Kawahara sensei, my Aikido teacher for almost 20 years and head instructor for Aikido in Canada passed away in Victoria last night. He has been ill for some time so it’s not a surprise but his absence will be felt across the world today. He started his training in Osaka at the age of 17 in 1957 and trained and taught continuously since then. He has been teaching in Canada since 1975.
I had the honor of receiving his technique while he demonstrated a joint lock for the class in Edmonton a month ago. Although he was very ill and unable to finish the class his strength and skill were still unmatched. Unfortunately this turned out to be one of the last times he taught.
After much thought, much discussion, and many sleepless nights I've resigned from the Bozankan Board of Directors. Don't know if I will ever train there again, just absolutely disgusted with the politics, BS, and lack of focus on what Aikido is supposed to do.
If people that have been training conflict resolution, harmony, and honor can't resolve conflict, get along, or be honest with each other then we've got a problem.
It feels like we're in a time of deconstruction.
The whole family has been sick on and off for the past month. We're tired, grumpy, and just need some rest. From colds to puking and back to colds again.
At the same time, the Aikido community has been falling apart. We've had the death of one Sensei in town, and politics and squabbling within the community have been tearing it apart. On top of impropriety, arrogance and disrespect. It's brutal -- this is not what it's about for me and it's time I thought about the amount of effort and time I put in to this at the cost of my family.
Work is good. I'm in a new position in the project group with all the non-infrastructure people reporting to me. I finally get to set things up the way that I want and show how good a shop we can have. But to do this, we're literally taking away huge dollars from out outsource provider. So people's lives are going to be impacted yet again -- many of them are the same people we impacted by moving them from here to there. I feel a bit like the angel of death.
I guess that you have to get rid of the old to bring in the new.
Great stuff.
1. What are you really thinking about today?
“As you think, so shall you become.”
2. Simplify.
“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”
3. Learn about yourself in interactions.
“To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.”
4. Do not divide.
“Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.”
5. Avoid a dependency on validation from others.
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
“Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”
6. Be proactive.
“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
7. Be you.
“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it."
Politics. Some say it's the essential nature of the human condition.
But I'm just tired of it. In my work life, in my extended family life, and definitely in aikido. It's funny but it seems that with people who are supposed to be without ego, ego becomes the most important thing.
I'm faced with a huge decision in my life. Give up something that used to bring me great joy and purpose, but now seems useless and only brings stress and pain as I see friends and mentors fight each other and myself for the perception of control.
What's the point? Aren't we supposed to be helping each other along our own paths? Isn't differing viewpoints the way ahead?
O Sensei would surprise us with how different he was from ordinary people. In his last year, he would have to be helped up the stairs and he said many times “I’m sick,” but as soon as he set foot in the practice hall, his back would straighten and he would look perfectly healthy as he gave an explanatory demonstration. But once again, as he stepped out into the hall, he would have to be helped by the deshi.
Then there were the times O Sensei would have to be helped to the toilet. We’d lift him up by his arms but it would take all our strength, it was like trying to move a giant stone.
“Sensei, we can’t move you…”
“Ah, I’m full of ki…” then he would stop extending ki and we could lift him off the bed. O Sensei was no ordinary person, that much I came to understand. He was 86.
"You must enter to die," Sensei said at the seminar this weekend. "Then match. This is koryu, from the samurai. This is how you must think."
Profound words. I believe Sensei was talking about initiating the attack, exposing a vulnerability that draws the opponent in so you can match the movement and throw or pin him. He also talked about the neccessity to understand ancient Japanese culture to understand this. He said O-Sensei talked about this frequently, but nobody understood him.
He also talked about "Shinko no ki" or the "Ki of no air" that O-Sensei personally taught him. How to throw a person if they just touch you lightly by creating a vacuum in the ki that pulls him in. You could only learn this from O-Sensei apparently.
Great, great seminar.
Everybody has a crappy day at work or says something really stupid to the wife or kids at home. Everybody blows it sometimes, but here's some great advice -- especially for the workplace -- to grow from it. I especially like #7:
7) Stop Analyzing and Start Doing Something New
There is a maximum limit to how much you can learn from an experience. That limit is actually fairly small with an isolated incident. If you give one speech and it fails, you might be able to learn one or two points of improvement. That’s it. Anything you “learn” after this threshold is just speculation which is often incorrect.
I’ve seen people in failed relationships, goals that went sour or broken commitments, try to learn everything from just one failure. Unfortunately, the only way you can learn isn’t just to fail once but to fail dozens of times. Trying to scoop up too much information on a bad situation just leaves you feeling miserable with the false sensation that you are accomplishing something useful.
After you’ve gathered a couple learning points, stop. Start doing something new. Pick out a new goal and move forward. After all, isn’t that what failures are for? To give you a small learning point and direct you towards bigger and better things?
Very sad. After 1400 years of continuous operation building temples in Japan, the Kongo Jumi family business is no more.
The world's oldest continuously operating family business ended its impressive run last year. Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi, in operation under the founders' descendants since 578, succumbed to excess debt and an unfavorable business climate in 2006.
How do you make a family business last for 14 centuries? Kongo Gumi's case suggests that it's a good idea to operate in a stable industry. Few industries could be less flighty than Buddhist temple construction. The belief system has survived for thousands of years and has many millions of adherents. With this firm foundation, Kongo had survived some tumultuous times, notably the 19th century Meiji restoration when it lost government subsidies and began building commercial buildings for the first time.
Great advice!
1. Live by your values, whatever they are. You confuse people when you don’t, because they can’t predict how you’ll behave.
2. Speak up! No one can “hear” what you’re thinking without you be willing to stand up for it. Mind-reading is something most people can’t do.
3. Honor your own good word, and keep the promises you make. If not, people eventually stop believing most of what you say, and your words will no longer work for you.
4. When you ask for more responsibility, expect to be held fully accountable. This is what seizing ownership of something is all about; it’s usually an all or nothing kind of thing, and so you’ve got to treat it that way.
5. Don’t expect people to trust you if you aren’t willing to be trustworthy for them first and foremost. Trust is an outcome of fulfilled expectations.
6. Be more productive by creating good habits and rejecting bad ones. Good habits corral your energies into a momentum-building rhythm for you; bad habits sap your energies and drain you.
7. Have a good work ethic, for it seems to be getting rare today. Curious, for those “old-fashioned” values like dependability, timeliness, professionalism and diligence are prized more than ever before. Be action-oriented. Seek to make things work. Be willing to do what it takes.
8. Be interesting. Read voraciously, and listen to learn, then teach and share everything you know. No one owes you their attention; you have to earn it and keep attracting it.
9. Be nice. Be courteous, polite and respectful. Be considerate. Manners still count for an awful lot in life, and thank goodness they do.
10. Be self-disciplined. That’s what adults are supposed to “grow up” to be.
11. Don’t be a victim or a martyr. You always have a choice, so don’t shy from it: Choose and choose without regret. Look forward and be enthusiastic.
12. Keep healthy and take care of yourself. Exercise your mind, body and spirit so you can be someone people count on, and so you can live expansively and with abundance.
Interesting that they seem to relate well to the 7 core principles of bushido:
1. Gi: the right decision, taken with equanimity, the right attitude, the truth. When we must die, we must die. Rectitude.
2. Yu: bravery tinged with heroism.
3. Jin: universal love, benevolence toward mankind; compassion.
4. Rei: right action--a most essential quality, courtesy.
5. Makoto: utter sincerity; truthfulness.
ó. Melyo: honor and glory.
7. Chugo: devotion, loyalty.
Techniques:
Attendance:
Attendance:
Techniques:
Extra:
Test run through for Fred
Like the science of all emotion, attempts to quantify, analyze, and define burnout have a slightly stilted, unnatural quality. It's a problem that's both physical and existential, an untidy agglomeration of external symptoms and private frustrations, how could such stuff be plotted on a graph? (I keep thinking of Bill Murray and those golf balls, or Bill Murray and his Suntory whiskeys in Lost in Translation, for that matter. Does a culture even need a definition of burnout when it has Bill Murray?) But researchers have nevertheless made valiant efforts to try. In 1981, Maslach, now vice-provost at the University of California, Berkeley, famously co-developed a detailed survey, known as the Maslach Burnout Inventory, to measure the syndrome. Her theory is that any one of the following six problems can fry us to a crisp: working too much; working in an unjust environment; working with little social support; working with little agency or control; working in the service of values we loathe; working for insufficient reward (whether the currency is money, prestige, or positive feedback). "I once talked to a pediatric dentist," she says, and he said, "A good day is when there are no screamers." And I'm sure half the people he was talking about were the parents.
Spiritual teachings of the founder. Very difficult to understand. Great calligraphy.