Aikido is Love text

I am translating a text from Japanese in which the text by O-Sensei which starts with "Aikido is love..." is included. I know it must be translated into English somewhere, and probably in a better version than I can create!

I have heard that it may be in one of the old Aiki Journal editions from around 1974-75. If anyone has the DVDs with these editions on them, and can find the text, could you help me, please?

The text may also be in one of the many Aikido books out there, I just can't find it in any of the ones I have.

For those who can read Japanese, the text goes:
"合気とは愛なり、天地の心を以って我が心とし、万有愛護の大精神を以って自己の使命を完遂する事こそ武の道であらねばならぬ、合気とは自己に打ち克ち敵をして戦う心なか らしむ、否、敵そのものを無くする絶対的自己完成の道なり、而して武技は天の理法を身体に移し霊肉一体の至上境に至るの技であり、道程である"


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Onegaishimasu!

In Aiki,

Ethan Weisgard

According to a chinese co-worker. This is a copy and paste of email I recieved back. I'm assuming he means aikido and not Taekwondo

"If Taekwondo designates the heart of love either heaven and earth as our heart from here and large mind of universal protection very from here completing the mission of oneself it is not the road of the military affairs, is not, Taekwondo it strikes in oneself and wins and does the enemy and heartlessly the mustard which fights, the road of the absolute self completion which loses no and the enemy itself or, military affairs skill moves law of the heaven to the body and reaches to the supreme boundary of body and soul one body to be skill, it is distance."

Hello Robert,

Cool! That text reads like some of the t-shirts I collect in Japan with the most amazing random English written on them!
Close, but no cigar! Thanks for the input, though.

In Aiki,

Ethan

Ethan Weisgard wrote: Hello Robert, Cool! That text reads like some of the t-shirts I collect in Japan with the most amazing random English written on them! Ethan

See Engrish.com

Cheers!
Carol Shifflett

Pasting the Japanese text into:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/
I get the translation below,

"If the combination air heart of love either heaven and earth is designated as っ て our heart from here and large mind of universal protection very from here completing the mission of っ て oneself it is not the road of the military affairs, is not, the combination air it strikes in oneself and wins and does the enemy and heartlessly the mustard which fights む, the road of the absolute self completion which loses no and the enemy itself or, 而, military affairs skill moves law of the heaven to the body and reaches to the supreme boundary of body and soul one body to be skill, it is distance"

I don't read Japanese, so I can't tell you if it's a good translation.

Mark

Thanks to all the many people who have replied in regard to this quest!
Jason Wotherspoon and cbateman found the exact translation I was looking for, so special thanks to them both.


For those interested:

Aikido is love. You make this great great love of the universe your heart and then you must make your own mission the protection and love of all things. To accomplish this mission must be the true budo. True budo means to win over yourself and eliminate the fighting spirit of the enemy…No, it is a way to absolute self/perfection, in which the very enemy is eliminated. The technique of Aiki is ascetic training and a way through which you reach a state of unification of body and spirit by the principle of heaven.


In Aiki,

Ethan Weisgard

Ethan Weisgard wrote: For those interested: Aikido is love. You make this great great love of the universe your heart and then you must make your own mission the protection and love of all things. To accomplish this mission must be the true budo. True budo means to win over yourself and eliminate the fighting spirit of the enemy…No, it is a way to absolute self/perfection, in which the very enemy is eliminated. The technique of Aiki is ascetic training and a way through which you reach a state of unification of body and spirit by the principle of heaven. In Aiki, Ethan Weisgard

The " mustard which fights" part is missing. I kind of liked that.

Ethan Weisgard wrote: I am translating a text from Japanese in which the text by O-Sensei which starts with "Aikido is love..." is included. I know it must be translated into English somewhere, and probably in a better version than I can create! I have heard that it may be in one of the old Aiki Journal editions from around 1974-75. If anyone has the DVDs with these editions on them, and can find the text, could you help me, please? The text may also be in one of the many Aikido books out there, I just can't find it in any of the ones I have. For those who can read Japanese, the text goes: "合気とは愛なり、天地の心を以って我が心とし、万有愛護の大精神を以って自己の使命を完遂する事こそ武の道であらねばならぬ、合気とは自己に打ち克ち敵をして戦う心なか らしむ、否、敵そのものを無くする絶対的自己完成の道なり、而して武技は天の理法を身体に移し霊肉一体の至上境に至るの技であり、道程である" Any help would be greatly appreciated! Onegaishimasu! In Aiki, Ethan Weisgard

Very nice. I appreciateyou posting this,


Justin

Ethan Weisgard wrote: "合気とは愛なり、天地の心を以って我が心とし、万有愛護の大精神を以って自己の使命を完遂する事こそ武の道であらねばならぬ、合気とは自己に打ち克ち敵をして戦う心なか らしむ、否、敵そのものを無くする絶対的自己完成の道なり、而して武技は天の理法を身体に移し霊肉一体の至上境に至るの技であり、道程である"

For those interested, I thought I'd throw in a rough translation of this
first let's break it up into parts

"合気とは愛なり"
Aiki is Love! ( oh man, there's that word again)
"天地の心を以って我が心とし"
I make my heart the heart of heaven and earth.

<commentary>
In this case heart can refer to "feeling". As in the core of his physical being is related to the "up-down/heaven-earth" relation. Refers to a physical feeling I'm guessing. Ark has no relation to Ueshiba, never has read this, but describes it in the same manner.

"万有愛護の大精神を以って自己の使命を完遂する事こそ武の道であらねばならぬ"
I recieve my mission from the Universal Spirit of Protection/Love/Care/Lovedovey, and the consummation of this is the ultimate goal of the Martial Way.
<commentary>
Anyone that can come up with a better translation, feel free to do so. I could state my opinoin, but it'd turn into a page long dialogue, most of it having to lay out why he talks like this, and lay parallels to bodyskill development. In short, it's not that important in the overall scheme.

"合気とは自己に打ち克ち敵をして戦う心なからしむ,否、敵そのものを無くする絶対的自己完成の道なり"
敵に戦いの心を起こさせず、また敵という概念を超える

Aiki is not about breaking down our inner enemy and "winning" against it. Rather, it is the ultimate way to complete oneself and erase the conception of "enemy" all together.
<Comments>
The fat and short of it, get rid of the conception of "enemy" all together, or "clashing" with an opponent. Again, typical of the developmental process in internal styles, not limited to just Ueshiba, Inc. This refers to a physical feeling when engaging the opponent, and isn't some half baked hippie mystical gobbley gook if you ask me. Others might have a different take on it.

"而して武技は天の理法を身体に移し霊肉一体の至上境に至るの技であり、道程である"
Martial technique is about making the Laws of Heaven one with body and soul, and a way to take the body and soul to the summits (of "insert whatever sounds inspiring to you")
<Commentary>
This probably refers to the natural harmonies governing the body, which you strengthen with internal connction, continue to train this, and there are no "limits".

FWIW

David Skaggs wrote: The " mustard which fights" part is missing. I kind of liked that.

That's some mighty sharp mustard ... and heartless besides...

Robert John wrote: For those interested, I thought I'd throw in a rough translation of this first let's break it up into parts "合気とは愛なり" Aiki is Love! ( oh man, there's that word again) "天地の心を以って我が心とし" I make my heart the heart of heaven and earth. <commentary> In this case heart can refer to "feeling". As in the core of his physical being is related to the "up-down/heaven-earth" relation. Refers to a physical feeling I'm guessing. Ark has no relation to Ueshiba, never has read this, but describes it in the same manner. "万有愛護の大精神を以って自己の使命を完遂する事こそ武の道であらねばならぬ" I recieve my mission from the Universal Spirit of Protection/Love/Care/Lovedovey, and the consummation of this is the ultimate goal of the Martial Way. <commentary> Anyone that can come up with a better translation, feel free to do so. I could state my opinoin, but it'd turn into a page long dialogue, most of it having to lay out why he talks like this, and lay parallels to bodyskill development. In short, it's not that important in the overall scheme. "合気とは自己に打ち克ち敵をして戦う心なからしむ,否、敵そのものを無くする絶対的自己完成の道なり" 敵に戦いの心を起こさせず、また敵という概念を超える Aiki is not about breaking down our inner enemy and "winning" against it. Rather, it is the ultimate way to complete oneself and erase the conception of "enemy" all together. <Comments> The fat and short of it, get rid of the conception of "enemy" all together, or "clashing" with an opponent. Again, typical of the developmental process in internal styles, not limited to just Ueshiba, Inc. This refers to a physical feeling when engaging the opponent, and isn't some half baked hippie mystical gobbley gook if you ask me. Others might have a different take on it. "而して武技は天の理法を身体に移し霊肉一体の至上境に至るの技であり、道程である" Martial technique is about making the Laws of Heaven one with body and soul, and a way to take the body and soul to the summits (of "insert whatever sounds inspiring to you") <Commentary> This probably refers to the natural harmonies governing the body, which you strengthen with internal connction, continue to train this, and there are no "limits".

Thanks, Rob. That loose translation actually indicates a re-stating of the idea of the "order of the Universe" idea, which would be more traditional for a martial arts expert to do than to talk about "love" in the sense that we in the West mean it. In other words, if you look at it in your terms, he's really simply stating that his martial art fulfills the "orderliness", the "harmony" of the universal laws that is the cornerstone of the Chinese cosmology (which is used as a basis in the Japanese beliefs as well).

The problem in discussing the issue in front of people that don't have the kokyu and ki skills (i.e., they're just some "academic" things that are mentioned probably as rituals by the Asians, etc.), is that the idea of using kokyu/jin to "blend" with all incoming forces doesn't seem to be more than some academic maunderings.

To me, he is saying that he makes his heart/core/essence the standard "primal qi", which is the combined "Ki of Heaven" and "Ki of Earth".... combining the qi of heaven and earth is the cornerstone concept for the "internal" jin/kokyu/ki development. Using that core, he has no need to conflict because any incoming attack is simply accepted into one's own circumstances, rather than fought against. If there are no conflicts because you "aiki" everything that comes into contact with your sphere, then there are no "enemies".

So I agree that this is more a discussion about what you can train, physically, to do with this wondrous combination of "the ki of heaven and earth", than it is a ministerial exhortation to love all things and then there are no enemies. This actually sort of feeds into my comments about some translators conveying ideas that are not necessarily reflective of the original intent of some of these classical writings. Ueshiba was at core a traditionalist; he would have made sure that whatever he espoused would have conformed with the accepted traditional ideas of the cosmology and the harmony with the natural laws of the cosmos.

Thanks for taking the time to write that, Rob.

FWIW

Mike

I had a thought about this thread last night while showering. I disagree with the "Aikido is Love" in the syrupy sense which becomes spoken as a "philosophy" or as a behavioural mandate. Naturally, and tellingly, that makes some people angry because it is their pet belief. But let me lay out what I think is the larger alternative:

The idea of "aiki" is that there is no conflict... what goes wrong is that people hear "no conflict" to mean things like "there should only be love in this world and all conflict should be abjured", etc. In actuality, the idea of "no conflict" means that you never directly contend with any incoming attack and you make it a useful part of what you are doing within your own sphere of influence. This premise of "no conflict" is actually pretty widespread throughout Asian martial arts (but not completely, of course).

It's this bigger picture of using everything in a positive manner that is more of a key than the "love" part. The philosophy of the larger context is to train your body and your mind *first* and then apply (the emphasis is martial but to extend it beyond that *afterward* is OK and desireable, as I understand it) the "aiki" concept. In that sense, "aiki" is an instinctive harmony, not a "love", as nifty as that would sound.

Shioda, Sunadomari, Ueshiba Sensei, and others have all, at one time or another on filmclips, shown the ability to blend and bounce off an opponent with no real perceptible movement.... that's essential "aiki". Of course, it can be done with larger movements, too, and sometimes that is unavoidable, but the focus I would have is how these experts made their movements smaller and smaller to where the movements approach "stillness". At least that's the perspective I would suggest as a good one.

My 2 cents and opinion.

Mike Sigman

This text which you are translated is actually called "The Spirit of Aiki Manseido". It was recorded by Kanshu Sunadomari Sensei. I practiced at a Manseido Dojo for some time and we all had to recite it at the beginning of class. Here is the translation in English which can be found in Sunadomari Sensei's book, "Enlightenment through Aikido".

Aiki is love
It is the path that brings our hearts into oneness with the spirit of the universe to complete our mission in life by instilling in us a love and reverence for all of nature.

Aiki overcomes self. It not only takes hostility from our hearts but in making those who appear as enemies, enemies no more, it leads to absolute perfection of self.

This martial art, therefore, is the supreme way and call to unite our body and spirit under the laws of the universe.

I liked that book. A little on the philosophical side for my tastes, but still enjoyable. Strangely enough, I was reading it while in Paris, and got to train at a Iwama style dojo at the same time. Interesting mix...

Best,
Ron

Mike Sigman wrote: I disagree with the "Aikido is Love" in the syrupy sense which becomes spoken as a "philosophy" or as a behavioural mandate. Naturally, and tellingly, that makes some people angry because it is their pet belief.

I think it is more telling that people, such as yourself, view someone having a disagreement, a different take on things, as someone being angry.

If you disagree with aikido is love in the syrupy sense, then you probably disagree with Ueshiba. One can, of course, disagree with Ueshiba, nothing wrong with that, but going from direct quotes from his writings, and from the writings of Kiss. Ueshiba, and writings of others, love was certainly central in what you call the syrupy sense, not just not harming your attacker, but spreading peace and love to everyone.

One of many examples (I can probably find at least a dozen):

"true budo is the way of great harmony and great love for all beings"
(p. 98, Spirit of Aikido)


Justin

Ok, I understand that references have been stated as to Aikido's philosophical "deeper meaning", I am not doubting this & I don't want to get bogged down in semantics, nor I am I willing to say that Aikido, at heart, in its core functionality is an ineffective means of combat.

That said, with the afore mentioned Aikido is "love", then where is the justification for combat (which I am here defining as any non-cooperative exchanges, i.e. not playing w/ ya buddy's). What's the point, sure love is fine, but why spend a lifetime training "martial techniques"? Obviously it would be easier to find a mountain top & meditate. Yet, we of the Chinese our Japanese arts, find ourselves training self defense, for combative purposes. Even if you justify yourself as only interested in the movement, or the cooperative exercises (which is fine), these practices are still martial based & martial functional. Why not just mediate on love?
Please help me to understand
Moses

Moses Jenkins wrote: with the afore mentioned Aikido is "love", then where is the justification for combat (which I am here defining as any non-cooperative exchanges, i.e. not playing w/ ya buddy's). What's the point, sure love is fine, but why spend a lifetime training "martial techniques"?

As far as I can tell, this kind of talk began in the 1920s or early 30's, when OSensei survived a determined attack by a sword-wielding Naval officer. Maybe someone else can correct me on the details, but I am under the impression that this happened when he was teaching aikijujutsu at the Imperial Naval Academy of Japan. Apparently, one of the officers took umbrage at the casual way that Ueshiba avoided attacks and countered decisively. After the class, he challenged Ueshiba and came at him in the hold of a ship with a live sword.

Ueshiba avoided attack after attack from this enraged military man who was very good with the sword and intended to kill him, but found that he could not.

After this, Ueshiba went into a garden and took some water from the well. When he raised the dipper to his lips, he had a sudden revelation of oneness in the universe. He said that the sky split open and golden light filled the universe and he realized that the true nature of budo was love.

What is seldom pointed out in this story was that OSensei was, at that time (if I'm not mistaken) teaching the elite of the Japanese military to kill. He was still teaching daito ryu and his students were soon to be (if not already) deeply involved in the invasion of China and the rest of Asia. So what he was teaching was not the modern swirly, smiley kind of aikido in which, real love means that you fall down faster. His students were strong, heavy fighting men with experience in killing.

So how could he have equated budo with love?

To me, it is as I said in the thread on subtle shades of meaning in the Japanese language. The first purpose of the sword is to protect. If it goes too far, it enslaves, but the original purpose is to protect one's own family.

In that way, the sword is like fire. In the stove, it keeps us warm and cooks our food, but if it gets out of hand, it destroys our home.

OSensei's greater change occurred when he realized that Japan was losing the war. Indeed, in terms of musubi, it had already lost, as soon as it began. Many Japanese understood this and opposed the war, but incidents such as 2/26, when many government figures were murdered, silenced most of the opposition. Ueshiba, himself, had supported the war, but he soon enough saw that it was destroying Japan.

In those days, he went back to his old pursuit of farming and gradually changed his techniques to something less overtly deadly, more fundamentally protective, maybe. Perhaps more influenced by nurturing his plants, encouraging their life force to come out, cooperating with their nature to bring about support for himself and his family.

Maybe this was when he changed from seeing budo as "love" in "defending" his nation to "love" as in defending all the people of all the nations.

Anyway, to me, this ability to defend is based on a sword-like capacity to destroy. Through his deep and deadly training, OSensei became able to overcome any attack without having to resort to deadliness. But it was based on his ability to be deadly.

So I think we have to remember the serious need to be able to protect ourselves and our families against serious attempts to harm us and them. Yet we are supposed to extend that same protection to the attacker, himself, as a member of our own family, in humanity.

Unfortunately, modern training, without solid technical focus on serious attacks, seems to leave practitioners with a subconscious realization that they cannot really defend against "any" attack and they fantasize about how they would handle a "real" attack. And these fantasies tend to get pretty violent, from ripping out shoulders, shattering joints, breaking bones, clawing eyes, and trying to kill the attacker in any way possible. And these fantasies sometimes come out in the dojo when a nage becomes frightened of attacks that come too close for comfort. Rather than seeing this as a sign of their own lack of technique, they perceive it as uke's "trying" to hurt them (even if the technique does not touch them) and they respond with harsh technique or atemi when it is not necessary. I suppose we've all felt some of this.

Well, the old way provides tested and sure ways to kill the attacker at a single stroke. Training with that in mind, it is not necessary to resort to violent fantasies and we can concentrate on doing techniques safely without injuring our partners in the dojo. And if we see ourself as the one most likely to get us into a bad situation, and work mostly on refining ourself through hard and serious technical practice, it becomes much easier to view attackers as misdirected and confused people and treat them with compassion and love--even if it is rather tough love.

For me, the most recent experience of this kind of thing came one day when I was riding my bike near a public park where my wife sometimes took our little boy. I noticed some people fighting in the children's play area. I pulled up near them and saw a young bum on top of an older bum, in the mount position, pounding down on the older guy's head. And then I noticed that the fighters were surrounded by six or eight other bums, watching from the benches.

I pulled up beside the play area and barked at the guy on top of the other guy: "Get off him! NOW!"

He looked shocked, but got up. The older man got off the ground, looking indignant at the man who had been beating him. The other bums looked at me, but didn't say anything.

I rode across the park to a restaurant, went inside and asked them to call the police to come to stop the fighting in the park. I guess the bums all took off. I didn't wait to see but went on home.

To me, that was protecting everyone without fighting.

Another time, I was approached by a "bum" in his twenties--a big, healthy-looking guy who wanted money. The only other person nearby was an older Chinese lady and I figured if I didn't engage the bum he would go after the Chinese lady. So I walked up and let him talk to me. He asked for a dollar. I took out my wallet and let him see that I had more than one dollar in it, but took out one dollar and gave it to him. I wanted to see if he would try to take the rest of the money. He didn't.

I finally decided that the best way to protect my own family was to move them out of that neighborhood. We now live in a nice little neighborhood. So that, again, is protecting without fighting.

I also think that if you train hard and seriously enough, with real technique rather than symbollic movement, it's not necessary even to think in terms of harming an attacker. And when you have done that, the would-be attacker finds it difficult even to think of attacking.

And there you have a full ni-en dama's worth of opinion.

Best wishes.

David

Moses, maybe because once you have these skills (kokyu) then what you use them for is extremely important. If you use them in the spirit of love, they become constructive assets to society. The fact that the faces of the Kongorikishi are stored behind this face of love is vital too, else you do not have the power to put yourself at work in the spirit of love. This is the same as the idea of the sword that gives life, not the sword that destroys. It does not mean that there is no violence or no death, it means the spirit of every action is guided by a constructive desire. I suspect you cannot do this if you are so weak that every action is determined merely by self-preservation. Remember if you have better aiki (in most cases your opponent will not have any, since the training is secret :lol, you can determin the outcome, your opponent cannot overcome you.

Dear Mike,

Thanks for the alternative translation. I am looking forward to having a little more time to go deeper into it. There are a lot of O-Sensei's texts that have been translated a long time ago, and it is great to take a second look at them.
It is also wonderful the way that people's responses point in so many interesting directions regarding the interpretation of the meaning behind the words.
In my opinion, in our Western cultures there is a very sort of clear division between the touchy-feely, warm and fuzzy faction and then the rough and ready. blood and guts and veins in your teeth faction when dealing with the more spiritual aspects of O-Sensei's words. Where I come from, having grown up with the group of wonderful instructors from the old Iwama Dojo, with Saito Morihiro Sensei as my teacher, and now having a close relationship with Isoyama Sensei, Inagaki Sensei, Hirosawa Sensei and Nemoto Sensei, I am very privileged to see that the rough and ready aspects of these gentlemen in terms of their physical attitude in Aikido finds a wonderful counterpart in their very serious belief in practicing the spiritual teachings of the Founder. The best of both worlds - boo rah!

In Aiki,

Ethan Weisgard

Ethan Weisgard wrote: Dear Mike, Thanks for the alternative translation.

Hi Ethan:

If you're talking to me, I have to note that while I made some comments, I didn't do any of the translating.

In my opinion, in our Western cultures there is a very sort of clear division between the touchy-feely, warm and fuzzy faction and then the rough and ready. blood and guts and veins in your teeth faction when dealing with the more spiritual aspects of O-Sensei's words.

Well, I'm sort of in the middle. There is a quite beautiful and immutable logic that governs the whole net of ki, kokyu, kiai, Misogi-breathing, "ki tests", "ki of heaven; ki of earth", etc., etc. It's like a beautiful gem. I'm interested more in the body skills supported by that logic and the personal strength and health aspects. The philosophy and the "martial prowess" stuff doesn't interest me very much; it's just coincidence that I'm large and have a lot of martial background.

Regards,

Mike Sigman

Hi Mike,

Sorry, I thought you had done the translation.
I respect your comments for their insight. I myself have been somewhere in the middle, regarding the different ways of relating to Aikido. I find that coming from a "hard-style" background, as I get older, I find myself moving more towards the inner workings of Aikido , but without letting go at all of the importance, in my opinion, of Aikido as a martial art. ( I just can't train as hard as I used to! )
Saito Sensei was very adamant about keeping Aikido - in its physical form - as a realistic and logical budo, as he had learned it from O-Sensei. But as the other Sensei from the Iwama Dojo make a clear point of, it would be a shame if all of O-Sensei's deeper thoughts and intentions for what Aikido can be used as, were not put into use. If we don't try to apply the spiritual sides of the principles that are adherent in the techniques of Aikido in our daily life, then we might as well just train some kind of sport.

In Aiki,

Ethan

Ethan Weisgard wrote: Dear Mike, Where I come from, having grown up with the group of wonderful instructors from the old Iwama Dojo, with Saito Morihiro Sensei as my teacher, and now having a close relationship with Isoyama Sensei, Inagaki Sensei, Hirosawa Sensei and Nemoto Sensei, I am very privileged to see that the rough and ready aspects of these gentlemen in terms of their physical attitude in Aikido finds a wonderful counterpart in their very serious belief in practicing the spiritual teachings of the Founder. The best of both worlds - boo rah!

Yes, I know exactly what you mean. One of my closest friends is Iwabe sensei who was the doshu's personal uke explained things that were just out of this world. When I grabbed his wrist, it was as if I could feel the power of the whole universe including Pluto come through his fingertips. On occasion, I even drank sake with doshu and I learned the true spirituality of it all.
I now practice at my own dojo, given the menkyo shou about one year ago. I am sure o sensei would be proud that we can still be rough and ready and full of love and laughs.

John Matsushima wrote: I now practice at my own dojo, given the menkyo shou about one year ago.

Menkyo shou? You need a menkyo shou to open a dojo? I just opened mine without any problem.

Peter A Goldsbury wrote: Menkyo shou? You need a menkyo shou to open a dojo? I just opened mine without any problem.

lol
me too.

Robert John wrote: "万有愛護の大精神を以って自己の使命を完遂する事こそ武の道であらねばならぬ" I recieve my mission from the Universal Spirit of Protection/Love/Care/Lovedovey, and the consummation of this is the ultimate goal of the Martial Way. <commentary> Anyone that can come up with a better translation, feel free to do so. I could state my opinoin, but it'd turn into a page long dialogue, most of it having to lay out why he talks like this, and lay parallels to bodyskill development. In short, it's not that important in the overall scheme.

Why would you say this concept is "not that important in the overall scheme?"