Torrey Orton
May 14, 2009
This is less an appreciation than an appreciating – a developmental, making process rather than a summary or aesthetically contemplative one. For I have certainly not mastered aikido or even a small part of it, though I have passed my first grading 6+ months ago. And I continue after two years to find little, and sometimes big, refinements or completions of the practices which have required an unconscious transition to a different mental space to even notice that they were possible.
Submission and learning:
One of the key learning steps is being willing to learn. This means, in part, submitting myself to someone else’s expertise, superiority, good intentions. Recently I was telling people I met at a lunch about my aikido commitment and volunteered that one aspect of interest to me after 9 months practice was consciously submitting myself to another’s leadership. One of the listeners blurted: “I couldn’t do that”. Therein probably lies a story of self-entrapment in the folds of self-protection, but...
Repeatedly, I remind myself to just do what Sensei is doing each day and everything will come together. Of special concern is remembering the order of practices which partly controls access to the inner contents of each one. It has become apparent that consciously struggling for the order – making notes, or similar – does not work for me. Or, rather, that just going along brings everything around again and again, so struggle for control is unnecessary. The video of Sensei’s Sensei demonstrating the 21 jo suburi practices helps. I don’t often use it now, though it’s on my laptop desktop and easily playable anytime I’m home (or away).
At the end of the morning meditation routine (which is the entry to the jo work each day), Sensei bows to the aikido school’s founder whose picture is hung on a wall with ceremonial incense burning on a table to one side. This ritual, too, I am not yet committed to after 8 months of participating in the meditation (which was not a part of my initial training, though I had experience with it intensively 30 years ago). I’m aware of resisting this last (?) submission (is it really the last one?) , while realising as I write that submission is a means of honouring the authority, expertise, etc. of the Sensei and his submission to the authority, expertise of his Sensei, and so on. ... a way of respecting the price in submission to the discipline of the school that they paid to become good enough for us to learn from them.
I am also aware that displaying this submission before other students, including my wife, is embarrassing in some way I don’t yet grasp. I undertook one morning when only I and Sensei were training to try getting on my knees at the close of the mediation ritual acknowledgment of the dojo’s founders in Japan, but couldn’t kneel the hardwood floor...so back to my chair.
Submission as offer and undertaking
It seems that submission goes in two different but mutually dependent directions: it’s two common meanings are (a) offer or propose, as in submit a report or an application or a rendition of the jo suburi under the eye of the Sensei (or, precisely, for the eye of the Sensei); this I did to pass my first grading. And, the second is (b) undertaking for another, as in submit to their command, direction, etc.(which I do in every training whether in group or alone).
So, when I take up aikido I both undertake the command of the Sensei and offer myself to him, or put myself in his hands. This is probably the source of the authority which allows me to follow his lead even when it is ‘wrong’ – that is, when he departs from routines, styles, orders of activity which previously had been the behavioural foundation of the discipline. And which made it learnable to a large extent in the initial phases where the performance models were not enough in mind to be accessed quickly and fluently.
Inhibitions to submission
Finally, for the moment, what inhibits submission? What makes “I couldn’t do that” a likely response from some people which also expresses part of me in resistance, like them!? In myself I find that resistance to a fully compliant submission I mentioned earlier – to honouring the elders who are the origin of the aikido I study. At the aesthetic level, it involves moves I’d feel somewhat silly to be seen doing. At another, ethnic perhaps, the manner of honouring is very non-Anglo.
In any event, I can say that part of me is under-developed (or over-developed looked at from another perspective). Perhaps it’s that I would feel shrunken in some respect by participating?? That’s what just came to mind and I’ve learned to follow the tracks of things which come to mind since that’s the only access to the subconscious I carry with me all day every day. But, on noticing that, I also notice that what I may be resisting is the submission to an imperfect god, for the practices continue to change in their home place as much as in the variations of my Sensei here – as they must.
So, what am I submitting to exactly – a discipline which is definite but changeable, which is demanding but relaxed, which is paradoxical to some extent? An effort for perfect form which realises that it can never be achieved...there is only the trying. A parallel universe to everyday life.
At various times each of these three has been my Sensei, but these Sensei’s Sensei is the man in the middle. They are, from l to r: Sean Seibold, Simon Harris, John Rigopoulos in Japan in late 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment