Journey to Ki
Seeking enlightenment at a Danbury dojo
Odd as it may seem, the most important thing in my life right now is throwing a 280-pound African-American hotel chef across the room. The trick is doing it effortlessly, without relying on muscle or force. Hasan, the chef, is a beautiful guy, so considerate that after twisting your arm into a potentially bone-breaking hold he gently untwists it, gives it a pat, and checks to make sure you’re OK. What’s great about Hasan as a training partner, though, is that he’s so darn big: The only way to budge him is by invoking the power of ki. As for what ki is … Let’s call it life’s secret sauce.
Hasan and I are studying ki at a remark- able martial-arts dojo called Aikibudokan of Connecticut, tucked away in a modest building near the Loews movie theaters in Danbury. Our teacher, or sensei, is James Cobb, 43, who holds 3rd-level black belts in the Japanese art of Aikido (or “path of harmony”) and its more violent predecessor, Aikibudo. Sensei James, whose warm brown eyes are often hidden behind swinging dreadlocks, is perhaps the gentlest per- son I’ve ever met. This is interesting, since he has devoted his life to combat. He also holds black belts, signifying the top levels of achievement, in several other martial arts, including Chinese Kempo and Korean Tae Kwon Do; he fought professionally in Karate and kick-boxing; and worked as a licensed bounty hunter. He is rock-hard and indomitable when fighting, incomprehensi- bly powerful and swift. Fourteen years after committing himself to Aikido, Sensei James still considers himself an aspiring student, speaking reverentially of his master, Bruno le Clercq, a French physician and master Aikidoka who used to teach in Danbury but now lives in Montreal. Student or not, Sensei James knows a whole lot more about ki than I do. I can feel it when we work one-on-one.
Aikido is rooted in the bushido (path of the warrior) code of the Japanese samurai, the greatest of whom combined supreme fighting skill with inner serenity and indifference to death. In their purest forms, uncorrupted by the mass market, martial arts use physical challenge to discipline students in body, mind, and spirit, with the ultimate aim of instilling a mastery of combat that is indistinguishable from enlightenment. Like many other time-tested paths to wisdom, martial-arts study can lead people to engage directly with the energetic primal essence of the universe. In Aikido, this essence is called ki. It goes by many other names, and can be found by many other paths. Whatever the name, as any accomplished practitioner of meditation or yoga or Aikido or prayer can know, that ultimate energy is present every- where — certainly within all of us — and to those who have experienced it directly, there’s no question that it’s real.
This sounds mystical, and it is. But the thrill of Aikido is its blend of spiritual explo- ration with earthy physicality. The essence of Aikido practice is deepening one’s relationship with the latent energy of ki, learning to channel and direct it — and, equally, to permit ki to guide one’s understanding and behavior. Once you experience the power of ki in your own body and see it with your own eyes — once you have sent Hasan flying, or been pinned helplessly to the floor by one finger of an opponent — doubt evaporates. The only remaining question is whether you have the staying power to master it yourself.
When I joined the dojo last year, I was the unlikeliest of students: 50 years old, soft- bellied, wheezing, light on machismo, and not particularly interested in self-defense. My wife, who was working on her brown belt in Shotokan Karate shortly before our engagement two decades ago, still can’t believe that I used to complain about the washboard abs she’d developed in Karate practice. (All I can say is, live and learn.) As an adult, I’ve gotten into only one fight, half a lifetime ago: An aggressive stranger kept shoving me while I was playing Asteroids at a Times Square arcade. Something primitive arose within me, and passion overwhelmed my conscious awareness. When I came to my senses half a minute later, I found myself trying to destroy a person who had merely annoyed me. I walked away, trembling. This experience got me interested in nonviolence.
So when my son, at age 6, burst into tears during his one visit to a strip-mall Karate school, I was sympathetic: The brutal vibe offended me too. And when my daughter, newly committed to physical fitness at age 13, took classes in Thai kick-boxing last year, I was amazed by the improvement in her muscle tone but turned off by the dojo’s bootcamp atmosphere. These last two experiences served as reminders of how martial arts came to the U.S.: Through World War II and the Korean War, members of the armed forces discovered once-secret arts in Asia, and returned to teach their own versions. No wonder the emphasis at so many dojos here is on militaristic rather than reverential forms of respect, and on violence or fitness rather than spirituality and grace. The local Yellow Pages lists some 75 businesses offering martial-arts training, serving students of widely varied interests.
My first contact with martial arts was in 1961. I was a fourth-grader who had just moved from public to private school, where my fellow students enjoyed beating up newcomers. As the new boy in class, and a wimp besides, I got special treatment.
After listening to me whine about this for several months, my mother suddenly convinced herself that she’d found the solution: She would teach me self-defense. That she knew absolutely nothing about the subject inhibited her not at all. The dear woman, wearing a blousy summer frock, came home one day and marched me out to the back yard with an illustrated book about Judo in her hand. Over the course of 90 minutes — this ranks among my happiest memories of her — my mother completely failed to teach me anything useful about self-defense. For the remainder of that school year, I practiced strategic retreat, hiding in the woods during recess, and returned to public school the fol- lowing September.
Shortly after graduating from college, I read a marvelous book called Zen in the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel. In just 81 lucid pages, it opened a door to Japan’s Zen tradition. This esoteric form of Buddhism enables students, under the guidance of a master, to penetrate the mysteries of existence through fiercely disciplined study of any of a variety of arts, from archery and swordsmanship to flower arrangement and calligraphy. The practice of Zen archery, as explained by Herrigel, takes place on an extraordinary level of consciousness, requiring that the archer become one with bow, arrow, and tar- get to such a degree that a master can effortlessly shoot bull’s-eyes while blindfolded.
Herrigel tells the story of a would-be disciple who begged a famous master swordsman to instruct him. The master accepted the fellow in his home, putting him to work on housekeeping chores. “After some time,” writes Herrigel, citing Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki, “the young man became dissatisfied, for he had not come to work as a servant to the old gentleman, but to learn the art of swordsmanship. The master agreed. The result was that the young man could not do any piece of work with any feeling of safety. For when he began to cook rice early in the morning, the master would appear and strike him from behind with a stick. When he was in the midst of his sweeping, he would be feeling the same blow from somewhere, from an unknown direction.” Thus, the result of the student’s pleading was not freedom from housework, but years of misery as the object of his master’s blows — until, at last, the ability to dodge the swordsman’s stick became part of his very nature. Only then did the master pronounce his student ready, at last, to begin study of the sword. Like many readers inspired by this book, I fantasized about moving to Japan and dedicating the rest of my life to rigorous Zen study. Instead, I got a job, a nice family, and a house in Ridgefield.
Once you experience the power of ki in your own body — once you have been pinned helplessly to the floor by one finger of an opponent — doubt evaporates.
The passing years did not diminish my curiosity about martial arts as a means of inner growth. Through my work, I happened to encounter two influential men. The first is Richard Strozzi-Heckler, a psychology Ph.D. who teaches Somatics — which he describes as the union of language, action, and meaning — to business and military leaders at the Strozzi Institute in California. The second is Stephen Gilligan, author, Ph.D., and practicing psychologist, whose work focuses on helping people access the deepest levels of their being. Both of these men have impressed me as powerfully grounded, rich in heart, and wise in very practical ways. It turns out that Strozzi-Heckler and Gilligan, who haven’t met, are both dedicated practitioners of Aikido, and regard the art as fundamental to their understanding of life. Strozzi-Heckler got me interested in Aikido; Gilligan inspired me to find a place to learn it. That took years, but eventually I heard that Sensei James had opened his dojo, offering this subtle teaching just a few miles from home.
The Aikibudokan dojo has created an unusual community. The oldest members are in their 60s; the youngest is 9. Women and men participate in roughly equal numbers. Several couples take classes together — my wife recently joined, for instance — along with parent/child combinations, and lots of young people with interesting hair. Our ranks include professionals educated at Yale and Harvard, as well as people who labor with their hands. Our racial and ethnic backgrounds are diverse, with students born in Brazil, Puerto Rico, Korea, Vietnam, and of course the United States. Among the Brazilians is Sensei Marcos Conceicão, 37, a 1st-level black belt who is sweet-tempered and elegant in motion. In terms of skill, the students range from novice white belts to our one brown belt so far: Marlen, a 17-year-old who starts college in the fall. (I’m an orange belt, the third-lowest rank, but just you wait.) We all practice together. The group is warm, friendly, and supportive. Every now and then a neophyte arrives with a desire to hurt people, but such people tend to wise up or quit. Violence and competition are not what Aikido is about. “Learning how to fight is secondary — you don’t need that,” Sensei James recently told our class. “What Aikido teaches you is something beyond what you can imagine.” Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969), creator of both Aikibudo and Aikido, was more explicit: “Aikido is the study of the spirit,” he said.
Unlike its predecessor, Aikido is nonviolent in intention. Its way of dealing with conflict, however, is not meek avoidance but instant, overwhelming action. Aikido study begins with basic grips, movements, and techniques that apply such intolerable torque to the joints of opponents that they have no choice but to beg for mercy. The style of Aikido that Sensei James teaches is effective in real-life conflicts — “on the street,” as he puts it. Yet the purpose of acquiring this skill is to avoid violence. “In Aikido,” he says, “you don’t really fight. You use your opponent’s energy and redirect it. Above all, you use your mind.” Thus he has but one word of counsel for anyone attacked with a knife: “Run!” During his days as a bounty hunter, Sensei James carried a licensed shotgun, just in case; but he relied on the quiet of his mind to induce criminals to surrender.
In Karate or Tai Chi, students practice movements so formal that the art can resemble dance. Aikido, like boxing or wrestling, requires active, spontaneous physical contact between at least two people. We usually work in pairs, changing partners often, working with people at all levels of skill. More often than not, one partner ends up on the mat, so learning to fall is important. Aikidokas quickly acquire restraint, to avoid hurting their partners. We always bow to one another before and after engaging, a Japanese expression of respect that feels unnatural at first but gains meaning over time.
As students advance, movement of the feet and hips becomes more important. We gradually become familiar with our bodies’ ever-shifting center of gravity, or hara. It is from the hara that ki energy extends through the body and beyond. As a student discovers the hara, and focuses awareness there, the effortlessness of Aikido reveals itself. Where once we strained with the muscles of arms, shoulders, and chest, we find that a simple, firm grip, combined with a clear intention and decisive movement of the lower body, is more than enough to overcome an opponent. At this point, we begin to learn flips and throws, exploring the beautiful circularity of movement in Aikido.
The practice of Aikido teaches fearlessness. This seems to be less a matter of courage than experience. Classes at the dojo often culminate with a form of sparring called randori, in which one person at the center of the mat is attacked for several minutes by two, three, or more students. The more able the student, the stronger the attack. During my first randori, I froze in panic, forgetting everything I’d learned. Sensei James kept saying, “Relax! Relax! Relax!” At first, I thought he was crazy: Who could relax while being assaulted? But by my tenth randori, the experience of being attacked was familiar enough that relaxation indeed became possible. Similarly, after much repetitive practice, Aikido movements and techniques gradually become instinctive, so there’s less need to think. That’s good, since thinking doesn’t seem to help much.
As the attackers kept coming, Sensei yelled, “Don’t flinch! Don’t flinch!” I was approaching sensory overload: Too much. Too fast. Too frightening.
One source of Aikido technique is samurai swordsmanship. For this reason, swordplay can be an important element of Aikido study. On Saturdays, we practice with dull-edged wooden swords called bokkens. We start with a set of warm-up exercises so grueling that I fear I may end up with washboard abs myself. (Just kidding.) Afterward, we practice attack and defense. My favorite class so far required one student to stand at the far end of the mat, holding the sword upraised in front in an attitude of defense. Sensei James told the other students to run at full speed, one by one, toward the defender, while yelling ferociously. Then they were to attack with their swords, cutting horizontally toward one of the defender’s ears. On the receiving end, the defender couldn’t predict which side of the head they’d attack. The aggressors moved fast, their faces contorted into genuinely frightening expressions. Their samurai screams were plenty distracting, too. Then came the sword cuts, powerful and fierce. Failure to block a blow could result in severe pain or worse, if the attacker lacked the control to halt the sword’s motion at the last instant. It was intimidating. As the first few attackers came at me, Sensei James kept yelling, “Don’t flinch! Don’t flinch!” He wanted me relaxed, but I was approaching sensory overload: Too much. Too fast. Too frightening. Then somehow the intensity of the experience slammed me into a state of consciousness free of thought, free of concern — just where I needed to be. I no longer focused on the attackers as they raced toward me, one after another; instead, my gaze steadied on a point well beyond them. As each attacker came close and began to move the sword, I somehow knew, reliably, which direction the sword would take. I blocked each one effortlessly, and felt high doing it.
Although my skills and understanding are still rudimentary, I’m already richer for Aikido. My body looked way better when I was 21, but I’m stronger and suppler today. Could I defend myself in a street fight? Who knows? I don’t intend to find out. But I’m already responding more effectively to the kind of conflicts that do arise in my life.
As I’ve said, the sage Ueshiba named his art Aikido, the path of harmony. When attacked, we strive not to resist but to blend harmoniously with the actions of opponents. Says Ueshiba:
If all you think about is winning you will in fact lose everything. Know that both you and your opponents are treading the same path. Envelop adversaries with love, entrust yourself to the natural flow of things, unify ki, body, and mind, and efface the boundary between self and other. This opens unlimited possibilities.
Conflicts in my life tend to be of the white-collar variety, conducted with words rather than fists. Not long ago, I was working on a particularly promising consulting job. It began with a subproject to which I didn’t feel well-suited. I’d said so to the client, but he’d insisted on my participation. The resulting work was frustrating. Then one day the client called me on the phone. “This is going to be a very difficult conversation,” he began. Uh-oh! I could feel tension gathering in my stomach. Then he fired me.
Before Aikido, I’d have resisted, and probably ruined the relationship. But by then, I was a veteran of randori; this was just another attack. So I relaxed and blended with my opponent, agreeing that the project was going badly, acknowledging the truth that the client could find someone better suited to that particular task than I was. The client expressed surprise and pleasure at this response. Before long, we were discussing more effective ways for us to work together. By the end of the call, he was asking whether I’d consider working on his company’s next project. I regard that conversation as a miracle of Aikido: The conflict ended almost as soon as it had begun. The client ceased to be my opponent. We found ourselves treading the same path, in harmony. Such are the workings of ki.
This article originally appeared in Ridgefield Magazine.
