Looking At the Little Things

by Andrew St. Jean

I've been practicing Aikido for most of my adult life. That realization has caused me to think about what my practice has taught me over the years. The raw techniques are certainly the most obvious things I've learned. At one time I would likely have added things like confidence and determination to the list but I don't think I would now. Certainly my time at the dojo has increased both these qualities but I think they have developed almost without my notice, while my attention was elsewhere. But that's not to say that I haven't learned anything beyond the techniques we practice in class. One of the things I think I've learned is that it is worth paying attention to the little things.

Aikido at the Jiseikan dojo does not put great emphasis on meditation. We do it at the beginning and end of every class during seiza but it doesn't last very long. We've devoted more time to meditation during Kangeiko where we've ended winter morning practices with 10 to 15 minutes of meditation. It's harder to ignore when it lasts this long and it's more obviously part of our practice. Still, for most of the year meditation is in the background and for many years I did not give it a great deal of thought.

I've begun to pay more attention to it lately, however. Every class I have not one, but two opportunities to practice something that I don't get to do during my day outside the dojo. If I don't take advantage of the opportunity, then I'm only cheating myself. Mokuso becomes an empty ritual, but it's empty only because I've decided to make it so. I can just as easily decide otherwise. Because it doesn't last very long, it's easy to forget that between mokuso and mokuso-yame I'm not passively sitting, waiting to bow to the shomen. Mokuso is an activity, like any other we practice at the dojo and should be treated as such.

I've been told more than once what the purpose of mokuso during seiza is. At the beginning of practice, mokuso is the time you use to clear your mind of the day's activities. It is the time you use to focus on the present so you can devote your full attention to what you will be taught in class. Conversely, at the end of practice, mokuso provides you the opportunity to reflect on what was shown.

I find it hard not to let my mind wander during mokuso. Thoughts appear unbidden and soon I'm thinking about something or other and I've forgotten why I'm sitting in seiza in the first place. Once I decided to do something about this situation, my first reaction was to make a mental effort to squash errant thoughts before I was carried away by them. I found I could do it but it took effort. My mind was working harder to not think than it was when I allowed it to wander.

But if the purpose of mokuso is to clear one's mind, then this defeats that purpose. It's taken a long time but now I don't try not to think during meditation. The thoughts will come, I can't stop them completely. Rather, I do my best to not let them disturb me. I let words enter my consciousness, I notice that they are there, and I let them fade out again, passing into whatever realm they came from.

One would think that mokuso at the end of practice would be easier, since I'm actively thinking about the day's class but I've found that's true only sometimes. I often catch myself following some tangent that my mind has thrown up and I have to make an effort to bring myself back to the topic at hand. Like the mokuso at the beginning of practice, I've been doing my best to accept that my mind will wander and not to resent these errant thoughts when they occur. My intention is to spend more time thinking about what I want to think about, and less time thinking about why I'm not thinking about what I want to think about.

From this experience, I've gleaned a few things that I think can be applied to other aspects of my practice. One is to not become attached to distractions. Physical discomfort is an obvious distraction and one every Aikidoka must deal with at some point or another. I have found other distractions more subtle and harder to overcome. The frustration that comes when a technique just is not working is a terrible distraction because it can easily reinforce itself. It takes great effort to let the frustration go and begin to seek why the technique is not working out as planned.

This leads to the second thing I've learned from mokuso and that is to think about the purpose of the things we do in class. When it comes to the technical aspects of Aikido, it's easy to say the purpose of practice is to improve our understanding and execution of techniques. But it's just as easy to forget that the technique is not my partner lying on the ground or tied up in a joint lock. Those are the results. The techniques are all the steps that led up to those results. Too often I find myself focused on the results and not on the steps leading to them. That is the time frustration appears, distracting me from what is important.

Something else I've learned from mokuso can help with this, however, and that is sincerity of purpose. During mokuso, if my purpose is to prepare for practice then that should be my intention, not chastising myself for letting my mind wander. During practice, when I'm defending, my intention is to execute a technique, all of the technique. Every step must be given equal weight. This is especially true when practicing transitions from one technique to another. My intention to perform the first technique must be there, otherwise the transition makes no sense. If all I wanted to do was the second technique, why didn't I just do that one first?

Because we don't focus a great deal on meditation at the dojo, it's easy to take for granted. But after thinking about it, I've found many lessons that I can apply to my Aikido practice as a whole. I think this is one of the consequences of practicing a martial art for many years and this realization is one of the things wearing a black belt is meant to signify.