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Manifest, Hidden, and Divine: Introduction to Sefirot Aikido

2006; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.24972/ijts.2006.25.1.83

1942-3241

Jack Susman,

Youth Development and Social Support

The potential for forging a valuable relationship between two transpersonal systems, Aikido, a Japanese martial art and spiritual tradition, and Kabbalah, a Jewish spiritual tradition, is explored.Aikido is not simply a martial art, rather it is also a way to achieve a sense of the spiritual.However, especially for Westerners, many of its spiritual tenets are elusive, based on abstruse Japanese cultural roots, whereas Kabbalah, as a spiritual tradition more fully explicated for Western audiences, can provide an accessible framework for grasping some of Aikido's deeper meanings.A blend of these traditions, called Sefirot Aikido, uses Kabbalah to understand, as well as to augment the practice of, Aikido.process, our ignorance of the former can possible be diminished with what we understand of the latter: Kabbalah provides insights for understanding Aikido.The intention is to show that Kabbalah is a fruitful and practical system that can be used to replace kotodama as a useful context for grasping Aikido's deeper meaning.What Kabbalah and Morihei's Aikido have in common, ultimately, is not a program for correcting weakness so much as a process for growth, transformation, and competency.Also, Kabbalah has always happened in a small circle of initiates gathered around a master.Aikido too has developed in small groups who are initiated by a sensei.Furthermore, the spirit of the times favors internationalism, the further merging of east and west.Aikido is culturally insensitive to many aspects of American society and the Western world-and looking at it from the perspective of Kabbalah that grew and was shaped in the Western heartland may begin to redress this matter.At the same time, Kabbalah can learn much from Aikido.It is the nature of human beings to learn, as Japanese learned from India and China, Romans learned from Greeks, and Christians learned from Romans, Greeks, and Jews.Kabbalah refers to systems of occult theosophy or mystical interpretation of the Hebrew Bible developed orally by some rabbis in perhaps the second to fifth centuries and edited and put into manuscript form beginning in about the tenth century; it was also transmitted to and taken up by medieval Christians.The translation of Judaic into Christian Kabbalah was not a difficult process.Jesus, St. Paul, and some other early Christians were believed to have studied the esoteric knowledge and much of what they said has been attributed to very early Kabbalistic sources (Dan, 1977).Conversely, some Kabbalalists have borrowed from non-Jewish sources.The Bible may be approached in at least four ways.It may be seen as a literal history, as an allegory, as a system of abstract ideas, or as a compendium of mystical knowledge.The latter is the Kabbalah's approach.Morihei Ueshiba, it seems, approached some of the ancient Japanese literature in these terms as well.However, as far as we know he did not set out in detail a methodology regarding union with what he sometimes called the Ultimate One, or show how to apply what he learned there, outside of what he said about Aikido.This knowledge does not appear to be available today, either directly or indirectly, through Morihei's writings.Kabbalah provides us with the symbols, knowledge, and methods of a spiritual quest and how to apply them.Perhaps a synthesis between Aikido and Kabbalah could augment our understanding of Aikido and also provide new ways of seeing Kabbalah?With a handshake between Aikido and Kabbalah, we can explore two significant matters: add to our understand-ing of Aikido through Kabbalah and approach Kabbalah through Aikido (Kohn, 2002.pp.53-56).Some important connections and correspondences between kotodama and Kabbalah theory and practices, from various sources, can be established.Both systems can benefit from the comparison and the student of Aikido may find the mystical door and how it can be opened perhaps better explained through Kabbalah than through Aikido's original mystical grounding.