Category Archives: Translations

Using a rounded piece of wood, know the moon on the water!
– – – the dream of Muso Gonnosuke Katsuyoshi

Do not think about hitting your opponent,
Move without thinking, like moonlight into a leaky cabin.
– – – Yamaoka Tesshu

A man knows for sure:
However hard he hits the flow of a river,
The simple fact of a trace in the water:
–   doesn’t happen.
– – –  Hoshina Chikanori

You should never make the same movement twice. If, as you watch a technique, you have the impression that it’s the right hand that’s pushing, well then, probably it’s the left, or even, if it’s not the left that’s pushing, then the right is pulling. If you think that the action happens above,  it is performed below. When you are attacked by a single person, act as if there were four attackers. Try to see better but understand that the thing that is being done is never the thing that you see. That which is apparent is never that which is truly.

Focus on the idea of being endlessly grateful, whatever might be the thoughts and events to which this applies. Say arigatai till you feel your body full of energy, then yoku naru without limiting this wish in any way… For whomever applies this rule, dekinai koto wa nashi. [there is nothing they cannot do].

[The way of aiki is] a Way for the forgetting of the self.

Every time [be] exactly at the center.

Aiki-ken contains [all] the necessary elements for the expression and understanding of the spiritual dimension of aikido.

Hold on to your partner’s arm the way you hold a baby in your arms, and dandle it [OR: cradle it,  rock it gently,  sooth it].

Never be afraid of not having enough energy, give unceasingly to others, and for as long as you do that, energy will come, still stronger, still more alive and abundant in you.

You’re showing too much [of] what you know. From now on, never display more than thirty per cent of your power…  When you teach, also, you must not show more than thirty per cent.

“Why” is an idiotic question. There is no “why”.

– – – reported by André Cognard Shihan  (So-Shihan of Aikido Kobayashi Ryu and designated successor to Hirokazu Kobayashi Shihan) in Petit manuel d’aikido,  pp. 52-3, 88, 108, 109, 116, 136;   Vivre sans ennemi, pp.33, 37.

There is someone who is not me in my little left finger, in this finger which closes my sword-grip. You can sense it during CHINKON.  The way in which you go from “cupped, round hands” to “triangle hands” [the chinkon mudra]…

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If you put yourself into KAMAE and close your eyelids, for example, alternatingly: close them, then re-open them, slowly, then close them, and so on… you notice each time you close your eyes, at that moment, precisely, all your attention goes down to your hara, automatically. It’s strange to notice that! It’s like a little “explosion of the instant”: ISSHUN-BAKUDEN.  From this I draw the conclusion that the ideal would be to do Kokyu-ho with open eyes, but with the same feeling as with the eyes closed….

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< Sensei suggests an exercise: :> In seiza, lean your torso forwards, slowly: the whole torso up to the point where your balance breaks… then return to normal and start over, and so on, continuously, very slowly…

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