Aikido
The Founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, born December 14, 1883 in Japan, as a young boy, used to see local thugs beating his father for political reasons.
This motivated him to build his strength to that he would be able to avenge his father. With a strong devotion to physical hard conditioning and eventually practicing martial arts, he received certificates of mastery in several styles such as fencing, jujitsu, spear fighting. However, he was not satisfied with his capabilities; he thus began to delve into religions, he hope to find a deeper significance to the meaning of life. He never stopped his studies of budu, or martial arts, and eventually combined his religious studies and his martial arts training to create Aikido a modern martial arts training.
Before he decided on the name ‘Aikido’ in 1942, he had already been using aikibudo" and "aikinomichi" as names for his martial arts training.
The technical rules of Aikido are several styles of jujitsu (modern judo is derived from this), spear and sword fighting arts, and diatoryu-jujitsu. To put it simply, Aikido uses the joint locks and the throws form jujitsu combined with body movement of spear and sword fighting. However, we must also remember that many of the Aikido techniques were developed by Master Ueshiba’s innovation.
Ueshiba was a devotee of Japan’s ‘new religions’ "Omotokyo” which is part of neo-Shintoism and in part of the socio-political ideals. One of Omotokyo’s goals is to unite all humanity in a single ‘Heavenly Kingdom on earth”. Omotokyo’s goal is to bring about a unification of all religions, under the single banner of Omotokyo.
Aikido does not have a unified philosophy, it is disorganized and partially a collection of metaphysical, ethical and religions beliefs, which are shared by aikisoka, which are transmitted either by word of month, or to be found in scattered publications on Aikido.
Some typical examples:
1. “Aikido is not a means to fighting, or to defeat enemies; instead it is a way to reconcile the world, making all human beings as one family.
2. “Aikido is the essence of the cultivation of ki, this is a vital force, mental/spiritual energy and internal power.”
3. “The secret to Aikido, is to become at one with the universe.”
4. “Aikido is a means of obtaining psychological self mastery.”
5. “The body is a concrete unification of spiritual and physical created by the universe.
When one con
a. A commitment to ensure peaceful resolutions of a conflict situation;
b. and, a commitment to self-improvement by using Aikido training.
