Lecture by Christopher Curtis Sensei 7th Dan

[TLR]

I just thought I would share a portion of this lecture from a recent seminar in Hawaii.

aloha,

The Meaning of Aikido
HKF Fall 2006 Seminar – Oahu
C. Curtis

In the past year or more, it seems like we have covered many different subjects: What is the meaning of Ki? What is the meaning of Happiness? What is the purpose of bokken training? Etc. But I don’t think I ever asked you what the meaning of Aikido is. So can you please tell me? What is the meaning of Aikido?

Student: The way of harmony with the universe
Student: To better our lives by harmonizing with someone else’s Ki.
Student: The way of harmonious energy.
Student: The way to union with the Ki of the universe.

That seems to be the popular conception of this. Shall we look at it more closely and see what we discover? (writes Japanese calligraphy on board, the adds “Ai…Ki…Do”)
Ai
Ki
Do
OK: Ai: Most everyone commonly interprets ai to mean harmonious, or harmony. The calligraphy for this word ai is made up of three separate characters, and literally means human, one, and mouth. So ai means “human with one mouth”. Maybe you can imagine the meaning already. What do we do with our mouth? We speak, we chant, we sing. So we can say that ai means “everyone singing with one voice”. “Harmony” is a good word to use for that. It is a popular one. But sometimes words have different meanings for different people. So it is important to look carefully at the source of important words like this. Of course, all kanji (Japanese calligraphy) originally came to Japan from ancient China. So this is Chinese from long ago. It is important to remember that when we look at these. So this is all people singing, or speaking with one voice; all humans unified. The challenge with the word “harmony” is that we often conceive of harmony as two or more things coming together. However, this is a relative and limited view. Harmony, as it is used in the word Aikido doesn’t mean multiple things coming together. Harmony here means all things are already together, even though we might not perceive them as in that condition. Humans are already one; unified. There is no need to make them one. We humans, through our limited and relative perception, actually make them separate. The way we see the world, and hence the way we see each other, is almost always relative; you over there and me over here. So you definitely seem different and separate from me, and either better or worse off, but never the same. So since we perceive this incredible variety in the dojo, and in the world, where everyone is apparently so different, then our practice has to be to remember that there is some fundamental essence that is one. And what is that? That is the question. If we are going to practice Ai, then we have to have a deep understanding of what that is, and if that something can even be spoken, or defined. Maybe, when we speak it, or define it, it suddenly becomes part of that relative condition, and it is not what we meant to point to at all. Do you see what I mean?
So when we use words we have to be very careful. It is so easy to say “harmony with the Ki of the universe” and think we know what that means.

So: Ki: Ki is made up of two separate characters, and each has its own meaning, as above. For the first character, on the top and to the right, we can say “clouds and rain”, which would be coming down from the heavens. Or at the same time it can mean “steam”, which would be rising up. And the symbol in the center here, the second one, is the symbol for “rice”. If this above is clouds and rain, then the rice is considered to be growing. If the first symbol is seen as steam, then the rice is cooking. In both cases it is exploding outward. It is important to understand why they made these symbols to signify ki of the universe. We will get into what ki means in this context in a moment, but obviously to the ancient Chinese, what the word ki represented was very significant for them. Because if the rain didn’t come and rice crop didn’t come in, they didn’t live. They couldn’t go to the grocery store and buy some more rice. If the crop didn’t come in that year, there was a famine. Everyone suffered. So having the rains come, having the rice crop be successful, and having the rice to eat as food; for the ancient Chinese, this meant life itself. So they used this combination of two symbols to represent ki - life itself. Life. For the ones who invented this word, ki equals life itself. And with these symbols we are pointing to harmony with this ki of the universe, which can indeed be seen as a kind of energy; more on that a bit later.

But before we go into that further, let’s first complete the word: Do. Do is made up of two symbols. This first one means “way”. And this second one means “leader” or you can say “individual” or it also can mean “prominence”; so we might say “the prominent way” or “the way of the prominent individual”. So, yes, this is “do”, and everybody knows “do” means “the way”. Ju-do, Karate-do, Ken-do, Kyu-do, Aiki-do. However, this has two symbols, which is telling us that there is a further qualification to the word “way”. We have “leader”, or “individual” added on or coupled with “way”. What that is pointing to, or qualifying here, is that there is only one way, but that you have to come upon it individually, from your particular individually conditioned mind. We can say that the action path through life of each individual person is unique. We all have our particular obsessions: be it sex, music, food, nature, knowledge, politics, etc. or even Aikido! It depends on what you particularly find yourself needing to work through. So there is only one general “way”, but this “way” manifests in each of us uniquely. The way is not something that you must follow blindly. Our task it to awaken to the realization of that way, as it evolves in each of our souls.

The Question and Answer can be read at www.hawaiikiaikido.org

[Josh Reyer]

Oh, man. First, let me say I see where he's coming from; he's trying to get across certain principles and ideas to his students, get them to think "outside the box", as it were, and not teaching a class on historical Chinese orthography. But, holy God, was he off the mark on those characters.

From Kanjigen, a kanji dictionary:

合　会意。「かぶせるしるし＋口（あな）」で、穴にふたをかぶせてぴたりとあわせることを示す。

氣　会意兼形声。气（キ）は、いきが屈曲しながら出てくるさま。氣は「米＋（音符）气」で、米をふかすときに出る蒸気のこと。

道　会意兼形声。「辵（足の動作）＋（音符）首」で、首（あたま）を向けて進みいくみち。また、迪（テキ）（みち）と同系と考えると、一点から出てのびていくみち。

Essentially, 合 ai, is a ideograph. The top arch and horizontal bar represent not "human" and "one", but rather "cover, put over", and 口 in this case represents not the human mouth, but rather a hole or opening. Together they represent the idea of perfectly covering a hole or an opening. This, incidently, illustrates that 合 does not mean "harmony" in Japanese! It means "meeting, matching, fitting together", and is used in any number of non-harmonious contexts! E.g., 言い合い iiai, an argument, 果し合い hatashiai, a duel, 切り合い kiriai, a swordfight, or 押し合いへし合い oshiai-heshiai, shoving and jostling.

He is much closer to the mark on 氣, although he exaggerates it to a grand degree, IMO. 氣, ki is an ideograph with phonetic elements.　气 represents vapors curling in the air and serves as the characters phonetic component, and 米 is "rice". Together they represent the steam rising up when cooking rice. As to why the Chinese used this character to mean "breath" and "energy", one can get grandiose, I suppose, or one could simply say that steam rising from cooking rice was one of the most tangible and visual indications of energy in Chinese daily life.

As for 道 dou, it is another ideograph with phonetic elements. 辵, simplified into 辶, represents feet moving, and 首 represents a head and provides the phonetic component. So it represents a road facing and advancing ahead of you. Alternatively, it could be along the same lines as 迪, and represent a road extending from a given point. 首 can in certain contexts mean "leader" (as can our English "head"), but "individual" strikes me as a stretch, and that secondary meaning is unlikely to be relevant here.

Going from a character perspective to a whole word perspective, why did Ueshiba name his art "aikido"? In the whole Q&A, Mr. Curtis says,

So maybe you can see why O’Sensei originally called this practice, “Aikido”. These are very powerful symbols with huge implications. And realize now…imagine…there wasn’t any Aikido before he came along. So he is trying to communicate to all of these people that have been attracted by his presence, what is going on, and how they might practice so that this could happen for them too.

And I'm afraid that's all wrong. The word "aiki" pre-dated Ueshiba, being used by Takeda Sokaku when he taught Daito-ryu. While the exact mechanics are up for debate for those outside of Daito-ryu, Takeda used it as a noun: aiki wo kakeru, "apply aiki". This would suggest that the "ai" is adjectival. IOW, "aiki" represents "au ki" or "atte-iru ki", "ki that matches" or "ki that is matching".

When Takeda gave Ueshiba his teaching license, it was in Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu. Ueshiba taught it as this for a while, and then began calling "aikibudo". "Aikido" as a name came about in the late 1930s, coined by the Butokukai as a general term for a number of martial arts, not just Ueshiba's.

Interestingly, while aiki wo kakeru still seems to show up in Daito-ryu contexts, in aikido webpages pages the term seems to be used as a verb: aiki-suru, "do aiki". That seems to subtly change the nuance, from the transitive sense used in Daito-ryu, to an intransitive sense in aikido. "Aiki" goes from being a noun to being a verb: "ki wo awaseru" "to match ki", rather than "ki that is matching".

Anyway, while I can see where Mr. Curtis is coming from, I don't think it's beneficial to represent character etymologies as he did (particularly, "ai", which is quickly becoming my latest linguistical pet peeve), nor to represent the word "aikido" as containing the whole meaning of the art, with the implication that it was coined by Ueshiba for that purpose. Words have histories, they have contexts, and they have idioms. Divorcing a word from its history (as Mr. Curtis does here) or breaking a character down into individual characters based on their modern meanings* (as Mr. Curtis does here) only serve to cloud the issue and spread misinformation.

* Almost always a mistake; what may look like a particular character may not be that at all, as we can see with "ai".

[Walker]

Josh,

Very nicely done.

I sometimes wonder about the "stories" that get told around kanji learning and how accurately they match the history of a kanji vs. convenient mnemonic device to remember elements. Have you studied this? Any suggestion on how to pursue an interest in this area?

Hi Josh,

Just wondered if you mind if I borrow part of your post? I want to use it to ask some questions, most likely on AikiWeb. I'll link back to here for the reference.

I think that's an interesting observation. It might explain why Aikido people think that to do aikido, one must actively "harmonize" with an attacker. Instead of using aiki properly to have "ki that is matching."

Thanks,
Mark


Excerpt:

Interestingly, while aiki wo kakeru still seems to show up in Daito-ryu contexts, in aikido webpages pages the term seems to be used as a verb: aiki-suru, "do aiki". That seems to subtly change the nuance, from the transitive sense used in Daito-ryu, to an intransitive sense in aikido. "Aiki" goes from being a noun to being a verb: "ki wo awaseru" "to match ki", rather than "ki that is matching".

[Josh Reyer]

Originally Posted by Mark Murray

Hi Josh,

Just wondered if you mind if I borrow part of your post? I want to use it to ask some questions, most likely on AikiWeb. I'll link back to here for the reference.

I think that's an interesting observation. It might explain why Aikido people think that to do aikido, one must actively "harmonize" with an attacker. Instead of using aiki properly to have "ki that is matching."

Thanks,
Mark

No problem, Mark. Although it should be noted that it's something of a musing of mine, and the linguistic difference may not be that great. For example, "to call on the phone" can be both "denwa wo kakeru", or "denwa-suru". On the other hand, if it were like "denwa wo kakeru/suru", you'd expect them to be used interchangeably by both DR and Aikido, and as near as I can tell, it is not.

Also, "aiki wo kakeru" refers to the trick, most often associated with DR, of immobilizing or incapacitating an opponent just by touch. I should go through some of Shioda's and the Yoshinkan's writings and see how they use it (if they do), as Shioda's the only Ueshiba deshi I've seen do that kind of trick.

Originally Posted by Josh Reyer

No problem, Mark. Although it should be noted that it's something of a musing of mine, and the linguistic difference may not be that great. For example, "to call on the phone" can be both "denwa wo kakeru", or "denwa-suru". On the other hand, if it were like "denwa wo kakeru/suru", you'd expect them to be used interchangeably by both DR and Aikido, and as near as I can tell, it is not.

Also, "aiki wo kakeru" refers to the trick, most often associated with DR, of immobilizing or incapacitating an opponent just by touch. I should go through some of Shioda's and the Yoshinkan's writings and see how they use it (if they do), as Shioda's the only Ueshiba deshi I've seen do that kind of trick.

I saw your post on aikiweb about that. Good posts. I think the translation in America for Aikido went a different direction that put more emphasis on the verb. So, instead of getting a translation of "ki that is matching", we get a definition of an action being done to match ki, which in turn gets defined as a moving physical action to influence uke. And then, we find that we're viewing aikido as a way to physically move to harmonize with an attacker, which isn't necessarily the right way of doing things. IMO, anyway.

Mark

[P Goldsbury]

Originally Posted by Walker

Josh,

Very nicely done.

I sometimes wonder about the "stories" that get told around kanji learning and how accurately they match the history of a kanji vs. convenient mnemonic device to remember elements. Have you studied this? Any suggestion on how to pursue an interest in this area?

Hello,

I suggest that you look at a kanji dictionary, of the sort used by Japanese school children when learning the writing system. Most dictionaries, for example, will give you the list of the 1006 kanji to be taught in elementary school, grade by grade, and they are laboriously learned, by rote. The 'elements' of each character are laid out as a learning device, and this can lead to the mistaken conclusion that the way that the character is formed is the same as what it actually means.

Another fallacy is that native speakers, simply by virtue of being 'native', are reliable authorities concerning the history and grammar of the language they speak. This also includes Japanese shihans resident abroad who are sometimes tempted to give 'explanations' of aikido terms, based simply of the fact that they are native speakers. I have heard too many times to keep count explanations of 'AI', 'KI', and 'DO' that are plausible, but in fact completely fallacious.

[Josh Reyer]

Originally Posted by Walker

Josh,

Very nicely done.

I sometimes wonder about the "stories" that get told around kanji learning and how accurately they match the history of a kanji vs. convenient mnemonic device to remember elements. Have you studied this? Any suggestion on how to pursue an interest in this area?

I'll just back-up Professor Goldsbury. Short of entering a graduate program in Japanese linguistics, learning Japanese enough to utilize reference materials for Japanese people is the best way to go. You might want to check out "Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters" by Kenneth G. Henshall. As I understand, it contains sound etymological information for the first 1,006 characters learned in elementary school. I don't recall how much etymological information is provided, but the NTC/Kenkyusha New Japanese-English Character Dictionary (ed. Jack Halpern) is very good for learning kanji (compared to the Nelson Character Dictionary, which is basically a dictionary for reading).