Book review - The Secret Teachings of Aikido

I have just finished reading another book. This time it is a hardcore aikido book, so hardcore that I didn't understand a lot of the concepts mentioned. The book is by O-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba, it is The Secret Teachings of Aikido, and the following is my subjective review of it.

The book is a very heavy reading. O-Sensei frequently mentions various gods and goddesses, most frequently Izanagi and Izanami, a male and a female deity of Shinto, as far I as understood. He also mentions that there are about eight million deities all affecting and governing our lives somehow. The translator (John Stevens, who also translated other books by O-Sensei) frequently explains the unknown names and Japanese concepts which makes it somewhat easier to follow O-Sensei's thoughts. There isn't a single technique description in the book, it is full of philosophical and religious approaches to Aikido. This is the reason why I was actually given the book for my birthday, by people in our dojo (lead by Karesz Sensei), and they surprised me with this act to a large extent. Thanks again, guys, I'm very grateful!

There are a couple of concepts in the book which are explained and I still want to learn about them more. One is the statement by O-Sensei "Aikido has no form". Probably the translation takes away some of the shades of the original Japanese sentence but it's still an interesting statement and also one I don't understand too much. Does that mean that there are no kata (forms) in aikido? Or that names like ikkyo are just forced names by people (including O-Sensei himself) who were trying to categorise movements? Or that every situation is completely different so the exact same form of movement can't be used once again? Or does it cover some deeper philosophical meaning, and the message is still a secret to a person with the knowledge that I have? It might also be that this is a typical sentence for a zen exercise like the one hand clap exercise I had read about some time ago ('how would you clap with only one hand?')... or maybe it's just a way to get me read the book again, in some years from now, with - hopefully - increased level of insight, so I can understand more of it. The Doshu (O-Sensei's grandson Moriteru) also says in the foreword that the book needs to be read over and over again.

The Triangle, Circle with a dot, Square symbols of Aikido

The other interesting concept is that of the triangle, circle, square triplet that I have been interested in for quite a time. In my first and second big aikido seminars I participated in, Fujita sensei had drawn these three shapes on the back of my gis (my first and second gis ). I didn't know what they meant, or why they were drawn there at all. Now I understand a bit more but I still need to come back again to grasp the concepts more in a couple of years' time. The triangle's one meaning (among others) is that it symbolises the triangular stance a martial artist has. In my understanding, the three points are one's centre, and the two feet. I had thought about the triangle as the triangle defined by the feet and an unstable point we call irimi point, but I don't remember reading this latter aspect in the book, so this meaning might not be included in the concept of the triangle. The circle with a dot in the centre is somewhat obvious, as everything in aikido moves in a circle, and our centre is supposed to be the centre of the circles, too. It has additional, deeper meanings as well but I'm not sure about those. The hardest shape for me is the square which I couldn't understand at all. O-Sensei talks about the Moon, and some hidden worlds but there is no mention of a square in terms of easily understandable movements or shapes when training. This is something I need to study more.
Nevertheless, these three shapes together symbolise aikido and I will still use an alternative meaning of them in the Kids Classes, for easy understanding: peace, love and harmony. They might not be connected to the original meaning, but I can use three aikido-related things to give an aikido-related message, I hope.

One more concept is that of "In three thousand worlds a single plum flower blooms". That's at least five more years to get :). Other things discussed are masakatsu agatsu katsuhayabi (true victory is self victory), kototama theory, ame no murakumo kuki samuhara ryu-o (the guardian deity of the Ueshiba clan, and of aiki), and many more.

I liked the pictures in the book, too. Some of them were unknown to me, many of them known. It was an interesting feeling reading a book for the first time and recognising pictures taken from archive video footage about O-Sensei I had watched several times before.

There are some haiku in the book as well, the last part contains a bunch of them, written in Japanese (both with Latin characters and kanji ) and in English. It's a good exercise to try to practice Japanese and try to recognise instances of words and various characters. At least this is the exercise for me, because I have yet to understand the real meanings and messages of the poems. A haiku used several times in the main part of the book is the following.

The divine beauty
Of heaven and earth!
All creation,
Members of
One family.
[source]

In the book, the translator John Stevens uses a different translation of the haiku (the above one is also translated by him but I found it on the Net). To find out what's the difference between translation please read the book as I'm not sure I can (for copyright reasons) simply take the text and type it in here. Note: I have found another translation at the Aikido Journal site: "The beautiful form of heaven and earth is a manifestation of a single family created by thekami …." [source], and another one in another article:

This beautiful appearance
Of Heaven and Earth
Everything is One Family
Created by the Lord

Maybe we can understand more from multiple translations...

O-Sensei talks about love throughout the book, and that people should stop fighting, warring, they should purify themselves and the world, and all train together in aikido.

The treasure chest of The Secret Teachings of Aikido opens fully only to those who have sufficient training, knowledge and understanding that provide them with keys to it.