) but they also tie to the physical nature -- or put another way -- each
kami is revealed in and possesses its own characteristic
mono).
When seen in developmental terms,
otodama as
ichirei- shikon (foundation and character-type, if you will) can become distinguished and progressive in the
sangen and
hachiriki alterations -- where the sangen can be seen as the three axes on which the
shikon action/potential of the
ichirei play out in spirals, with the
hachiriki being the various sensible or conceptual effects of this "playing out" in the physical (and metaphysical) alterations of the world or situation.