Uncategorized – Lokahi Ki Society

Friday, Nov. 27, 2020
C. Curtis
Hello, everyone, I hope everyone is fine. Onegaishimasu. I’m happy to see you all.
I’m going to begin by reading Shokushu #10, “The Principle of Non-Dissension.”
“There is no conflict in the absolute universe. Conflict arises only in the relative world. If we are
to lead others, we must unify mind and body and practice the principles of the universe. Do not
say that this is a world of survival of the fittest, where the stronger prey upon the weaker. The
true way to peace is exactly the same as the principle of non-dissension.”
Tonight is our eighth saying from Tohei Sensei:
“You can accept anything if you open your mind.”
Isn’t it interesting that people think of Aikido as a self-defense martial art, and yet if we are
defensive in even the smallest way, it doesn’t work. Think about it. You know, when someone
comes to attack us, it doesn’t matter what their intention is. They’re making an action toward
us, maybe to grab us or to kick us or to hit us or something like this. And in Aikido, we have to
join with them. Right? And we have to open ourselves to them in order to be able to join with
them. And through this opening, this unification, we become one with them. And then the
action is resolved without any harm coming to them or to us. That’s like Aikido in a nutshell,
right?
So that’s what Tohei Sensei means by, “we have to be able to open our mind in order to accept
anything.” And if we can open our mind, we can accept everything, no matter what. Again, it
doesn’t mean that we pretend to ourselves that the person that’s taking this action against us,
whether it’s verbal, or emotional, or physical, doesn’t have any negative intention. They may be
obsessed with some sort of negativity, but that doesn’t matter. In fact, they probably do have
something like that, if in fact we’re going to have to do Aikido with them. That’s not the issue,
and if we see that then we don’t need to be negatively affected.
And of let’s remember that kind of attack very rarely happens on a physical level. But the
principle, whether it be emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, happens every day, doesn’t
it? Someone says something and we see they have some intent here. And if we’re practicing
Aikido, then when we notice this, that’s when we open ourselves.
Tohei Sensei always talked about everything anyone throws at us goes into the “magic pot” of
our One Point. Suzuki Sensei always talked about “tsuki ganai shisei”, which means “a posture
of no opening.” And isn’t it interesting here again, that in order to have a posture of no
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opening, we have to be completely open, ourselves. If we have even a little bit of defensiveness
we hide behind, or a little bit of defending ourselves against this person, that defensiveness of
ours is a button that our opponent can push to make us lose our stability, to make us weak. This
is why I read about the spirit of non-dissension today, and why it’s so important to us.
Do we understand this? You know, often people say to me, “Does this mean that I have to just
lay down and take it?” No, no. Don’t forget Tohei Sensei taught us the three ways that human
beings respond to a challenge in their lives. In every situation, whenever we’re challenged,
Option A, Option B, or Option C occurs. As we have covered so often, Option A is defending
yourself, or fighting back, sticking up for yourself. But unfortunately that doesn’t come from
strength, but from fear. Trying to show strength is showing weakness. When we actually have
strength, we never need to show it.
Option B is really just collapsing, allowing whatever to happen, and praying that someone will
take care of the problem for us. Of course, that won’t work either.
Option C is non- dissension. This is standing up directly in the face of difficulty, standing up in
the face of someone that is negative, standing up in the face of adversity and becoming one
with it. Becoming so vulnerable that we can embrace and include the other person. We call this
“osairu.” Osairu means “to embrace” or “to include.” Literally it means “to cover” but in Aikido
we use it to mean embracing or including.
No matter how nasty that which is dark is, we transform it by turning the light of awareness on
it. This is the awareness that every single thing that takes place in this world I can use for my
benefit. I am the center of the universe as are you. So that means that everything that happens
in our world happens to benefit us. No matter how vile it may seem at the time, no matter how
tragic, no matter how negative, everything naturally fits us perfectly.
So learning to listen means learning to be open, to open our mind, and then we can accept
everything. Maybe you remember, I taught you the four principles of practice. Number one is
“show up,” we have to be present, not just physically showing up, but then waking up. Number
two is “opening.” We open our mind. And number three, we “follow.” We follow whatever is
happening. And in the end, finally, the resolution. Number four is to “accept.” We accept
whatever the resolution is, we accept whatever the result. Of course, that may very well be not
what we were wishing for or looking for. Because we’re always wishing for and looking for
something that our small mind thinks will benefit us. Quite often, what we need is something
outside of that category. So the result of this practice may not always appear to be as beneficial
as it may be, if we can accept it. We want to invite whatever it is into our life, this whole
business of being vulnerable, open, and accepting, this is Aikido. And this is the strong person.
This is the fearless person. This is what takes courage.
This is difficult, because even though we all may know this principle of non-dissension, this is
definitely not commonly known or practiced in this world. That’s not what’s happening out
there, is it? Everybody feels they must protect themselves, as if this life is survival of the fittest.
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And we each of us have that in us, folks. So we have to really notice when it’s arising, when it’s
coming up.
(15 minutes discussion groups)
Student: Everybody in our group told stories about daily life, basically where they could have
been challenged but managed to deal with situations, and sometimes not. But I have a question.
You mentioned in Aikido we train to deal with negative energy. Yeah, I know you didn’t frame it
like this. But it’s this idea that when we do Ki Aikido in the proper way, in the dojo, we see that
the opponent is not trying to harm us, and we are both Keeping One Point. The opponent wants
to help me to learn the art. And then he gives me some line of attack. And I have learned to
move with this Ki movement. So there’s no negativity that I have to deal with, unless I perceive it
as such. So for me, the actual Aikido training is outside of the dojo, where the same energy
patterns happen, but with actual negativity. So I use my training outside of the dojo to deal with
higher energy versus negativities. People want to hurt me or something like this. So I learn the
patterns in the dojo, and then I have to be ready to use those outside.
Thank you. This is a something that’s very important. When we’re practicing in the dojo, of
course, the person that is attacking us doesn’t actually want to hurt us. And so he’s not negative
in the sense that he wants to cause us harm. Yes. It’s a little bit like, in the dojo, we use a
wooden knife, we don’t use a steel blade that is razor sharp, because we’re practicing and don’t
want to hurt each other. And we always say, “See that wooden knife as if it’s steel, so that
when you see the steel knife you can see it as if it’s wood.” This is similar to what you’re
describing. When we see a person who is attacking us in the dojo, we know he doesn’t mean to
hurt us. But in order to learn, we must look at him as if he’s serious. In fact, so much so that as
Shinichi Sensei is really insisting more and more lately, when you attack you better attack with
full force. Because otherwise, we begin to think life is like the energy in the dojo, not really so
severe. So, it has to be a full attack.
I do want to add one thing regarding when we are in daily life. Generally speaking, nobody’s
trying to physically harm us. It might happen once in a while, but for most of us, it’s pretty rare.
But as I was saying earlier, what does happen to us quite often, in some way, is to be verbally or
emotionally attacked. People do this. And yes, they may have some negative energy involved
that you will notice. But because we’re used to practicing with a full-on energy attack in the
dojo, we know how to deal with the energy outside the dojo, and we don’t have to worry about
it being negative.
Of course, this is where Meditation comes in, and Ki Breathing. When we do a lot of meditation,
we learn to give our full attention to the moment. And when we’re fully in attention, we
become very calm. A number of you have told me stories about things that happened in your
lives. When you were with someone, even several people at once, who had a negative intention
to harm you. Particularly several women have told me about this and how, by becoming just
very steady and very calm and facing these people directly, they were able to neutralize the
entire situation. You know, no one who wants to take advantage of someone else in some way
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is going to pick the one who is standing up and looking at them right in the eye, fearlessly. In
fact, they conducted a study in a prison a number of years ago. They took films of women
walking, and they asked the inmates, “Which one would you attack?” And the inmates all
picked people that were walking with their heads down with a kind of sloppy posture, but not
the ones that were striding along, looking straight forward. So even the “experts” know, they
understand.
You know, I would say that people in daily life are much easier to deal with than people in the
dojo, who really know how to attack. Okay, thank you very much.
Student: Our question is, when you say “accepting,” you don’t mean “taking it on”? Like, taking
on someone’s negative energy when we’re in a defensive mode to where it affects us negatively.
When I talk about accepting something, that’s the fourth of the four principles of practice.
What that means to me is that whatever kind of situation I’m in, I want to remember that
whatever it is, it’s there to benefit me. It’s there in my favor. It’s never they’re not in my favor.
It’s never there not to benefit me. That’s not how this works. Thinking that way would be very
ignorant, since it would lead to creating conflict. I would be judging something to be one way or
the other. But can we afford such a luxury, such self-indulgence as to be judging, and thinking
we’re knowledgeable enough, awakened enough? No, that is just feeding fear and doubt.
I have to treat every situation with the same seriousness, the same respect. And if I’m going to
practice what I preach then I have to be vulnerable, open, willing. I have to be a participant, not
an avoider, not a judge. We are not hiding, not running away, not protecting, but ready for
anything and willing to be here for everybody.
We have to practice all our lives for this. And even when we are perhaps very experienced, still
no one is perfect. This is a very, very difficult thing to be asking of ourselves, but it doesn’t
mean that we don’t practice it every day. You know, we have 24 hours each day. Maybe we
only spent two or three hours doing Aikido, inside or outside the dojo. So we must remember
to pay attention all the time with the same kind of openness. Okay, thank you.
Student: Hello, Hi, everybody. The general consensus of the group was that as we’re living and
practicing, you know, we realized that this takes time and effort, this is not something that, oh,
all of a sudden, we’re just open. This requires daily practice. And this is what we are all working
towards. It was a wonderful discussion.
Student: At some stage the topic in our discussion was how to deal with daily life type of
situation when it comes to emotion and psychological situations. One possibility is the
professional setups, when you have people exercising power, and then the question is how to
deal with that unfairness? There is this professional context where we have to accept and open
up to situations that are driven by things that are not necessarily acceptable from a fairness
point of view. And then the question was, yes, the Aikido practice can be of help. staying calm,
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being open, embracing the situation is very important, but life can still remain challenging on
occasion. So should we not have a discussion around this topic, the professional context?
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. This is obviously very complex. And when I talk about this the way I do,
it might seem like we are overly simplifying things, or making a very complex thing very simple.
The principle itself, principle of non-dissension, is very simple. But in action, for instance as you
suggest in a business context, in a meeting where people may be less than genuine and
exercising some sort of power and control. You know, the actual techniques that we might use
for this kind of thing, maybe we don’t always teach those techniques in the dojo, like we show
how to move in your kokyunage, how to become one with to neutralize, to unify with that kind
of energy.
However, in human relations, where we don’t have movement, we use questions. Instead of
making statements, we ask questions, we try to get to know the person’s state of mind. We
want to get to know their intention very well. And while we’re noticing that, we do that without
judging, because we want to remain truly vulnerable, questioning, not deciding.
So that that is a technique that, if you’re a successful business person, you already know and
practice. The more mature we become, the more we can maintain mind body unification and a
sense of calmness, which, please remember, only comes about by listening, by paying
attention. Right? So when we have that kind of state of mind, and we’re practicing it all the
time, then we can pretty much find an opportunity to neutralize, to resolve and join with
opposition in any situation.
Student: I’ll summarize a bit and then I’ll say something that has come up in your answers to
the to these previous questions. For instance, someone talked about how we’re raised to know
what is good and what is bad, you know, these kind of basic values. So, can we accept
something that we know is bad or wrong? So that came up in this discussion. And then another
point was that, maybe before we trained Aikido, we had kind of pattern of competitiveness in
life. And then with Aikido, we start to break out of that pattern. But then we become very
attuned to seeing that pattern in everyone else outside of us. Also, you mentioned something
before that strikes me now. It had to do with the fact that we don’t have to accept something
negative. Right? I mean, in other words, we accept, but it doesn’t mean we are accepting
something negative.
Oh, absolutely.
Student: Yeah. And so I was wondering if you could just say something more in that regard.
Okay, so, shopping in the grocery store: I don’t know if you have had to look for a ripe avocado
lately. If so, you might notice that everybody has gone in and tested them to see if they’re ripe
or not. Okay.? So you have to be quite attentive to this, and maybe even experienced is what
I’m suggesting, in order to choose the correct avocado, one that is not already mashed. And
you have to be able to do this without touching. Otherwise you are only adding to the problem.
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So, in this case, those mushy ones are negative. Those are the avocados that you don’t want to
receive, okay? So you leave those behind.
Of course, there are sometimes when you’re not able to avoid a confrontation, you’re not able
to avoid dealing with some situation. And in that situation, if you’re fearful of receiving
something negative, that’s a misunderstanding and it’s not going to work. You know, if I made a
mistake and took home one of those mushy avocados, I’d just have to make guacamole that
night. That’s all. You see?
So in this sense, rejecting is the opposite of excepting. And by “accept,” I’m saying that we have
to deal with whatever we’re given. And if we get caught up in how wrong it is, that’s a fearbased
way of living. And that will lead to avoidance that will even either lead to Option A,
fighting, or Option B, you will collapse in the face of it. But you will not be doing Aikido. So
finding out the key to what allows us to be willing to be a part of whatever confronts us. within
us, this is what we call noticing. The process of our practice is noticing what motivates us to do
what we do. And you notice that by seeing it come up again and again and again. And at some
point, we say to ourselves, “Oh, that’s what I’m doing!”
Thank you.
Student: We didn’t really have a question. We just talked about training, whether it be a
conflict between someone that you are working with, or someone in your family who takes a
position that you can’t agree with, or just being in the grocery line and having a moment when
somebody gets in front of you. And we just realized, you know, we really think that it’s great to
think about just showing up, opening up, following, and accepting the result. I don’t really know
what else to say, you know, we just talked about how we realize that we need to train more and
learn to be accepting and be present.
Thank you very much. Yes, the more you train, the more years you spend hanging out with
teachers and other Aikidoka who are serious about training and serious about their own
development, the more you hear things like the four principles of practice, the easier it will
become.
When I’m with a group of you like this, my responsibility is to give some kind of a presentation
and present this way of non-dissension in some way. I try to just get to the kernel of what it is
that we need to work on. Nobody’s saying that they’re perfect at this. We’re all practicing
together, something that is incredibly difficult. And we’re faced with it in our lives all day, every
day. But let me just say how fortunate we all are to be able to get together like this and discuss
this most difficult subject. This Aikido has very well saved my life, and I think probably yours
too. And if it hasn’t yet, I promise you it will, if you allow it to. I don’t mean “saved my life” in
the way that somebody would have killed me, but instead I fancifully threw them on the
ground. I don’t mean that at all. I mean it saved my life because it changed the way I see the
world. That’s what changes our life. That’s what saves us from our self. So let’s just be grateful
for that.
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Alright, so thank you very much. I love you all. I’m glad to see you and I hope to see you Sunday
morning. Bye bye.

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