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Aikido, Satyagraha and Nonviolence

Rick Higgs

In an article published in the May/June 1999 issue of The UTNE Reader entitled "The 20th Century: What's Worth Saving?", authors Jay Walljasper and Jon Spayde attempted to pick 100 inventions, ideas or concepts that they felt were worthy to be brought forward into the new millennium. While this may seem an ambitious task, one of their choices with which few would disagree is Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of Satyagraha, his revolutionary approach to social change through nonviolent means. Perhaps a less immediately likely choice for inclusion in UTNE's "Hot 100 for positive social change" would be any kind of martial art, yet near the top of their list appears the art ot Aikido, developed by Japanese martial arts master Morihei Ueyshiba in the first half of the 20th century. While it may seem counterintuitive to imagine that the study of any martial art could help to promote nonviolence and peaceful reconciliation, I believe that the study of Aikido can help to further these goals. This is because the principles of Aikido are based on, and in fact embody, principles of nonviolence and nonresistance that parallel those of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. An understanding and application of these principles can help individuals, organizations and possibly even governments to peaceful and perhaps even mutually beneficial conflict resolution.

     Mr. Gandhi's approach was quite revolutionary when first introduced. Instead of nonviolent solutions, the recorded history of humankind is a seemingly endless cycle of violence and retribution. Relatively recent examples are not difficult to find. One such case is that of Germany early in the 20th century. The French had bitter feelings toward Germany since their humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. At the close of World War l in 1918 after the defeat of Germany by the Allied powers, France insisted on the most extreme and humiliating reparations from Germany over the strenuous objections of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, who had hoped to work out a treaty that would allow Germany to rebuild its’ economy. Instead the Versailles Treaty insured conditions too harsh for the survival of the nascent democratic government, and instead lead to hardship and resentments that provided fertile ground for the spread of Hitler's National Socialism only fifteen years later (Armstrong 217, 219-221).

Other examples in more recent memory include the renewal in the 1990's of hostilities based on long-standing enmity between Serbs and Croatians in Bosnia, and the complex and seemingly endless conflict in Palestine. As more and more nations achieve atomic capability, it becomes ever more crucial for us to to find and use methods of conflict resolution that can break the cycle of violence. That is why the world is grateful to Mr. Gandhi for his successful development of nonviolent techniques to confront social injustice, and to Dr. Martin Luther King for adapting Gandhi's strategies for use in the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Many Gandhian principles are embodied in both the technical and philosophical aspects of Aikido training, as we shall see.

   Gandhi first employed his theory of nonviolent resistance in South Africa in 1906. He had gone there as a young lawyer in 1893 for what was supposed to be employment lasting one year - instead, he stayed for twenty-one years defending the rights of Indian nationals in South Africa. After experiencing incidents of racism first hand early in his stay, he was motivated to organize the Indian minority. He was confronting the prejudices of both the ruling British and the resident Boers, settlers of Dutch descent, defeated by the British in 1902 but still holding positions in government. After restrictive new registration laws were imposed on the Indian minority in 1906, Gandhi persuaded his followers to defy these laws and travel bans and allow themselves to be arrested. His concept allowed for no overt violence on the part of the demonstrators, but instead encouraged mass refusal to obey oppressive laws, and the willingness to suffer abuse and imprisonment (Fischer 20-36).

     The name that Gandhi coined for his weapon of peace is Satyagraha, which means "soul force" or "love force". At the root of his theory was the concept that it was not ultimately as constructive to defeat or humiliate an opponent as it was to convert them to his point of view. He felt that an opponent must be "weaned from error by patience and sympathy". Thus it was important never to meet force with force but to instead practice nonresistance. He felt that only this approach offered any possibility for peaceful reconciliation and a     solution beneficial to all parties. His primary influences in the development of Satyagraha were works of Tolstoy, with whom he kept up a correspondence for years, Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, who himself spent some time in jail standing for his beliefs, and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (35-40). With these new tactics he won major political victories in South Africa and eventually India's independence from England. These were the triumphs of nonviolence that inspired Martin Luther King during his studies at seminary. In his 1958 speech, "The Power of Nonviolence", Dr. King explained that this approach, based on that of Gandhi, is nonaggressive but spiritually powerful, not intended to defeat an opponent, struggles against the corrupt system as a whole rather than against individuals and is based in a centeredness of spirit, avoiding internal as well as external violence. These are the precepts he subsequently used in the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott of 1955, and continued to believe in for the rest of his life (King 30-32).

   Many of the conclusions about nonresistance and nonviolence drawn by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King were shared by a renegade Japanese martial artist named Morihei Ueyshiba, born in 1883, who was able to synthesize a new martial art that physically and philosophically embodied those principles. He called his new art Aikido, which can be translated as "the Way of harmonizing with universal energy". In 1925 Master Ueyshiba, known by his followers as O-Sensei (Great Teacher) experienced a powerful spiritual awakening in which he came to the realization that "Budo (the Way of the Warrior) is Love", and that the role of the warrior was the preservation of life, rather than to cause destruction. Up to that point he had had a thorough education in a number of armed and unarmed forms of traditional martial arts, including sword, spear, bayonet and several forms of jujutsu, most notably the potent Daito-ryu style of Sokaku Takeda. The turning point for Master Ueyshiba, however, came through the influence of a radical offshoot of the Shinto religion called Omoto-kyo, headed by the charismatic priest Onisaburo Deguchi. Omoto-kyo was anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and most of all pacifist. In 1919 Master Ueyshiba had moved himself and his family to Ayabe, location of the center of Omoto-kyo, in order to immerse himself in study. He became Deguchi’s assistant and at his suggestion built a dojo (training hall) there to teach fellow disciples . While it may seem strange that a religious pacifist would welcome a professional martial artist into the fold, Deguchi believed that Master Ueyshiba's divine purpose was "to teach the real meaning of budo: an end to all fighting and contention" (Stevens 12,13). He stayed eight years before leaving to establish his art in Tokyo. It was during the Ayabe period that he achieved a new level of enlightenment . He described the experience in metaphysical terms, alluding to feeling "bathed in heavenly light" and seeing a golden mist rise out of the earth and enter his body. (Stevens 15) In any case, it was at that moment that he understood what he had to do to bring Budo into a place where it could be congruent with the basic tenets of his religion. He proceeded to go back through everything he knew about armed and unarmed combat, discarding some techniques, modifying others and creating still others until he felt that he had designed a new martial art that in philosophy and practice reflected his spiritual beliefs. Much of Aikido philosophy sits very comfortably alongside Gandhi and Dr. King's ideas about nonviolence and nonresistance.

First and foremost, Aikido is dedicated to the loving protection of all beings - very definitely including the aggressor that one is defending oneself against! To fully understand this it is useful to consider a concept explained by Westbrook and Ratti in their excellent book Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere (1970), the Four Ethical Levels of Defense in Combat.

     The first and lowest of these levels is an unprovoked attack in which one person (person A) attacks another (person B) who has done nothing to instigate the attack and seriously injures or kills him. This of course falls under the legal heading of assault or murder.

    The second level involves a situation in which A does not attack B directly, but instead somehow provokes B into attacking him. Person A then responds by injuring or killing B. This approach is ethically no great improvement over the first scenario, and is quite rightly almost as likely to result in legal action.

   At the third level person A is blameless and is himself the victim of an unprovoked assault by person B. However, in defending himself person A considers his own safety only and as a result of that defense he seriously injures or kills his attacker, person B. Here is the level at which we find many of the existing martial arts - if attacked it is justifiable and desirable to use one's technique to do as much damage to the attacker as possible, as quickly as possible. While person A is probably on more solid legal grounds in this case there exists a higher ethical possibility. This is one important factor that differentiates Aikido from many or most other arts.

    At the highest ethical level, Person A is once again innocent of any provocation but is attacked by person B. But in this instance, instead of destroying person B , A defends himself in such a manner as to keep himself safe while doing no serious harm to person B who after all is another human like himself, although unfortunately temporarily out of control. This is the ethical level to which Aikido aspires (Westbrook 33-34). This ethical intent is crucial - used with hostile intentions Aikido techniques could be devastating. Instead both parties have been kept from harm, and the possibility for a peaceful resolution is preserved. Jujutsu techniques that were designed to break bones or dislocate joints were modified toward this end to allow hostile energy to be safely diffused and grounded without harm to either party. Naturally this ethical standard demands a high level of skill - it is actually much easier to destroy an aggressor than it is to preserve both his integrity and ones' own!

    Aikido also parallels Gandhian principles of nonviolence with its own reliance on physical nonresistance. It never seeks to contest strength against strength or force against force. Instead it uses movements based on the circle and spiral to redirect incoming energy into a circuit of safety. (This principle is diagrammed in Appendix l at the end of this article.) It is because of this that Aikido can be practiced effectively by men and women of all ages, sizes and general states of physical fitness. Master Ueyshiba himself continued to practice and teach until shortly before his death at 86 years of age in 1969, and George Leonard Sensei of Aikido of Tamalpais is still actively instructing well into his eighties. As to personal experience, I started the practice at age forty-nine and was able to achieve shodan level (1st degree black belt ) in five and one half years. The benefit of being able to train with all kinds of people is that one becomes experienced and comfortable with dealing with all kinds of people with     nonviolent means, an attitude that one is able to take out of the training hall and into the public arena.

    Another important aspect of Aikido philosophy is that it is interested in dealing with the specific aggressive action itself, and not the aggressor per se. This means that Aikido is not punitive in nature and does not seek revenge against the attacker for his aggressive action, but only seeks to restore harmony. In his speech of 1957 to a group of students at U.C. Berkeley, Dr. Martin Luther King explained this concept with these words: "...the nonviolent resistor seeks to attack the evil system rather than individuals who happen to be caught up in the system" (King 31).

    Still another important basic precept of Aikido is the fact that in most styles there is no competition, thereby fostering a spirit of cooperation. Aikido was never intended to be a sport and instead concerns itself instead with the protection of life and self- improvement through the integration of body, mind and spirit. The Founder himself stated that the real purpose of Aikido was not to defeat an opponent, but to to defeat the violence and disharmony within oneself. It is therefore important to differentiate here between the concepts of "contest" and "conflict".

    A contest is a game, an artificially created competition with rules agreed upon beforehand. It is a structure that generally requires a "winner" and a "loser". Conflict, on the other hand, is not an artificial construct but a phenomenon of nature, as universal as that of river water polishing rocks. No rules are necessarily agreed upon, nor does it require winners or losers . Instead, all it requires is resolution. Since no one-upmanship is required, it becomes possible to find solutions that are mutually beneficial. Unfortunately, in modern society problems in life and relationships are often handled as contests to be won at any cost rather than as natural conflicts . This attitude was aptly expressed by the famous football coach Vince Lombardi , who stated "Winning isn't everything... it's the only thing!"

    Aikido offers a more compassionate, "win-win" model for the resolution of conflict. In a typical class, the sensei (instructor) first models a technique and then the class gets up in pairs and practices that technique. One of the pair takes four turns as nage (pronounced nah-gay), the one one who applies the technique, and the other as uke (oo-kay), the attacker who is thrown or pinned and skillfully takes the fall. Then the pattern is reversed for four more turns until the sensei demonstrates again. In this way, Aikido practitioners are constantly
experiencing both the winning and losing side of the equation, and learn how to handle both calmly and safely while protecting both themselves and their partners. Learning ukemi (the art of falling safely) protects both parties in the sense that, even if the attacker succeeded in throwing the defender, he has been prevented from causing physical harm that could result at least in bad karma if not possible legal action!

    The final principle we will consider here that mirrors concepts endorsed by Gandhi and Dr. King is that of "centeredness". Referring once again to Dr. King's 1957 speech on the power of nonviolence, he stated that "... nonviolent resistance is also an internal matter. It not only avoids external violence or external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit" (King 31). Aikido teaches that it is impossible to offer an appropriate response to a stressful situation from an unbalanced state, be it physical, mental or emotional. It helps to develop in the practitioner the ability to maintain a calm mental and emotional base from which to operate under stress, instead of reacting from a place of anger or fear. It also teaches how to find and use the "one point", one's center of gravity, in martial arts tradition conceived to be located about two inches below the navel. All the circular and spiral movements in Aikido originate from and revolve around this point . Additionally, attention to breathing is emphasized as a critical element in maintaining center.

    Without doubt, the best way to study the principles of Aikido is to actually find a dojo and approach the art as a physical practice meant to be long term, to be acquired over time in an experiential fashion. Certainly that is the only way to gain enough proficiency in the art to make it really effective as a practice of physical self-defense. However, many practitioners have found ways to take Aikido principles "off the mat" and apply them in day-to-day milieus. It has found applications in business administration, the healing arts, mediation and law enforcement, among others.

Many management consulting and business training enterprises have been created to teach executives both self-improvement and management skills using Aikido principles (Aiki Extensions website). George Leonard Sensei of Aikido of Tamalpais has authored several books on the subject and has created training methods for business that can be presented in seminar form (Leonard Energy Training, which has had over 50,000 participants) or as a long term practice that does not involve the physical techniques of Aikido called Integral Transformative Practice (Leonard, ITP website). Richard Strozzi Heckler Sensei of Two Rock Aikido founded the Strozzi Institute in Petaluma which offers leadership training for individuals and groups. A group called Quantum Edge headed by Richard Moon Sensei of Fairfax describes itself as offering Mastery coaching to corporate executives. All of these have in common their roots in formal Aikido training and adherence to basic Aiki principles as the basis for their philosophy and methodologies (Aiki Extensions).

    Practitioners of the healing arts have also found precepts of Aikido can be very effective in their fields. There are a number of workers in the field of somatics that have integrated Aikido into their practices. Among these is Wendy Palmer Sensei of Aikido of Tamalpais who developed her Conscious Embodiment program directly from Aikido practice, and Cheryl Reinhart and Jeff Haller, who each have independently found ways to integrate Aikido and Feldenkrais work. Other healing arts can also be benefited by application of Aiki principles. Many in the field of psychotherapy have found Aikido to be a useful model in their practice. For example, in his article "Aikido: A Model for Brief Strategic Therapy" psychologist Donald T. Saposnek Ph.D. explains the parallels between Aikido and this therapeutic approach, which include the concepts of circularity, blending, extension, and humility (Saposnek 178-186).

    Other areas of public life in which the influence of Aikido is beginning to have an impact are fields such as mediation and law enforcement. Anyone involved in mediation would benefit from Aikido's concepts of operating from a stable, unflappable center, of non-competition and cooperation, of dealing with aggressive energy without harming the aggressor, instead blending with and grounding the energy. Similarly, it is in the best interests of both the general public and police departments for police to receive Aikido training, as many departments in Japan, Germany and parts of the U.S., including Hawaii, have done (Aiki Extensions). It can only improve interactions between police and the public for police officers to learn more about centeredness and self-control, and to be provided with effective modes of conflict resolution and self-defense that are non-lethal.

    In fact, it is not difficult to imagine the benefits of Aikido training extended farther into society at large. On a grass roots level, Aikido could be taught as part of physical education at middle and high school level. Some schools already do this - local private school Marin Academy offers Aikido, and Head-Royce allows its students to take Aikido privately in order to satisfy their physical education requirement. I would take it even further by requiring all public servants up to presidential level to at least complete some Aiki-based seminar training like the above mentioned business management courses, and for the same reasons, to learn about methods of mutually non-destructive, mutually beneficial conflict resolution.

    Mahatma Gandhi and later Dr. Martin Luther King became convinced over time that the only effective methods to implement social change and to "fight the power" had to be nonviolent. They recognized the futility of opposing an overwhelming, well entrenched force with force, not only because of the likelihood of the resistance being crushed by superior numbers, but because even in the unlikely event of victory through revolutionary violence the cyclical patterns of violence and retribution remain in place. Both of these great leaders for peace and justice well understood the need to offer to the world effective methods of nonviolent resistance against social injustice that might break that endless cycle . Their solutions, based in Gandhi's Satyagraha, involved methods of civil disobedience that were based on nonresistance (not meeting force with force with force), dealing with the problem system (racism, injustice) rather than humans caught up in that system, finding solutions that all parties involved can live with, not attempting to crush or humiliate an opponent, and operating from a philosophically calm and centered place. All of these precepts are embodied in Morihei Ueyshiba's Aikido, the only martial art/self defense practice that has an equal ethical concern with protecting both parties involved in conflict. Like Gandhi and Dr. King, Ueyshiba Sensei understood that victory had to be based on the power of love and a sincere desire for justice and the restoration of harmony. His Aikido was meant to be a gift to the world. Since the late 1960's Aikido has in fact spread and become a world-wide practice, the world's fastest growing martial art. There are, indeed, more Aikido dojos in both the United States and France than there are in Japan. This bodes well both for the future of Aikido and of humanity at large, as more and more people recognize the need for a practice that integrates body, mind and spirit and offers models for peaceful resolution of conflict. This is why Ueyshiba Sensei's unlikely martial art deserves to thrive in the new century. He understood that the roots of all contention are internal, and that peace starts with self control.

In closing let us consider these two statements from O-Sensei Morihei Ueyshiba as quoted by Richard Moon in Richard Strozzi Heckler’s Aikido and the New Warrior: (116)

"True budo is a work of love. It is a work of giving life to all beings, and not killing or struggling with each other. Love is the guardian of everything. Nothing can exist without it. Aikido is the realization of love".

"Victory at the expense of others is not true victory. Winning means winning over the mind of discord within yourself. Aiki is not a technique to fight with or defeat the enemy. It is a way to reconcile the world and make human beings one family."