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Lao Tzu; Tào Té Ching; From Chapter 13
The reason for great distress is the body.
Without it, what distress could there be?
Translation by Stefan Stenudd
The only reason we suffer hurt is that we have bodies;
if we had no bodies, how could we suffer?
Translation by Arthur Waley
What makes me liable to great calamity
is my having the body (which I call myself);
if I had not the body, what great calamity could come to me?
Translation by James Legge
I always found this part from Chapter 13 of Táo Té Ching very inspiring. According to Arthur Waley, the word “body” in Chinese, shên, can have two meanings: “the physical body” or “the concept self”. What does this mean? What does the word “self” mean?
Our most basic way to identify our self, is our physical body, I guess. When we say me or I, as a child, we speak of our body. Our identity is inseparable from our physical appearance at this point of time. Of course only a very short time later our physical body has changed a lot, but we might be stuck for a long time with this idea of who we are. And if someone asks us if this person is you when showing us a photo ourselves in the past, we might start to get some idea that yes, it is still me, even though the body is different, because we are older at this time.
Most people will reach the point of maturity where we realise that who we are is a bit more deep rooted than the body. We did not choose who our parents are, or which time or which culture to be born into. It is just a throw of the dice deciding which body we end up with.
Our next identification, as we grow slightly more mature, is usually the mind. We will naturally have some opinions and emotions about different situations and subjects. There are patterns happening to us based on our body, and on the history we have experienced up to this point in our life.
As we already discussed, the genetics coming from our ancestors, what we inherit through the body, were not chosen, so therefore it is not personal. Also, what happens to us in our childhood and early life is a natural consequence of where and when we were born and which situations we find ourselves in. So our mind is just as far from personal as our physical body.
If we are not our body, and not our mind, who are we? We do have a body, yes; we also do have thoughts and opinions, yes; and in a way bridging our body and our thoughts, we have emotions. All of the above are random, in the meaning that they were not chosen by us. Is it who we are? Is this our self? Maybe, many will say that yes, this is who we are. And they are willing to fight their friends, and kill them, because they are in conflict with what their friends consider that their self is.
It really does not matter if it is political views, nationality, religion, or any other random classification based on our definition of self. The result is that we end up defending this self (the fake one in my opinion). Killing our friends. Attacking each other. Because we think that ourselves are different from themselves.
Because we are inflicted by thoughts and emotions telling us that the one we see in our inner eye is our enemy. At some level we would be able to see the person if they happen to be in front of us. This is the tool of a politician. It is easy to ask a soldier to kill an enemy they know only by their conspiring whispers. It is a different situation if the soldiers already know each other.
However, at a lower level our mind would even prevent us from seeing the reality because everything is filtered through our distorted view of the world around us. We do not even see them even if they are right there, because our mind blinds us from observing the real world. If we could see we will know that this is our friend. This disease is causing us to perform violence to our friends.
Naturally our friend have the same disease. They perceive us as a threat and will be attacking us. This mutual sickness is feeding itself, because hostile acts breeds more hostility. As we consider each other enemies, and we are always looking at ways of defending the self, there is eternal war.
We arm ourselves. We want to defend our “self”. We build armies and plot, and build up our image of who we are, as something separate from who they are.
Imagine two armed people meeting in a dark alley. Both are trained to the highest level in drawing and shooting, and they both have the best equipment available. They have been trained to look for hostility in the other. They see each other. They immediately see that the other is not a police officer, and they seem to be armed. Where are the hands of the other, and where are their own hands?
When these two both draw their guns and kill each other. Who’s fault would it be? They were triggering each other to draw at the same time. Was it the alley’s fault, that it was dark there? Or was it the fault of the person making the guns, or producing the ammunition? Or was it the fault of the people teaching them how to shoot? Or does the fault lie with the basic flaw in the mind that we want to defend what we define as our “self”? In reality they were both headed to the same restaurant, their wife or husband waiting for them at neighbour tables.
The mind is responsible for all the factors, except for the natural darkness of some alleys. It makes all environments dark because it prevents us from seeing reality, but some actual darkness will always be in some places. As long as there is light, there will be shadow.
In my opinion our path, or road, in the practice we are doing every day, is to increase our awareness about what is happening inside of ourselves. By being aware of what is going on inside, we have a basis for peaceful communication with ourselves. Not denying thought or emotion, but acknowledging that they are there, and respecting that this is the state we are in, at this moment.
This peaceful interaction with ourselves gives us a fundament to be able to act peaceful in our interaction with the world outside ourselves, even if some of the ones we are in contact with does not share our level of awareness. By seeing the causality of mind state and action, we have understanding when someone is doing something which might be considered not ideal. We understand that nobody can do otherwise than what the mind dictates, until we have the level to see what is going on in ourselves.
Most important of all, we have the freedom to choose independently of our mind when we realise that our thoughts and emotions are guiding us to act insanely.
We are relinquishing our self, by realising in our keiko, a deeper meaning of self. Maybe our self is life itself? What this is I would not be able to say. However, we could start by realising that our self is something which does not require defence. The reality is still true, no matter how distorted people’s opinion is about it is. There is no threat to neither reality, nor life itself.
Our body will die, so will our mind, with all its opinions and emotions. Even everybody who ever met us will die, and we will be forgotten. But life is always present. Just as it is in us now, like it was ten or thirty years ago, even though our body consisted of different physical material back then, and were quite physiological different from now. Life was there then, now, and until life goes on without our body. We can’t kill life, we can’t defend life. Is this our real self?
Since before I stepped on to the tatami, my opinion has been that aikido is the opposite of self defence. It is based on my experience. It has been solidified by my practise. Still, there are no problems practising with people doing self defence (they are quite few, in the part of the aikido world where I go most frequently, but they do exist). They have different experience and different training, so naturally their opinion will differ from mine.
This is no problem. We should practise together. We probably have different definition of some words, we might follow different principles in our physical keiko. However, it is fascinating to study how to do our keiko in a way that can satisfy our needs to proceed on our way. Our path of “The Art of Peace”, as the Founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba called it.
Now, I do not read Chinese, so whether the original sign in Tào Té Ching means body, or self, I would not know. However, I enjoy the observation of Arthur Waley that the word could have both meanings. No matter if that statement is correct or not, it awoke my curiosity, and sparked the fire for this little project of mine: To relinquishing the fake self, while nurturing and rejuvenating the body and the mind, getting in touch with whatever our real self could be.
Enjoy your keiko! Aikido makes people happy!