Ralph Pettman
Going For A Walk In The World
THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION Unless we have a larger purpose in mind it is hard, if not impossible, to let go. Our small-minded aspirations will keep us from anything more than small- minded achievements. Our thinking brain will play endless tricks, dominating our behaviour and determining what we do. A sense of larger purpose is where Uyeshiba began. "It is the way of budo [the martial arts]" he said "to make the heart of the universe our own and [to] perform our mission of loving and protecting all beings with a grand spirit". It is in this light that he declared "[t]he techniques of budo" to be "... only a means to reach that end". A "grand spirit" is what Uyeshiba said and a "grand spirit" is what he meant. It was this spirit that he believed would "reconcile the world" and make human beings "one family". Uyeshiba's desire to "reconcile the world" led him to view martial arts as potentially constructive rather than destructive. The destructive arts make for disharmony and discord. The constructive ones make for harmony and peace. They have no interest in competition and seek neither victory nor defeat. They are, in Uyeshiba's terms, "true" budo. Using martial arts constructively means "giving life to all beings". It means, Uyeshiba came to believe, not struggling with or killing each other. The martial art he made - his "aikido" - he wanted to be a "true" budo in these terms. He wanted it to be an art of reconciliation, not counter-attack. Many people tried to test the "constructiveness" of Uyeshiba and of his art. They wanted, for example, to test its practicality. Did it "work" in a fight, for example? For Uyeshiba, however, there was never any fight. He felt as if he had become one with the universe. As far as he was concerned anyone who attacked him attacked the universe. They attacked themselves and their own discordant minds. They were defeated by their own aggression before their attacks had even begun. While Uyeshiba was able, very convincingly, to demonstrate aikido's effectiveness, could other people learn to do so too? As it turned out, apparently anyone could. Competitive people could become uncompetitive. They could know what it was to act otherwise. They could purge themselves of their discordant intentions. They could discover more harmonious world-views. The key to the learning process was quite simple. Uyeshiba was very specific in his answer to questions about it: "You should first" he said "make God's heart yours. It is a Great Love, omnipresent in all quarters and in all times of the universe. There is no discord in love. There is no enemy of love". True budo, in other words, was in Uyeshiba's view a "work of love ...", and love was the "guardian deity of everything". "Nothing" Uyeshiba argued "can exist without it". It was Uyeshiba's wish that everyone realise a feeling of universal love. He believed aikido could bring a sense of such love to all who practised it, and practise was the key. "You practise it" he said. You don't just talk about it, you do it. You find out about it for yourself and you use it in your daily life. You don't take anybody else's word for it. You try it yourself and you see what happens. This was his way to realise the "great power" of "oneness with Nature" and it was this way he offered others.
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