Having studied kuji ho from several perspectives, including the Tantric Buddhist, I find
that most people in the West, who become curious about it, see some kind of interesting
thing in a movie – ninjas doing something, or some mystical-looking, magical thing – and I think that this very attraction, itself, indicates there must be something to it. In fact, these ritualized exercises take you through the stages of entering into a unified state: you’re cutting away obstructions, you’re drawing yang ki in, creating the correct condition in the body before, perhaps, getting in to a freezing-cold river… you’re generating the proper energy state in your body. And these mudra – because that’s what they are – have morphogenic power. You do something one million times, over a hundred generations, and it’s going to have some juice. Mudras are time/space tools: you’re tapping into fields of energy created by the ancients.
Now, often people learn things without understanding the purpose they serve: they gather up things just to have them: to feel like “I know this,” “I know that…” and there’s a vicarious thrill to understanding things you might call esoteric… But at some point or another you start asking, “what purpose do things serve, what do they do?”
And I once asked a Tibetan teacher, Namgyal Rinpoche, who was connected with a Dharma group here in town, “Do you know of aikido?” And he said, “I do. I really like it.” And I said, “What do you think it is?” And he said, “Aikido is mudra, it’s like a whole-body mudra.” And we discussed a little bit, and he was telling me how mudra works: and it’s the same for aikido and it’s the same for kuji ho: there are a lot of levels to it. Each mudra contacts an archetypic realm. They also activate the winds and channels in the body. They allow us to have one-pointed focus on something. There’s a certain aesthetic beauty to the practice: and beauty speaks to everyone on a cellular level when it’s real beauty… And I never forgot what he said.
And I think that if you consider aikido as mudra – or kuji ho as mudra: the idea that enlightened movement, and the positions and activities of the body in various ways could connect you to archetypic states and information, well then I think that eventually you realize that the art of mudra is vast, and that the body is a library, and movements are books.
So, in aikido, when I’m doing ikkyo-nikyo-sankyo… I can approach it martially; I can approach it on the level of lineage – preserving something; I can do it as an exploration of center and the dynamics of energy; or as an expression of the kami-sama… all those levels are there, every one is there. And it’s good that each person explore the level that makes the deepest resonance for them.
But if you know how to open the book that’s good. If you know how to read the book that’s better. And to be able to take the information of the book and live it: that’s the fruition of the system.
So… aikido waza are whole-body mudra when done correctly. They are a heaven and earth connection, with the inter-linking, the weaving together, the musubi of it all, held together with a state of concentration, of one-pointed mind, that is like yoga used to be.
Yogic asana – the positions of yoga – are said to be – many of them – the position someone was in when they entered into an enlightened state. And so people copy these positions hoping that their antenna will be correct.
And with a teacher’s instruction – a teacher who can do it, of course – you may experience something profound, because the teacher will correct the body so the book is correct. It increases your chances exponentially – that and correct practice. Because “perfect practice makes perfect.”
So when we simulate a teacher’s movement – like I did, looking at O’Sensei’s movement in those old movies – and all the while maintaining certain archetypic principals: then the shapes themselves will teach us.
Have you ever noticed, when you’re learning, that you’re trying to do one movement and you end up doing another? That’s the movement itself teaching you. I think about people starting in thinking about shihonage: and they end up doing sankyo. Over and over. And when I tell them, or it just occurs to them: their body’s telling them they’re doing what they saw me do, but it’s actually doing the exact opposite – well, that’s that the system’s correct but it’s running backwards. And I think that this actually gives you some kind of information about how this energy of the body works.
And I think O’Sensei – at least from what I’ve read: I wasn’t around – I think O’Sensei was in contact with mudra-based systems. He grew up with Shingon Buddhism, which is all about mudras and mantra. And I think that O-Motokyo really did a lot with mudras.
As I was showing you guys with that little clip from Meetings With Remarkable Men: the ancient schools used sound and movement as ways of accessing those places. It was a big deal. And I think you’ll find it everywhere: there’s European correlations, there’s African correlations, that’s why sacred dance – kagura – is everywhere: everyone dances themselves into sacred spaces.
The nice thing about aikido is that the partner is the perfect mirror to see if you’re really there – instead of maybe an intellectual explanation or maybe an emotional catharsis – see if you’re really right there: with life and death precision.
I see quite a variety in aiki training – and some of the French schools we were talking about, especially – they’re very dancelike. They catch a lot of flak from people, but what they’re saying is: this is the real purpose. The beauty of this is to connect to these wonderful spaces – which does mirror O’Sensei’s writing about it: he’s trying to transform it from knuckle-dragging, break-someone’s-arm-off to something more sublime. Which he does. And some of these schools have grown it into something pretty amazing.
In some cases, as they move away from the martial aspect, they also lose their groundedness: they are not stable in their motion. But I also see, in what they’re doing, the deep concept of how the hands are that writing we were talking about.
But then, back in Shingu, you have people such as Motomichi Anno Shihan – who, you can see, is perfectly grounded, and at the same time looks totally fluid and relaxed. And in his book, with Linda Holiday Sensei, he really discusses this aspect of it that we’re talking about, and I think his contemplations on why we do this are really profound. I am totally grateful that Linda Holiday Sensei was able to get that information put together before it just evaporates. So totally grateful.
A lot of the old teachers, you know, they get marginalized by time and politics, and yet what they’re saying is so profound – and for a lot of people, it’s the reason they’re doing this: why they spend their life doing this. Because really the idea of somehow getting martially tough or something is, well, it’s alright, but it’s hardly something that’s going to get you there every day…
It can be the idea, maybe, that gets you in the door, but then, hopefully, you get woken up somewhere along the way, and say, “This is way better than the first question I had…”
– – – Kimbal Anderson Sensei