What is your relationship to conflict? Is it something you prefer to avoid? Or do you like to lean into a good fight? Recently, Diane Musho Hamilton and I held our 3rd Community Call in our “Dharma & The Evolution Of Conflict” 3-part series. In this call, together with the global sangha, Diane & I dove into this very topic as we explored “Embracing Conflict As Path.”
Confession time: my wife Maya and I are fans of “The Good Fight”, a drama series on the life and times of Chicago lawyers, now in its second season on CBS All Access. This series is a spin-off of the popular series “The Good Wife” that ran for 7 seasons (we were also fans). As an Aikido practitioner and teacher for close to 35 years, you can imagine what a wonderful surprise I had a few weeks ago to find Aikido on The Good Fight.
There are no two ways about it; from time to time, life can be tough. Creating the skill to work with life’s arising challenges is essential. Meditation, for example, is a sort of “superpower” that gradually increases your capacity to hold and be with life’s challenges. It will help you to weather the storm. But you also need to develop competencies to skillfully work with, and discover the inherent potential in difficult moments.
On May 1st, 2018, Diane Musho Hamilton and I held our 2nd of 3 Community Calls on “Dharma & The Evolution Of Conflict.” In this call with the global sangha Diane & I explored the topic of “Our Evolutionary Potential.”
The main focus on this blog is the exploration of what it means to “Walk A Higher Path Of Practice.” All “higher paths” are teachings, practices, or methodologies that progressively lead you, in one way or another, to the awakening of spirit absolute. Aikido, meditation, yoga, and the many other disciplines that come out of the spiritual traditions are all examples of higher path practices towards awakening. All such practices for awakening will progressively lead you forward through a process called “the 3 shifts in awakening.”
How do you see the relationship between unity and diversity? For millennia spiritual traditions have pointed to the spiritual truth that we are all One. Yet, we live in a world of diversity. A diversity which most of us celebrate as a rich tapestry of humanity. It is at this very junction of unity and diversity that Diane Musho Hamilton & I continue our “Dharma Bite” series on “Relating As One Living System.”
Zen Buddhism has the practice of “Koans.” A practice which is meant to transport you beyond concepts, penetrating into the true nature of reality. “Reality” meaning a perspective that is hidden from the ordinary mind, never to be understood through concepts, logic, and reason. Just like with Zen, Aikido’s true nature is also hidden from view of the ordinary mind. Even more so in the middle of conflict. So what is “The Aikido Koan” that will reveal the mystical nature of conflict?
Aikido is unique among martial arts as it is simultaneously “martial” & “spiritual”. This means that even though Aikido engages conflict (as all martial arts do) the intention for doing so is the resolution of conflict and restoration of harmony. How can this be? Engaging conflict (in other words, fighting) is zero-sum, with one winner and one loser. From beginning to end, it perpetuates separation. But “the way of harmony” is none other then a unifying practice. In order to understand this apparent contradiction you need to look at the art from the perspective of “Aikido & Non-Duality.”
Last Tuesday, April 3rd, 2018, it was my pleasure to host Diane Musho Hamilton for the first of 3 community calls on “Dharma & The Evolution Of Conflict.” We were joined by some 40 members of the global sangha for an exploration of “Dharma As Your True Nature.”
How good are you at taking the perspective of others in the middle of a conflict? Is it even something you consider important? After all, isn’t it basic human nature to protect your own point of view (not to mention your own body)? How does your basic survival instinct stack up with the higher intention of Aikido? Is Aikido’s central principle of “awase” (blending with another) still important to you when the chips are down and the conflict is on? What does “Getting The Other’s World Through Aikido” actually mean? Do you even care?
