Edited by Lee Seaman and Tomi Nagai-Rothe

Mourning
A number of people close to me have passed away recently: my wife Nicole’s brother Philippe Beauvois, my friend Jim Cummings who was a business partner with my friend and colleague John Kent – in addition to my cousin in Japan.

Nicole and I started a morning/mourning ritual to remember them and to pray for their souls. We also hope this will help them in their passage out of this life. According to Buddhist tradition, there is a long “tunnel” called the bardo that the soul must travel on its way to Nirvana. It takes 49 days and during that time the soul may become attracted to and side-tracked by episodes related to their karma. This is why relatives and friends pray for 49 days to help the soul emerge from the tunnel without getting stuck. Nicole and I have been doing that for Philippe, Jim and my cousin.

During our ritual we listen to the Dalai Lama chanting the Maha Mrityunajaya Mantra (https://soundcloud.com/mantramrityunjaya/dalai-lama-chanting )

16 years ago, I envisioned Eiko Dai cosmology as a Kaiho-kei approach to passing through the bardo. My own fusion of morning mourning is a Yoki-kei approach. I use Master Ma’s Tai Chi warm-up – goboho kenko (五防保健功 – literally “five ways of maintaining your health”) in addition to Yoki-kei Tenshingoso (天真五相).

Yugen
Noh classical Japanese theater is very dramatic, very old, and full of symbolism. In Noh the main character often comes out center stage, and then another character shows up. It reminds me of a person walking in the woods and suddenly meeting a ghost. Usually we think of ghosts as scary, but in this case the main character isn’t frightened at all. The ghost is often someone who has passed away and begins sharing their regrets, so the main character and the ghost end up talking. The ghost shares everything about its life regrets (almost like counseling or psychotherapy) and then it disappears.

Zeami, the founder of Noh, talked a great deal about yugen (幽玄) – a fundamental  Noh Theater concept. Yugen means “profound grace and subtlety.” It is one of the three ancient ideals underlying Japanese culture and aesthetics. Zeami said it’s almost impossible for young Noh actors to express yugen on stage: they must reach a certain level of maturity before they understand it. To me the concept of yugen is deeply related to these ghosts in Noh theater. It seems obvious to me now, but I don’t think I could have understood that when I was a young man.

I have often led celebrations of life for Shintaido friends and students who have died including Bill Peterson, Juliette Farkouh, Christophe Bernard, Joe Zawielski, and John Seaman. When I did those, the feeling was very Kaiho-kei, strongly expressing my ki energy for them. But now when I do the morning mourning ritual, it is Yoki-kei, more resilient and receiving. For me, Yokikei keiko is essentially an expression of yugen.

During our morning rituals Nicole and I often saw Philippe, and just as in the Noh drama, we weren’t frightened. In fact, it seemed very natural. Behind Philippe, we saw Nicole and Philippe’s parents. It felt like time travel – connected to an alternate reality. Rather than frightening, it was a pleasure and a comfort. No separation between this world and the other world.

Epilogue
Shintaido comes from the martial arts and when I was younger, I talked a lot about life and death when I was teaching. But I never actually thought about death being beside me during keiko. It wasn’t until I began to learn diving that I realized how close death is: one tiny mistake can be fatal when you are diving. So that really changed my teaching of Shintaido. I learned to have much more real-time respect for life and death. And though death is scary, it wasn’t like that when Philippe came with his parents. It was more like, “Wow!”

I started my 49-day morning mourning ritual with Philippe’s death, but in the middle of it Jim died, and then my cousin, so the 49-day rituals stacked up and extended out in time. And now I feel, “Okay, I can just keep going with this meditation.” It’s like being an Olympic torch-carrier. I will keep carrying this for a while, and then someone else can  pick it up for me.

Acknowledgements - Many thanks to Lee Seaman and Tomi Nagai-Rothe who helped me put these experiences into words.

http://www.shintaido.org/article/the-history-of-taimyo-for-world-peace-and-healing/

This story came form Andrew’s imagination, almost like a movie script. I was unable to include it in my book, but could not keep it a secret in my file – just as a memory. My hope is that this story will deepen your appreciation of Taimyo Kata now and in the future!

Click here to read the article! →Taimyo Heritage

With Diamond Mudra
Ito
2017

My full name is Haruyoshi Fugaku Ito. Since many people know me simply as Ito, you may not be familiar with the rest of my name. This is my reflection on what I have expressed through my name, and learned from it.

My parents gave me the name, Haruyoshi. Haru means spring, and Yoshi means righteousness. I was told that Haruyoshi came from my great grandfather, who was the first generation town mayor of Hayama-cho*!

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayama,_Kanagawa

Hayama is located at the northern end of Miura Peninsula, facing Sagami Bay on the Pacific Ocean. The area has a temperate maritime climate with short cool winters, and hot humid summers.

Fugaku is the artistic name I received from Aoki-sensei during the Rakutenkai period. It was a great honor to receive a name from him in recognition of being his disciple. The Fu of Fugaku is like the im of im-possible (meaning, not), or the un of un-believable. Gaku means learning – studying intellectually or logically through language. Fugaku* means without intellectual study.

I must have been a very annoying student when I was young. I was always asking my sensei and sempai questions in order to understand the meaning of kata or any other number of things.

One day they told me to look for the answer by searching within my own body. This meant I had to study my own body wisdom, instead of expecting answers from others.

One of the things I learned was that a person who only collects knowledge may seem smart, but also can often be quite narrow-minded. If we want to really build our lives, we need to gather wisdom through personal experience by interacting humbly with other people and the world. That’s what I wanted for my life, so I started asking, “What is the message of Nature? What is Nature telling me?”

When I did that, and actually paid attention, I ran into a lot of contradictions: good is bad, bad is good. It was confusing — like the Chinese proverb about the horse.

A Chinese farmer gets a horse, which soon runs away. A neighbor says, “That’s bad news.” The farmer replies, “Good news, bad news, who can say?”

The horse comes back and brings another horse with him. Good news, you might say. The farmer gives the second horse to his son, who rides it, then is thrown and badly breaks his leg. “So sorry for your bad news,” says the concerned neighbor. “Good news, bad news, who can say?” the farmer replies. 

In a week or so, the emperor’s men come and take every able-bodied young man to fight in a war. The farmer’s son is spared. Good news, of course. And of course, the story doesn’t stop there.

I found so many situations like that when I started to pay attention.

Life is a kind of training, searching for the way, searching for the truth and for real meaning. All my life I’ve never had what most people would think of as a “real job” to make money. Whenever I had the chance to take a job I’d ask, “Is this job going to be good for me?” So I pursued my interests, and since money is very convenient, I ended up doing a lot of different things to make a living. All my life I have felt, “Life is good! I like what I do. I do what like.”

As a result, I’ve learned something from everything in my life.

I found that the more enthusiastically I taught, and the more eagerly I shared, the more I found out about the world and other people. One major life lesson for me has been, “The more you share, the more you learn.”

And over the years I have come to realize that my body knows the wisdom of the Japanese martial arts. It’s like the breath of Japanese culture flows through the kata into my body, and it makes a home there. Of course, that understanding takes a lot longer to reach my brain! But my body seems like a repository of treasures inherited from three great masters — a world-class living national museum.

Buddhists say that our life was given to each of us as an opportunity for Shugyo (training). We are supposed to keep developing our level of spirituality, no matter what we do and no matter what kind of circumstances we encounter.

World peace will never arrive through political statements or laws or military might. It always starts from within us. If you don’t have peace in your own body and your own heart, you can’t expect peace in your person-to-person relationships, and you can’t be in peaceful relationship with people or animals or anything in the world around you. Even if we want peace, we will end up creating conflict until we make peace within ourselves.

This is what Fugaku has come to mean for me: Do not depend simply on your intellectual understanding of the world. Find Truth by studying the Universe through the movement of your body.

I share it with you as a useful life principle.

*Note: Daisetsu T. Suzuki is the author of Zen and Japanese Culture. Dai means great or big and Setsu means clumsy, so his first name means Great Clumsiness. Even though his writing is not the least bit clumsy, it is a Zen tradition to give oneself a self-deprecating name.

2017.10

Click below to continue:

2017_ The Diamond Eight Cut and Life Reflections

426 Day Street
7pm to 8:30pm
Cost: $50 for all 4 classes or $15 per class
RSVP: Connie at bordensheets@aol.com

Traveling with Diamond Eight Cut (DEC):

Soon after formally I studied the DEC with Masashi Minagawa at the Reims event, Nicole and I flew back to spend the summer in San Francisco.

While there I had three opportunities to deepen my understanding of this kata:

• It formed a core part of my summer teaching program – 2016 Taimyo meditation classes – at the Day Street Dojo in San Francisco
• I shared it with Jim S., Connie B., Shin A., Sandra B., Rob G., Chris N., David S., and Mike S. at the Pacific Shintaido Kenjutsu workshop held in San Rafael, August 20–21
• I tested it by doing lots of hitori–geiko under the wilderness night sky during my four day camping trip with David S. and Chris N. in the California Trinity Alps*

While visiting the Wellness Resource Center (WRC) ** (an Aiki-Do and massage school) in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts at the beginning of September, I had two more opportunities:

• I taught it to the experienced Aiki-do instructors at the WRC
• I shared it with four east coast Shintaido instructors who came to visit me at the WRC

These are my insights:

• Everyone likes the first movement, because it is very much like the Diamond Mudra in the 10 Position Meditation sequence
• DEC was really appreciated as a present from “Ten” by the Taimyo practitioners, as we celebrated our 15th anniversary this summer
• The whole sequence can be used as a simple warm up exercise, if practiced very slowly and gently, for those who cannot do aerobic body movements
• If you practice DEC with the movement of your eyes – even without moving your arms – it becomes a strong program of great image work
• It can be used as an Oharai *** akin to Japanese Shinto rituals
• Practicing in a chair, I really feel as if I’m doing Toitsu-Kihon in the space/sky. I imagine that I am riding a Space Ship of Intention (I guess I’ve been inspired by watching the Paralympic Games)
• And most important, I feel as if I go beyond the Universe/Dai-Uchu to the other side of Creation as I make a super slow number 8 movement, cutting the big sky ****

Looking forward to sharing my latest inspiration with all of you when I see you next time!

-Ito

2016/9/27

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Alps

** http://www.wrcaikido.com

*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harae

**** The following is my analysis:

Dai-Jodan Kirikomi, or Kirioroshi:  a 90º movement cut

Chudan Kiriharai = a 180º movement cut

#8 movement of DEC: becomes a 180º movement cut when you sway your body from one side to reach behind yourself

Greeting from SF CA, where I finished 2 Tuesday evening classes, and 3 more to go!
Hope you are well and enjoying your “Taimyo” at wherever you are!!

As you have heard already, the 11th International Shintaido Gathering was held in Reims, France at the middle of July, 2016, and it has been successfully completed !

By being a facilitator during the TNEC discussion we had for the last 6 months, the following is a cross cultural analysis* came back to my mind:

* After I came to the US in 1975, I immersed myself for several years in comparative culture studies. From that, I realized that Western and Eastern thinking have very different strong points and weak points. People who are steeped in the Western perspective of dualism (the self as separate from the non-self) can more easily develop some specialty in a certain area. They are very good in their specialty, but they may not accept the ideas of other specialists very well, and it’s easy for them to disagree and fight. In Eastern thinking, the culture encourages people to accept other ideas, so there may be less disagreement, but there is also less clarity and more confusion.

For me these 2 kinds way of thinking has been reflected upon between the way of SOA Board & TC think and the way of ETC does whenever we had a debate!
Speaking without fear of misunderstanding, its seems to reflect upon the augment happened between the ISC Board and TNEC, too…..

At last, it reflects upon 2 ways thinking of what Shintaido means to each of us:

• The first one:
Shintaido = Aoki world, So that we needs to keep following him forever, or at least till the end of his life. ISC also should be formed according to this idea!
• The second one:
Shintaido is the art form created by Aoki and Rakutenkai members in the ‘60s~’70s, so that the fundamental Kata/Dai-Kihon itself carries the essence, and the practicers should respect his work, but can/should be independent from him. ISC should be formed according to this philosophy!

By saying “Shoganai!” in Japanese, “Je ne sai pas!” in French, Should we give up each other and separate one from other?

No, I hope not!

By playing “Devils Advocate” each other, I really hope that we can reach an agreement, so that we can set up an clear goal for the next 10 years!

It was why, I have recommended Kazuo Inamori’s quote* to be used as our Dai-Mokutek** in Shintaido’s Out-Reach programs as follow:

•• “In Service to Others – and the World”
I believe that we humans need to be useful to the world around us, because we benefit daily from what Earth has provided for millennia. Living “in service to others and the world” is the highest form of action we can take as human beings.
Even in the course of being successful in business, we have always based our thinking in service to others and the world.
This is my life purpose. Living this way is my cause, my calling, and my message to others.

In any case, don’t you think that this quote really fits to our Dai-Mokuteki of Taimyo meditation network for the world peace, too?

Sincerely yours,

-Ito

2016/8/10

It is with great pleasure that I send you the following text as a support for my Taiymo meditation workshop this summer.

When I read this essay from Matsuyama on his understanding of the Heart Sutra and its relationship with meditation, I asked to translate it in English for the Shintaido and Life Exercise practitioners worldwide.

Matsuyama’s essay deals with Chuang Zhou (Zhuang Zi), a disciple of Laozi who wrote about Confucius’s teachings. It also describes how some aspects of Chuang Zhou’s book are linked to the Heart Sutra and meditation.

Thank you, Shin-Ichi!

Haruyoshi Fugaku Ito, June 21, 2015

PS: if you approach it with a traditional Western perspective, this text may seem very confusing. The reasons are that 1) Western education traditionally puts the emphasis on linear explanations, with a clear connection between each point, and 2) Western culture often demands a complete understanding almost immediately. However regarding this kind of thinking, I don’t expect anyone to « get it » immediately; you must chew on it, leave it in the background of your thoughts for a while, until the idea modifies sufficiently your approach so that you can consciously understand it.

***************************

The Heart Sutra and Meditation — by Shin-Ichi Matsuyama^[1]

The Heart Sutra (Hanya Shingyo in Japanese) can be seen as a meditation guide. As an instruction manual it has a lot in common with the meditation books old and new, whether they be from the west or from the east.

Note from Ito: The Heart Sutra is often used during funerals. It may be used as a bridge between this world and beyond. It is very short, so many of the older people in Japan and in the rest of the East and Southeast of Asia have memorized it, and recite it in the morning and in the evening during the mourning period as a kind of prayer so that the soul of the person may transit from here to there without any problem.

Here, Matsuyama provides three examples of guidelines for meditation — which at first sight seem very different. He tells us that actually they are very similar. But each takes a completely different approach.

Clear as morning air

朝徹

(Japanese pronunciation: Chou Tetsu)

(Chinese pronunciation: Zhao Che)

There is a meditative state called Chou Tetsu (Zhao Che) — a state of consciousness as clear as the air in the morning — which many people try to reach. However according to Chuang Zhou, this state is not the goal, but rather the point from which consciousness grows. The process he describes to progress beyond this starting point has a lot in common with the meditation approaches adopted over time by several wisdom traditions.

What you are asked to observe in a deep meditation state is quite common to many religions. When we enter deep meditation, we immerse ourselves in the here and now, and we absorb ourselves in the things as they are. Ordinarily, we cannot see what happens around us without adding our own mental interpretation.

But in this state we do not add or affect anything. We are simply present and experience the world without any filter. The details of what we see and feel have no big importance. What is really important is that we keep our consciousness awake whatever manifests itself through it. This is essential so as to allow our real consciousness to develop.

There are many ways to express these concepts. One is to use a very simple language, almost like a koan:

The body I have is not my real self

The senses I have are not my real self

The thoughts I have are not my real self

The mind I have is not my real self

I realize that there is no self

I am Existence-Consciousness

Emptiness

心斎

(Japanese pronunciation: Shin Sai)

(Chinese pronunciation: Xin Zhai)

回曰：「敢問心齋。」

仲尼曰：「若一志，无聽之以耳而聽之以心，无聽之以心而聽之以氣！聽止於耳，心止於符。氣也者，虛而待物者也。唯道集虛。虛者，心齋也。」

顏回曰：「回之未始得使，實自回也；得使之也，未始有回也；」

『荘子/人間世』http://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/荘子/人間世

Gankai (Yan Hui), a disciple of Confucius, asked him:

« I would like to know your interpretation of Shinsai (Xin Zhai). »

Confucius answered:
« Observe your own aspirations. Do not listen with your ears, but with your heart. And after that, do not listen with your heart, but with your Ki (Qi). With your ears, you can only hear the sounds, and with your heart you can only understand (and perceive) what comes from outside. But Ki (Qi) is naturally empty, so it can receive all and anything. Dao collects in vacuity, and vacuity is Shin Sai. »

The disciple then said: « before I knew Shinsai, I was Gankai, but now that I know Shinsai, there is no more Gankai. »

Note from Ito: “Emptiness” may seem different from “Clear as morning air”. But Matsuyama suggests that if we think about it, we shall see that both are actually two sides of a same thing.

We could paraphrase this as « I knew many things about myself at a certain point. But when I saw how things really are, I realized that “myself” never even existed. »

No Life, No Death

攖寧

(Japanese Pronunciation: Einei)

(Chinese Pronunciation: Ying Ning)

「參日而後能外天下；已外天下矣，吾又守之，七日而後能外物；已外物矣，吾又守之，九日，而後能外生；已外生矣，而後能朝徹；朝徹，而後能見獨；見獨，而後能无古今；无古今，而後能入於不死不生。殺生者不死，生生者不生。其為物，無不將也，無不迎也；無不毀也，無不成也。其名為攖寧。攖寧也者，攖而後成者也。」

『荘子/大宗師』http://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/荘子/大宗師

Confucius says:

After three days of meditation with Shin Sai (Xin Zhai) I ended up separated from the world. I felt humble, and continued for seven days, and separated from the material world. I continued to meditate and after nine days I separated from life and from death.

After this, I felt I had finally arrived at Chou Tetsu (Zhao Che) — like a wakening morning.

After Chou Tetsu, I could experience Doku (Du) a perspective from which I was independent from and not influenced by things around me.

After experiencing Doku (Du) the past and the present had disappeared. After the past and present had disappeared, I could enter the domain of no life, no death.

It went like this:

No death for those who see life without beginning

No birth for those who see life without end

When they come in touch with the material world

Nothing is not let go, therefore everything is let go

Nothing is not welcome, therefore everything is welcome

Nothing is not bound to disappear, therefore everything is bound to disappear

Nothing is not given birth, therefore everything is given birth

This state can be called Einei (Ying Ning). The person who has reached Einei (Ying Ning) is empty, and only appears when he or she gets in touch with the material world.

Matsuyama thinks: Einei means that all things are let go, all things are welcome, all things are bound to disappear and all things are given birth. In other words, all things are true when they are seen in their true state.

Einei is not easy to understand, and it is often misinterpreted. The Japanese scholar Kanaya Osamu interprets that it is about « staying calm in the battering storm of material things », the Chinese scholar 郭嵩燾 says that 攖 means to keep your heart undisturbed even when harassed from inside as well as from outside, and the Chinese scholar 馬叙倫 says that the old character 攖 means to be at peace even when surrounded by 寧.

Scholars live in a world of difficult ideas, therefore they find this idea difficult as well. But Shintaidoists have learnt to live in wakame, and that makes it easy to keep a quiet heart when many things are moving around us.

***************************

About the author

From 1997 to 2001, Shin-Ichi Matsuyama was researcher in biology at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. After studying the molecular mechanisms of social behaviour, he moved to Osaka, Japan, in 2001 where he continued his research on the evolution of symbiotic systems. In 2004 he left scientific research to devote himself to the study of traditional Japanese acupuncture, natural medicine and Shintaido.

Acknowledgements

The following people have contributed to this text

• Original text by Shin-ichi Matsuyama
• English translation by Lee Seaman
• Proofreading of the Chinese text by Clélie Dudon & Yi Shiu Liu
• French translation by Patrick Bouchaud
• Final English version by Tomi Nagai-Rothe

References

• 般若心経 “Hannya-Shingyo”  Ban  Ruo Xin Jing    Heart Sutra
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Sutra
• 孔子 “Ko-Shi”   Kong Zi    Confucious
  http://translate.google.fr/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh/%25E5%25AD%2594%25E5%25AD%2590&prev=search
• 荘子 “So-shi”    Zhuang Zi/Chuang Zhou
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi_(book)
• 顔回 ”Ga-Kai”　Yan Hui
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Hui

^[1] Here is a link to Matsuyama’s message to the visitors of the website of his clinic, in Japanese: http://e-hari.sakura.ne.jp/yuan_zhangkara.html