Aikidamashii dojo is proud to host a seminar by Zainuddin Abd Khalic sensei, 3rd dan and President of Aikikai Malaysia Association. The seminar will be held from 12th-14th December 2008.
For more information please contact Hj Sabtu Hj Awg Besar at hjsabtu@yahoo.com.sg or +6738841155. Please take note that the deadline for registration will close on 7th December 2008.
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This seminar has both disheartened and liberated me. These contradictory feelings have emerged because on the one hand, I have realized that I will not be able to reach a high level of aikido in this lifetime, and on the other hand, I am realizing that that sought after level is an illusion, and that the level I am on, and the levels I will attain in the future, are all that I need, and all that I should hope for.
There is no way that I will be able to become a 6th Dan; some sort of aikido demi-god to us 1st Dans. To do so I would need to train relentlessly, for an extended period of years, alongside others of that level, or close to it. I am not in such a situation. I cannot make the sacrifices I would need to make in order to get into that situation. Family, work, finances, study, all play a significant role in my life.
Aikido is simply a leisure time activity for me, something to keep me fit, motivated, thoughtful, and friendly. Aikido also offers me a chance to show others how to do things, to have them regard me with some respect. Aikido brings me into contact with others who have amazing skills and knowledge in the art, with funny, frightening, and jaw dropping tales of their experiences, training sessions, teachers, and the legends and histories they know of. I meet people worthy of my respect for the discipline, courage, humour, and good will they show during our training sessions together.
Aikido saves me from myself. I have a dark side, like everyone, which comes from my attachments, my infancy and childhood, my selfishness, ignorance, pride, and desires. Aikido gives me an outlet for my uncontrollable urges. Aikido helps me to see others and participate with them as people, humans like me, with aims and minds and hearts like mine, not simply as objects and actors or characters in this dream which is my short life.
Aikido training makes me one of many, not the centre of everyone. Aikido helps me to be humble, showing my achievements to be tiny, and my ignorance to be great. Aikido has brought people into my life whom I would never ordinarily meet. Our meeting in Aikido is unique, special, and wonderful in comparison to the ways in which I ordinarily meet, communicate, and interact with people in the other activities and dimensions of my life. I get to blend with others’ physical and emotional energies. I get to throw people, strike at them, and pin them to the floor; all with smiles on both our faces. I get to be thrown, struck, and pinned; and I get to correct others, and have them correct me, with graciousness, humility, and appreciation.
I get to be part of a great heritage; a receiver, enactor, and transmitter, of beautiful and lethal physical movements, and an ever expanding set of incredible, mind blowing ideas. I get to express and enjoy a type of love for others which I don’t learn anywhere else.
I am so unhappy that I will never become a ‘no touch’ sensei, or someone like Tada or Saotome. What hope could I ever have to attain anywhere near the level that O Sensei reached in his lifetime. This leads me to question what I am doing and spending so much time on something that could even injure me; something that takes me away from my family, and doesn’t even bring me any financial reward. What’s the point of such a thing. I’m never going to be really good at it. in fact I’m not even sure I know what it is.
It’s further saddening to see and hear that aikido causes almost as much harm as it hopes to prevent. World aikido politics, the egos and agendas of proud individuals, the deceptions, sabotages, and fighting all amount to little more than another of humanities many devices for causing further hatred and division in a world already ripped to pieces. Why do I participate in something, aiming for high levels of achievement in it, when people who are at the levels I will never reach, act just like any other evil human being.
Zainnudin’s seminar has reoriented my aims in aikido. I don’t want or need those high levels anymore. I’m happy where I am, with what I am doing. I’m just focusing on this, now, and what I need to learn at this time. The seminar in many ways, has liberated me from the unbreakable binds of the need to be great. For what I am doing is already great. I remember when I first started, I couldn’t do anything, and wished I could just do something basic; I remember when I used to see the black belt and wish I had one of my own.
Imagine if an angel went to Saito sensei or O sensei, or even Sugano sensei, and asked: “would you like the chance to be in those dojos over there, training with Lance, and those other bare beginners”. My guess is that any of those people would love to be here, where I am, training with me, enjoying the amazement I feel for aikido and the people I train with. And here I am, I’m here, doing what they would give so much for. I’m alive, and I’m able to train. I’m able to meet you, and you’re able to enjoy my company in way that no one else in my life can. I’m able to know you, in a way that I know few other people. I am liberated from needing to achieve the impossible, and focused on getting my appreciation and attention on this moment; the one that I am in, now.
Thank you Sensei.
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