Bias

All beginning students bring biases with them. That is only natural. But the amount they bring and the extent to which they infuse them into practice is different. Many beginners will want to "challenge" the art and the techniques. They will say, "Yeah, but if I do this...." to everything the instructor shows or to everything their partner does. These are the hardest students to train, but at the same time they are the ones who need the training the most. There is nothing wrong with challenging the art, but there is a time and place for it.

Many students have previous martial arts training either formal or military. It is understandable that they "default" to this training while on the mat. Muscle memory in many ways forces them in that direction. But to progress in aikido, one must throw all of that training away. Even in aikido, as you progress, one must continue to throw the training away. Get rid of all the "ideas" of what aikido is about.

This leads to us mushin. Mushin is something very difficult to understand and even more difficult to implement. But here are some thoughts...

Everything that comes into us from the world should go back out exactly the same with no modification. This is to live naturally. Usually our views of the world, provided to us through our sense perception (site, hearing, taste, etc) get modified by the "filter" of our life experience. After going through this filter, our perceptions then get processed by our consciousness into the way we view the world. Some of this is good. For example, we all know that it is not good to place our hand on a hot stove.

But some life experience, through a lack of natural understanding, mutates into ego driven biases and prejudices whose sole purpose is to make ourselves feel special and are not necessarily grounded in anything resembling natural truth. For example, "I went to Harvard therefore I am smarter than you," or "I make more money therefore I am better than you." These are extreme examples but valid nonetheless. To live without these types of world dividing biases takes 1) recognition that we have them, and, 2) discipline to keep them at bay as they will always want to creep up into our worldview. The vast majority of people do not want to face these biases because to do so would undermine the entire foundation upon which they have built their life and sense of self worth. What they unfortunately do not see or understand is that this foundation is hollow and vulnerable to collapse under the weight of life's pressures (look at the alarming rates of addiction and/or substance abuse, for example). This weakness can be overcome with the right direction and effort but it takes work and time and most people do not want to take the time or put in the work for results that they do not understand and therefore do not value.

Our minds should "reflect the world as a mirror". We should represent, through our actions and character, how the world actually is in its raw form. In other words, as naturally as possible. Gaining an understanding of mushin will open our senses up to the world as it is and not how we wish it to be. Then we can tear down that hollow foundation and replace it with a solid one that can, through the force of validity, withstand life's pressures.

To understand this concept, reorient your life to it, and apply it can have dramatic consequences. One manifestation of this understanding is a much more natural and flowing aikido. It is only when we stop to analyze our aikido through the crusted filter of personal bias that has built up over the years that our flow stops and becomes stilted. Beginner's (and even some advanced practitioners who have yet to gain sufficient control over their ego) experience this interrupted flow and stiltedness every practice. Our goal through aikido is to slowly but thoroughly clean and then eliminate that filter. To do so will allow us to see the world as it is and not how we wish it to be.

This idea is much better stated by English poet William Blake from his poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."