Uchi-Deshi Life: A Unity of Shin Jutsu and Tai Jutsu

Preface

This is a part V in a series of posts on Uchi-Deshi Life written for a Japanese Publisher as a series of requests for more came rapidly. The first was an “Introduction to Saotome Sensei”, published prior to this one and has been read in fifty countries. Two vignette sections have been added that were not part of the original series, these are in the grey (“Keiko”) and blue (“Missing Time”) and will remain in subsequent series for practitioners wanting more details of physical practices and spiritual challenges, respectively. There is a little MDL embedded.

Unity of Shin- and Tai-jutsu

Sensei breaks silence over a cigarette, “aikido is shin jutsu; not wrestling”, writing a diagram of the relationship. He pairs shin jutsu and tai jutsu together and connects them with a line. Included in this shin jutsu, he exclaims, “aikido is [a] culture business, not show business.” He shares this direct guidance in disjunct timing for students, it might take many years for some to hear the next teaching. This is how he received teachings from O’Sensei. Students under O’Sensei worked at honing perception rather than instructed step by step with kata. “Must develop sharp perception,” he says. Deshi must do this to realize O’Sensei’s teachings intimately and directly for themselves, “aikido has no style.” Sensei believes that all students have capacity for this kind of perception, that all students are capable of developing these capacities often exclaiming, “[are] you not seeing? Perception!”

Give Me Your Cigarette

Another moment that is well remembered, and some already know this story, is when we were just about to return from a meal downtown. Sensei, Mike Rosario, another uchi-deshi that lived at the dojo, and I were waiting for Robert Deppe to return with a car to pick us up. We were on the sidewalk with Sensei, and he was casually smoking a cigarette. A man in disheveled clothes walked down the street and stopped right in front of Sensei almost touching face to face and shouts, “give me your cigarette!” and Sensei simply takes the cigarette out of his mouth, turns it around and places it at the man’s lips. The man takes the cigarette, inhales quickly, and then blows the smoke straight forward at Sensei, and then turns the cigarette and puts it back in Sensei’s hands. The man walks off, and Sensei says without breaking awareness, “you know, some people, no understanding.”

A man in disheveled clothes walked down the street and stopped right in front of Sensei almost touching face to face and shouts, “give me your cigarette!”

Beyond fighting, beyond arguments, beyond force, beyond manipulation. It was a simple and pure exchange human to human. A man came, a cigarette rotated, some smoke blown, some smoke dissipated, a cigarette rotated back, a man gone. To Mike and me, it was an amazing moment, simple, instructional, and struck at the heart of our study. This tremendously impacted training; uke comes, threat is exactly neutral, and then uke goes. If uke stops attacking, what more is there to do? Even on the mat, if uke stops, then just stop. No need to force a technique, or do anything, the attack has stopped, bu has been fulfilled, the spear has been halted. Now of course, sharp perception keeps track of the position of the halted spears, so if another uke attacks, the stopped uke can be used as a shield or as a lever in an interception. This is budo.

Guarding the Honor of Transmission

On another birthday, Sensei had again came downstairs out of the house, and I was in the process of straightening and dusting the photographs of O’Sensei and Sensei, along with awards and gifts that line the walls of Aikido Shobukan Dojo. “You know Roy,” Sensei paused looking around at the dojo, “this is Sensei’s honor.” He gestured at the photographs, O’Sensei standing majestically, “this is Sensei’s honor.” He paused again, and reached out, “you guarding Sensei’s honor.” I came to revisit this memory many times, and still do today, and it has evolved since that day. Guarding the honor of transmission need not be for just aikido alone, an uchi-deshi guards the honor of transmission for all arts, an uchi-deshi becomes a friend of the work of transmission for the benefit of humanity, for society, for wisdom. This the role of an uchi-deshi, and this role guards the truth of the source of a transmission’s true lineage, the qualities, and characteristics that engender limitless potential. An uchi-deshi becomes an inner shrine guardian, by resolving ignorance, truly. It will take much courage, and work to overcome negative affliction, while retaining enthusiasm and zeal of raw and natural motion.

A Distant Future

Sensei exemplifies dedication and commitment to the aikido mission, affirming belief that true budo, the pairing of shin-jutsu (心術) and tai-jutsu (体術) moved by ki (氣), manifests changing shapes of waza (技). Part of the pinnacle of this waza is demonstrated by O’Sensei’s building of an Aiki Shrine in Japan, where later Sensei himself took up the mission to build an Aiki Shrine in Myakka City Florida in the United States. We drew a timeline together to encompass the relationship between the Aiki Shrine in Japan and the Aiki Shrine in the United States, and I was inspired by Amaterasu Oho No Kami and wrote the kanji for sun at the beginning of the timeline before O’Sensei built the first Aiki shrine, and later where Saotome Sensei built the second, yet far to the right, an insight arose. These hands then wrote the kanji for moon far off in the distance as if to symbolize a limitless future reflecting the radiant limitless past. He smiled, and then said simply, “yes, like this.”