修行会

137「主の至愛ひびき生れし大宇宙御いとなみぞ生れ出てたる。」- 植芝盛平

Original Waka

主の至愛
ひびき生れし
大宇宙
御いとなみぞ
生れ出てたる

植芝盛平 (Ueshiba, 1977)

Translation

“The Lord‘s supreme love, its resonance begetting the vast universe’s august creative workings had been born, emerged, and stands.” – Morihei Ueshiba

Waka Translation

Lords’ own supreme love
resonant echo birthed forth
the great universe

august workings manifest
was born, emerged forth, and stands.

Morihei Ueshiba

歴史的仮名遣い（語構成を明示）^1,2

主の至愛（すのしあい）
ひびき生れし（ひびきうまれし）
大宇宙（だいうちゅう）
御いとなみぞ（おんいとなみぞ）
生れ出でたる（うまれいでたる）

植芝盛平

Bungo Romanization^1,2

su no shi‑ai
hibiki umare‑shi
dai‑uchū
on‑itonami zo
umare ide‑taru

Ueshiba Morihei

口語; 現代仮名遣い

137「主の至愛は、その響きによって生まれた、大宇宙の——御いとなみこそ、生まれ出ているのだ。」— 植芝盛平 (口語訳)

Kōgo Romanization

“Shu no shi‑ai wa, sono hibiki ni yotte umareta, dai‑uchū no—on‑itonami koso, umare dete iru no da.” — Ueshiba Morihei (Kōgo Translation)

Notes

¹ I restore classical 出で for 出て.

² On honorific 御 read either on- or mi‑ in waka diction; here mi‑ underscores divine agency.

Translation, Notes, Commentary, and Research by Latex G. N. R. Space-Coyote

Ueshiba, M. (2025). 植芝盛平道歌–137: Su’s resonant love (L. G. N. R. Space-Coyote, Trans.; OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, Ed.). Shugyokai.org. https://shugyokai.org/qxki (Original work compiled 1977)

主（す / しゅ／ぬし; su / shu / nushi） — lord, master, main, principal; head of family; master, mistress; husband, proprietor, landlord; in Ueshiba’s usage, a numinous, sovereign kami-principle; not necessarily theistic in a Western sense, but the cosmic source / order; su is read in Go-onr eadings that were used in Japanese Buddhist and legal communities of practice based in Nanjing dialect which are readings for Chinese characters used in the Kojiki; as su, attached to names for respect; etymology is important here, wood with fire on top; a spirit tablet in old pictograms, which incidentally is the radical on the left of the kanji for kami; fire is considered sacred, and the person (e.g., master, head of household, elder) who controlled fire was called so (そう; DigitalIO, n.d.-a; EDRDG, n.d.; Muller, 2014; Wikimedia Foundation, 2025).

至愛（しあい; shi-ai）— “supreme / extreme love”; Ueshiba often links ai (“love”) with the ethical-spiritual core of Aikidō (and with musubi, creative union); kakekotoba as しあい (shi‑ai) is homophonous with 試合 “match, contest” hinting at Ueshiba’s re‑reading of martial “matches” as opportunities to manifest supreme love rather than to defeat an opponent.

主の至愛（すのしあい／しゅのしあい／ぬしのしあい; su no shi-ai / shu no shi-ai / nushi no shi-ai）— “the Lord’s supreme love”; 主 can be read or; in Ueshiba’s usage it often denotes a numinous sovereign kami principle (not necessarily theistic in a Western sense). 至愛 (“supreme love”) is central to Ueshiba’s ethics and cosmology. 

ひびき（hibiki）— “resonance/echo”; evokes kotodama (word‑spirit) and vibrational cosmology—creation as reverberation rather than mechanical causation.

生れし（うまれし; umare-shi）— “was born / came to be.” The ‑し is the rentaikei (attributive) of the classical past auxiliary き, modifying the next noun (“the Great Cosmos that was born …”). This is textbook bungo (cf. Shirane, 2005).

ひびき生れし — “(whose) resonance gave birth.” The rentaikei し is the attributive of the past auxiliary き, forming a relative clause that modifies the following noun (“the great universe that was born …”).

大（だい; dai）— great; big; large; grand.

大宇宙（だいうちゅう; dai‑uchū）— “Great Universe / Cosmos”; the totality of heaven–earth; standard Sino-Japanese cosmological term.

御（み; mi） — honorific prefix; in historical grammar it functions as a bound morpheme marking reverence toward the referent. NINJAL’s (2017) historical corpus treats ミ（御） as a prefixal element with numerous sacred exemplars (御子, 御言, 御手洗, etc.); indexes sacred dignity. In Shintō vocabulary mi‑ marks kami and imperial referents (mi‑koto, mi‑tama), a usage Kokugakuin’s (n.d.) Encyclopedia of Shintō treats as an honorific title/prefix for divine persons and attributes.

いとなみ / 営み（itonami）— “acts, activity, conducts, workings, operations”; classical and modern dictionaries gloss it as acts / workings, including everyday life, work, ritual or divine activity (Kotobank; Daijisen).

御いとなみ（おんいとなみぞ; on‑itonami）— “august workings / creative activity”; an honorific for the gods’ ordering of the world; the ぞ … たる construction emphatically marks that these “workings” have indeed “come forth / broken into manifestation”; honorific 御 marks divine agency; emphatic ぞ is a classical exclamative/focus particle that forces an attributive predicate later (cf. line 5). As transmitted, this line likely lacks one mora; inserting の (“of”) smoothly links 3→4 (“of the cosmos, [its] august workings …”). In this religious waka, reading 御いとなみ as “august cosmic workings” (rather than e.g. “livelihood”) best matches classical usage and Ueshiba’s cosmology of an ordered, living universe.

出づ （いで; ide）— classical verb “to come forth / emerge.” Here it is in ren’yōkei (連用形) before the perfect / resultative auxiliary たり.

たる（taru）— attributive form of たり, a classical perfect / stative auxiliary: “has come forth and (now) stands as …” (cf. Shirane, 2005). 

Kami-no-ku and shimo-no-ku. The kami‑no‑ku (lines 1–3) carries “Lord’s extreme love → resonance → cosmos born,” while the shimo‑no‑ku (lines 4–5) seals it with “august workings → manifested birth,” preserving the original poem’s conceptual arc.

Lexicon. Waka style typically blends native vocabulary (ひびき, いとなみ, 出で) with Sino‑Japanese compounds (至愛, 大宇宙), especially in religious or philosophical poems (Brower & Miner, 1961). Ueshiba’s diction here mirrors that pattern: emotionally charged Yamato words frame cosmological compounds (Great Cosmos, supreme love). Words like ひびき (hibiki) and 出で (ide) carry strong sound‑symbolic resonance in Japanese religious discourse—hibiki evokes echoing vibrations; ide evokes emergence from hidden to manifest, a movement crucial to Shintō ideas of kami appearing in the world (cf. Bocking, 1997; cf. Hardacre, 2017).

Auxiliaries & forms. 生れし uses き (past) in rentaikei し; 出でたる uses たり/たる (perfect/resultative attributive). Both are textbook bungo.

Focus particle. ぞ is the classical exclamative particle that requires a following rentaikei predicate (hence …たる).

Honorifics and divine register. 主, 御, 大 together create a high, reverential register characteristic of religious waka and norito (Shintō liturgy) (cf. Bocking, 1997; cf. Hardacre, 2017). 御 (mi‑ / o‑) for divine action (御いとなみ) is standard waka diction; on- is possible in kun reading. 御いとなみ (“august workings”) matches classical uses like 御子, 御言, 御手, where mi‑ marks sacred agency.

Kan’yō on & Yamato mix. The blend of Sino‑Japanese (大宇宙, 至愛) with native diction (ひびき, 出で) is typical of waka registers across the classical tradition.

Shintō and the Ōmoto movement. Ueshiba’s cosmology draws heavily on Shintō and the Ōmoto movement (Deguchi Onisaburō), where kotodama (言霊)—the creative “spirit of words/sounds”—and musubi (creative binding) are central. Reading line 2’s ひびき(“resonance”) alongside 至愛 aligns with this doctrine: creation as the resonant unfolding of divine love. The Aiki Shrine at Iwama (1943) and Ueshiba’s frequent religious statements situate aikidō as a ritualized enactment of cosmic harmony, not merely technique. Religious‑studies and historical syntheses on Shintō and Ōmoto provide the background, and aikidō scholarship tracks how Ueshiba restated Ōmoto ideas through practice and poetry.