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The Sword that Takes Life is the Sword that Gives Life: Aikido and the Martial Way of Peace by Benjamin Pincus Sensei Chief Instructor, Aikido of Champlain Valley O Sensei, the founder of aikido, believed that martial training is a path to non-violence, a physical method of creating a harmonious world: "True Budo is a work of love. It is a work of giving life to all beings, and not killing or struggling with each other... Aikido is the realization of love." Aikido is also a martial art that can be used to hurt or kill; despite the "soft," circular nature of aikido movements, one could argue that there is nothing intrinsically ethical about its powerful throwing techniques. In Budo, his 1938 training manual and first major explication of aikido, the Founder illustrates the martial effectiveness of a system based on harmonious movement: "in order to deliver a devastating blow to an enemy, one must be enlightened to the principles of heaven and earth..." How can aikido serve as a vehicle for peace and reconciliation? Or more precisely, what does a combat system teach us about non-violence and harmony? Intensive martial training leavened with ethical and physical sensitivity inculcates compassionate awareness. Without an experiential understanding of aikido as a fighting art and the concomitant clarity that comes with such training, the concept of aikido as a path of love and reconciliation makes little sense. This creative tension between life and death, creation and destruction, is the wellspring for the philosophy of aikido. A synthesis of combat and spirit uniquely Japanese, aikido was influenced by the Founder's Shinto sensibilities (the notion of harmonious, procreative forces in the natural world) and a martial tradition infused with Buddhist ideology. In order to explore this paradox it is helpful to look back to feudal Japan and the concepts of satsujinken (the killing sword) and katsujinken (the life-giving sword). With the relative peace of the Tokugawa period in the I 7th Century, samurai culture placed greater emphasis on self-cultivation through fine arts, meditation and introspection. While various martial ryu (schools) increased in combat sophistication, religious strains of thought (in particular Shingon and Zen Buddhism) influenced the study of martial arts. The moral, internal emphasis of Buddhist philosophy promoted martial training as a physical metaphor and path for learning to live virtuously and harmoniously in a chaotic world. Samurai and Zen priests alike viewed a warrior's intense ascetic training as analogous to Zen meditation, a means to overcome the delusions of the ego and discover a profound sense of inner peace and self-awareness. According to Yagyu Munenori, 17th century Master of the Yagyu Shinkage Ryu of swordsmanship, Zen's anti-doctrinal emphasis on spontaneity applies equally well to sword fighting: "Once you have understood something, don't let it stay in your mind, even if it is the True Dharma [Buddhist law]... keep your mind empty so that you may conduct yourself with a natural mind... Unless you attain that state, you can hardly be called a master of swordsmanship... This observation is not limited to swordsmanship, it is applicable to every field of endeavor [emphasis added]." In other words, the skills of a swordsman serve equally well in times of peace, and physical skill and spiritual growth are essential for true mastery of the art. The sword that gives life is integrally connected to the sword that takes life. Zen Buddhism in particular appealed to samurai because a warrior with a mind focused through rigorous physical training and meditation was also a person who could kill with ruthless efficiency and commitment. And in an era of relatively little violence, intensive training provided samurai with the mental alacrity, poise and compassion to choose non-violent (or at least non-lethal) alternatives to drawing a sword. This emphasis on life-giving, internal training served the samurai well during the Tokugawa period, when the samurai as a military force under individual daimyo (feudal lords) seemed somewhat antithetical to their new role as a symbolic source of power for the stable shogunate. Consequently, some martial schools emphasized training as a source of vitality rather than martial prowess. The Yagyu Shinkage school of swordsmanship, for example, explained that the "the sword should never be used to kill but rather to sustain one's vigor." It seems that O Sensei continued to develop this internal, ethical interpretation of martial training. He created aikido by integrating a number of traditional martial arts, in particular Daito Ryu Aikijujitsu. How is aikido different from these older styles? Aikido movements are more rounded and circular in nature, with fewer techniques that cause hyperextension of the joints. Nevertheless, O Sensei retained many of the effective elements of traditional jujitsu, and his fiery spirit and powerful technique made it evident that this new form was still a lethal martial art. In Budo, he explains that you should "always image yourself on the battlefield under the fiercest attack." On the other hand, he emphasized that aikido transcended mere technique. Physical training becomes a method of learning about harmony by resolving internal conflict. "There are no contests in aikido," he wrote. "A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing. Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention that we harbor within." A Peaceful Warrior: a problematic metaphor and a ubiquitous expression in this era of "new age," spiritual/self-help movements on one hand and military doublespeak on the other. As a student and teacher of aikido, and as someone who protested nuclear proliferation during the era of Peacemaker missiles, I continually grapple with the semantics of this paradox. Chiba Sensei once told me that my lifetime koan (a Zen conundrum that is not solvable through intellectual experience; the resolution emerges spontaneously through rigorous meditative training) is to understand aikido as a path of love and harmony as well as a killing art. For me, the killing element -- the notion that one should train with the awareness and capacity to do serious injury -- is difficult to reconcile with my distaste of violence and cruelty. I ask myself how does learning more violence contribute to a world already rife with pain and suffering? How does my aikido practice inform my understanding of situations in which one can argue that violence is justified? Would I still believe in non-violent civil disobedience as a Jew in Nazi Germany? Many previously antiwar Americans called this a "good" or "necessary" war against evil. Is self-defense that results in injury appropriate on the streets of Burlington? After all, countless people have killed and died in continued the name of national and personal self-defense. I believe that self-defense and capitol punishment is violence euphemistically obscured by claims to a moral, ethical context. This is a parody of justice, for nothing checks this cycle of violence. This does not mean that I would turn my cheek if a mugger pulls a knife on me in the street. I have mixed feelings about this matter: part of me believes in the code of "reasonable force" - if I am attacked, I am allowed to protect myself using equal or lesser force. Yet I also believe that there must be a better way. It is my job as an aikidoka to reduce violence in the world, not add to it. At the same time, I love the intensity and calculated danger of intensive aikido practice. I notice that there is something passionately vital about focused training. In contrast, there is a dead, flat feeling in aikido training lacking such intensity. While there seems to be little violence in softer, less martial training, there also seems to be an absence of compassion and harmony. This is what aikido philosophy recognizes: it is in the tension of opposites that wonderful things happen. A spiritual crisis create grounds for transcendence, fiery destruction of a forest allows new seedlings to sprout in the ashes. While training, O Sensei explains, "you must test and polish yourself in order to face the great challenges of life. Transcend the realm of life and death, and then you will be able to make your way calmly and safely through any crisis that confronts you." The killing sword, the perfection of martial prowess and focus, establishes a sense of power. This deep awareness potentially creates the space for compassion. After all, how can we truly love if we are afraid? What if we abandoned the martial spirit of aikido and only emphasized elements of harmony and flow? I suppose one could view aikido as a centering exercise, almost a dance. Yet in a sense this is not the cessation of violence; it is merely the avoidance and denial of something that still exists (violence, H. Rap Brown writes, is as American as cherry pie). The dojo becomes a place of safety and refuge rather than a place of exploration. Without challenges or conflict, there is no resolution. Without an experiential understanding of conflict, and a deep awareness of the ramifications of violence against the self and other, there is no possibility for harmony and balance. I have visited dojo in which the students talk on the mat during class as if they were at a cocktail party. There was no focus, no sense of martial awareness. Terry Dobson Sensei said that when you went to the dojo you should feel like you are walking into a pit of vipers. This creates an atmosphere in which if you work through feelings of hesitation and fear, your technique becomes more powerful and effective. Most importantly, training in a focused, martial environment teaches one a sense of compassion and true caring. A mind unclouded by fear and doubt, or at least a mind that understands how to creatively confront difficult emotions, is a person brave enough to love and nurture in a world that often denies the value and beauty of such delicate sentiment. I often tell my students to have more "fire" in their technique. This is different from being rough: it is more comparable to a cat I once had who without hesitation would catch a moth with one elastic swipe of his paw. There is no thought here, no ego interfering with one's judgement. Similarly, in a real physical attack, there is no time to check one's stance, consider one's skill or adjust the hair. You must simply act, with clarity and total commitment. On the street, or in a focused dojo, there is no room for self-consciousness or doubt. This martial directness is revitalizing and purifying in a world of spiritual confusion and ambiguity. How does physical training in aikido resolve violence in daily life? On the mat we learn to evade attacks instead of blocking. We neutralize an attack by turning, which gives us a moment to explore our options to violence. This moment of agreement allows us to look at things from the attacker's perspective. Recently, a woman cut me off while I looked for a parking place in downtown Burlington. I was driving my truck and she was elderly, with white hair, large black glasses and a sour mien. She looked smug as she pulled into the last parking space. I felt my blood pressure rise, and I contemplated driving my truck into the side of her Buick sedan. Then I realized that maybe she has been looking for a place to park for the last ten minutes. Maybe she had a bad day - the bank foreclosed on the family business, another jerk in a truck had just cut her off, and so on. This blend, this moment of harmony, enabled me to look at things from her perspective. This sense of agreement allows us to see that we are integrally connected to our surroundings. There is no need for violence or anger in a world without separation. Let us return to the koan. "Aikido is a killing art that teaches compassion and harmony." It is important to remember that a koan is answered with the body-mind; rather than relying on intellectual inquiry, one reaches a deeper understanding or resolution of a contradiction through experience. I confess that I am still caught in my mind - I have a long way to go in my intuitive understanding of the unity of the killing and life-giving sword. I feel sadness and anger and, thankfully, joy in this crazy, cruel world, and continue to investigate the relevance of aikido in the creation a peaceful environment. I believe that I am often caught in the semantics of the koan rather than a direct, intuitive encounter with the problem. Yet words have great power, and I know that Zen Buddhist principles of "emptiness" and "no mind" have been subverted for military use as recently as World War II Japan, when the Buddhist scholar D.T. Suzuki enthusiastically wrote that these principles will help soldiers kill with greater detachment and efficiency.. I suppose the challenge becomes how to balance the cognitive and intuitive, killing and healing, elements of our psyche in our daily lives and within our aikido training. Recently, I told Chiba Sensei that I wanted to interview him on the concepts of katsujinken/satsujinken for this issue of Shoshin. "What do you know about such matters?" he exclaimed. That ended the conversation with alacrity, like the decisive swing of a sword. Back to the mat...