The Elimination of Suffering

Budo is a philosophy for living life. It is the practice of purposely facing life's suffering in order to overcome it. Suffering permeates life, and suffering for many people is very difficult to overcome. Just look at the growing rates of alcoholism, drug addiction and abuse, eating disorders, and any other unhealthy compulsion created by the stresses and emptiness of modern existence. The purpose of budo is to find meaning in one's suffering. This meaning gives the suffering purpose. With purpose, suffering becomes tolerable, even joyous, when it is overcome.

Through rigorous martial training, ones faces fear, weakness, pain, and numerous other forms of weakness and suffering in one's self. One learns to accept, and in many ways seek out, this suffering. Without it, progress does not occur. The greater the suffering one can endure and overcome, the greater the progress towards the elimination of suffering. Enduring and overcoming suffering through martial practice builds not just practical martial skills but also a quiet personal confidence. With the confidence that comes through the cultivation of martial skill, life's more mundane sufferings (ie. traffic laden commutes, long lines at the grocery store, a car that will not start, etc.) become less of a physical and spiritual burden and more of a reason to laugh at one's self and at others' rather absurd over-reaction to such trivialities.

With diligent and consistent practice, this confidence manifests itself in what martial artists from the Japanese tradition call "mushin", or "empty mind". This is the ability to keep a calm, clear mind when the body is under duress. Through mushin, suffering becomes inconsequential. There is no ego, there is no fear, to cause suffering and the martial artist is able to act without hesitation to whatever attack he may be faced with without thought as to his possible injury or death, thoughts that, if followed and/or believed, will result in suffering. A goal of the martial artist is to be able to enter mushin at will and, thus, eliminate the causes of suffering at will. This can only be attained with years of diligent and hard training, if it is ever attained.

More concretely, I practice aikido, and other martial arts, to be a better all around warfighter both technically, tactically, and morally and to cultivate my own sense of budo physically and spiritually. I believe that hard, realistic, and diligent training is necessary for this purpose. Hard, realistic training allows one to face suffering in a controlled setting and develop and test strategies for overcoming it. Continued training forges successful elements of these strategies into habits. Cultivating these successful habits helps one grow as a martial artist and as a human being and ultimately helps give suffering meaning. Once suffering has meaning, it ceases to be suffering. It inhabits its meaning, and, thus, suffering is eliminated.

Compliance vs. Choice

Aikido is a martial art whose practice is intricately woven within a very humanistic philosophy (more on this in a future post). Despite, aikido's humanistic underpinnings, it is a fighting system with very real applications provided the training is tailored to exploit these applications. My friend kahuna6 (see Kahuna International link in the side bar) makes the point in his post Archaic Pedagogy that the aikido training system is inefficient. Its attacks are telegraphed. Its techniques are difficult to execute because they assume a certain competency in martial art technique (ie. how to move, punch, throw, etc). Mired in the Eastern affinity for tradition, it cannot progress. With this point, I agree. This "archaic pedagogy" is the standard in many aikido dojos in America and elsewhere around the world as this technique of instruction is used as a vehicle for character cultivation. The training style is necessarily difficult as this is how aikido dojos, who focus primarily on human character building and not fighting, cultivate and polish their students' character. The difficult training curriculum is the adversity. But this does not train an aikidoka how to fight.

Aikido's philosophical endstates of self-defense, character cultivation, spiritual transformation, and peaceful resolution of conflict are certainly valid reasons for the practice of aikido and have their place. But in the end aikido is a martial art, a fighting system. The essential elements of aikido philosophy, noble as they may be, are hollow unless they are applied from a position of martial strength. If one is martially weak, then strength in negotiation or battle is impossible, and one must comply, whether they desire to or not, to the enemy's will. This is not aikido. True aikido is having the choice to comply or not based on one's martial skill. Knowing you have the ability to engage your enemy with force if necessary, and win, and choosing not to do so out of compassion or compromise for the sake of all involved, is very different from complying with the enemy's will out of an inability to be successful in the application of needed force.

I agree with kahuna6 that current aikido pedagogy is inefficient at training the martially minded aikidoka. This is why I recommend study of another martial art before aikido is attempted. A sound grounding in another, more physically demanding art (like muay thai, for example) provides a martial foundation for aikido development both physically and mentally and allows for a proper appreciation of the skill and time required to develop a high level of proficiency in aikido. It is very easy, due to the difficulty of applying aikido with proficiency in a martial context, to slip into "aikido as character building" by placing sole emphasis on its spiritual and ethical philosophy. This must be avoided unless one wishes to be forced to comply out of weakness, a situation no self-respecting akidoka would allow to happen.

Chasing Ghosts

I have battled with my own personal ambition for a long time. I was raised to cultivate and use ambition to achieve. Through achievement, and external recognition of that achievement, I would find satisfaction and fulfillment. The more I achieved and was recognized for that achievement, the greater my sense of satisfaction, and, thus, the greater my sense of fulfillment would become. Or so I was led to believe.

Achieving does provide a certain level of satisfaction and fulfillment. But achievement, catalyzed by ambition, can lead to more ego driven pursuits. For example, the desire to publicize one's achievements as a way to ensure others are aware, and in awe of, your accomplishments. The acquisition of wealth, luxury, or fame for personal satisfaction is another example. I have come to realize this ubiquitous and too often accepted American social paradigm leads to a life of ever-increasing emptiness and disappointment.

Most people with a high level of ambition focus on the end result of whatever achievement or task they put their mind to. If the end result does not fit within their frame of expectation, they become disappointed. If that end result exceeds their frame of expectation, they are, at a minimum, reluctantly satisfied, at a maximum, arrogant and over-confident. Ambition drives people to be results oriented. They chase the ghost of perfection becoming dissatisfied when they cannot catch it. Eventually, the process by which they attempt to attain their perfect result becomes frustrating, tiresome, or uninteresting. Yet they continue to push through it, dissatisfied and unhappy, in the vain hope of achieving their perfect result.

Aikido has taught me that perfection in life is unattainable. The point of aikido (or any martial art for that matter) is not to attain perfection in technique. It is to strive for perfection in technique. (Attaining anything close to perfection is just a bonus.) Progressively striving for perfection, in whatever endeavor you may choose, when done with proper guidance and tempering, builds (some would say "polishes") the character of the practitioner...and that is the ultimate purpose of practicing a martial art (more on this controversial point in another post).

To live a truly fulfilling life, I have learned one must enjoy this process of striving for perfection. The end result of an action or activity is relatively insignificant to the amount of effort it takes to attain it. It just simply makes more sense to glean satisfaction from the act of striving for the perfect result than to allow oneself to be disappointed by the perpetual failure to attain it.