About Aikido of Champlain Valley
Unlearningby David Mendenhall"I smell a mat." Thwack! My head hit the mat, nose first, my neck throbbing from the throw. Sensei fell atop me like water, as though he was another part of my body. In a motion, he swung my arm up behind my back, pinning me by my left shoulder between his knees, pressing my chest and jaw deeper into the sweat-slickened mat. Slowly, he continued to stretch my arm over my back towards my ear. I writhed and squinted and squirmed. I thought my arm would come off. I was nearly purple. "Feel that?" I heard - almost a whisper. "Yeah," I yelped, as he released my arm and it fell, loose, a boneless rag next to my body. "Be sure and slap the mat when you feel it. That's the only information I have," he smiled, gazing down at my limp figure pooled into the soggy gi beneath him. "Otherwise I just think you're enjoying yourself." He bowed and sprung up like a cat. "Yes," I half-grinned, rolling to my knees and bowing. "Thank you, Sensei." "Thank you." I walked shikko toward the edge of the mat, straightening my gi, tightening my belt. A fellow student waited for me as partner. "O na gai shimasu (please teach me)," I whispered and bowed. "O na gai shimasu," she replied. The windows of the dojo steamed. Water streamed from my pores. I was enjoying myself. I loved aikido. "Never hurry; never rest." A Buddhist word of wisdom I've come across these last months goes something like: "One should meditate as though his hair is on fire." The idea seems to be that there is no time to waste. Right now is all you have. To learn about the "right-now," zazen (zen meditation) has become a dawn ritual. I sit alone in seiza, very still, breathing, facing a blank wall in my dim living room. Shunryu Suzuki has said that this posture, this breathing, this awareness is the Path. So I just sit. For months it was sitting and stretching and pacing. My thighs burned. And my knees, oh, my knees. But I continued to breathe. These days, I still just sit. Th |