Sandan Report : Bu
O Sensei said "Aiki is not a technique for fighting or defeating enemies. It is a way to unite the world and unify mankind into one family. The secret of Aikido is to harmonize one's self with the movements of the Universe and to achieve oneness with the Universe. For those who understand the secret of Aikido, the Universe is in their heart (lit., "stomach" [kokoro]), ...(T)rue bu is not for winning and losing. True bu is always invincible. That is to say, invincibility means never fighting with anyone.”
If you ask nearly any Aikido instructor what Budo is they will likely say something like "Budo is a path of self purification. The characters for BU are made of two base characters that mean to 'stop the fight'. " Now some sensei will stop there, but others might continue to say that "But Budo is also a martial art, so if you need to go ahead and break their nose or arm or skull..." Other instructors will finish with "you get them down here and you can strike the back of the neck, or the spine, killing your opponent, but you don't. That is the way of peace." I disagree.
My years of training in Aikido, practicing what OSensei called Shin-no-Budo (true budo), my time studying philosophy, meditating on the founders writing and the practice of traditional Japanese calligraphy; coupled with some profound experiences working with some amazingly gifted sensei, has led me to a different kind of translation for Budo.
The current dictionary translation for Bu uses the characters "tome" (stop) and "hoko" (spear/halbred), easily read as Stop the Weapon or Stop the fight.
This is very a shallow translation for something that has such a rich history. When we translate Bu as "Stop the Fight" we automatically limit ourselves to how deep the practice of budo can take us.
After almost 9 years of Aikido practice and four years of practicing calligraphy I began to feel very passionate about this subject, and so I decided to research the translation of Budo. Through the research that I have conducted so far I feel that the “Stop the Fight” translation of Bu is not only shallow, but completely inaccurate, and misleading.
This translation of BU is the method that teachers use to teach young children to remember the difficult eight stroke order of the kanji. I learned this from my Kanji instructor, Koji Tsuchiya. If the first character is Tome, then the second character must be Hoko in order to create the character Bu.
But what if the first part of the combined kanji is not Tome but Tadashi, meaning right or correct? If the first character is Tadashi then the other character for the compound used to make up the character Bu would be Kokoro (meaning heart or center).
If that were the case, then the translation for Budo, using those as the base characters, would be "Correct Center" or "Right Heart". This has a much deeper and complicated meaning and implication that just "stop the fight".
C O R R E C T H E A R T ...
My reasoning behind why I feel this is so important is simple. I believe that the way we talk about our world shape our perceptions and actions within that world. I was listening to NPR one day last year and I heard an interview with Mr. Allen, a Catholic language reformer. When the interviewer asked him why language was so important to him, he replied that
"... (T)his is a basic philosophical insight that the categories we use in our speech influence the way we construe the world. If we talk regularly about spirit, then we begin to see the world in terms of the supernatural. We begin to see the role of realities and forces beyond what the eye can see. "
Even within the realm of science in Anthropology I found that the way you talk about your world helps to shape your perceptions of it. Edward Sapir wrote that "It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group... ".
So the way we talk, the words we use, the categories of speech we engage in shape the world around us. These words DIRECTLY influence our experience of the world that we live in. And thus the way we interact with others in this existence.
Correct Heart.
Let us try out the different ways that Osensei's words are translated and see how they sound:
Bu wa ai nari. To stop the fight is love.
ok... To be in correct center is love.
Lets try part of Osensei’s quote that I read earlier:
Aikido wa Shin no budo. The way to unite with the universal life-force that creates and sustains us is the true way to stop the fight.
That isn't too bad. How about : To unite with the universal life-force that creates and sustains us is the true way to be in correct center.
I believe that the way I have translated it is the way OSensei meant it to be heard. When translated in this manner the meaning is deepened and is more difficult to understand for some people. But I think I may understand it.
I don't know why this hasn't been explored before, but what I do know is that we have to look deeper into what the character really means. To stop using the negative and engage with the posative. Bu as Correct Heart has become a life long goal for me, and I plan to continue to train in an effort to express what I believe to be the most correct translation of OSensei's vision of Budo.
..end of line