A feeling. A reality. Something so simple that everyone can experience it, yet so ineffable. Real and intangible at the same time.
It is not only the domain of poets and artists. It is something that runs through everyone’s existence-including those who practice Aikido.
It is well known that Morihei Ueshiba, playing on the homophony of the Japanese language (Ai 合 can mean both union, harmony, and love 愛), left several calligraphies in which Aikido was written as 愛氣道.
In a recent seminar, we reflected on a crucial moment in Morihei Ueshiba’s life. In 1942, an officer of the Imperial Navy, an expert in Kendo, challenged him. In that encounter, the founder of Aikido refused to arm himself, deeply offending the officer, who eventually surrendered after being repeatedly evaded and rendered unable to attack.
A significant moment for both Ueshiba and Aikido, as it strongly emphasized that what was emerging-and what we now call Aikido- was not something directed against the attack itself.
If it had been, it would have been nothing more than yet another fighting style. Another waste of energy and force.
What was taking shape was a system for neutralizing the attacker. Something that placed the very intention to strike in a condition where it could not be expressed- where it became too exhausting to sustain, ultimately pointless.
Not something against the attacker, against the person- but against the attack.
There is something in the practice of Aikido that is profoundly different from any other martial art. All of them aim at personal growth and are based on intense partner work. Yet Aikido has a structure in which the pair creates the action together and, once completed, returns to create another, and another stil- a continuous return toward one another.
The kanji 愛 contains within it 心, kokoro, the heart, and the radical 夂. In ancient times, it represented a person who, while walking, turns back- unable to separate from what they feel deeply connected to.
For an Aikido practitioner (and not only), love is movement- it is dynamic. It is a motion that generates continuous encounter, without stopping at the surface of conflict.
That movement which envelops the pair in practice, creating from two centers a new, single axis, around which every point rotates in the same harmony.
A condition in which desire and will align, merge, and pulse with the same rhythm of life.
What Dante experienced in the highest act of artistic creation of the human spirit:
the love that moves the sun and the other stars
Credit: Picture by Valeria Fioranti