About Aikido of Champlain Valley
Washing Leeksby Benjamin Pincus SenseiChief Instructor, Aikido of Champlain Valley
O Sensei loved farming. As a young man, he founded an agricultural settlement in snowy Hokkaido. There he met the fierce Sokaku Takeda, heir to the Daito Ryu aikijutsu lineage and the most important technical influence on the development of aikido. Years later, during his isolation from the fervor of World War II, he had a blacksmith forge him heavy farming tools in order to increase his strength. In one of my favorite photographs, he is an old man, earnestly watering plants, evoking the spirit of a gentle gardener rather than that of a Shinto adept and temperamental warrior. I have puzzled over his statement "budo and farming are one" while laboring in various gardens and fields from Vermont to California. After observing weeds regenerate easily on the fields I had so carefully groomed, I realized that gardening, like aikido training, never ends. Cycles of birth, growth, harvest and decay continuously reflect our own journey of self-cultivation and transformation. The relationship between budo (martial arts) and farming is revealed in the expression takemusu aiki. Take is the same kanji (character) as bu, which can mean warrior, but also implies a sense of bravery and the cessation of conflict (literally meaning to stop a sword). The term musu is more complex, meaning creative power, percolate, fecundate, ferment ripeness. It is an abbreviation for Musubi (bi means wondrous light - vital source of energy). Musubi is sometimes translated as linkage, evoking interconnection, unity and marriage. Takemusu aiki is sometimes translated as Aiki of protection: our duty to bravely protect and nurture all living things, because we are interconnected to this world of decay, creation and rebirth. Similarly, the farmer creates life from fermentation, nourishing germination and growth through the decay of compost and manure. I kneel in mulch hay on a rainy August day. Thrusting my hand below hay and composted manure, I discover potatoes amidst the pungent blackness of rich soil. The garden glows with verdant beauty, rainfall accentuating the intensity of colors. Orange and purple stems of rainbow chard grow besides the pa |