I am extremely fortunate to have been able to travel to Nepal and India with Sensei and others from Nippon Kan. Travel, and the dream of future places to visit, occupies a large part of my time since I have an overriding curiosity about other peoples and their way of life. I have gone so far as to wonder whether I travel so much because my profession allows it, or whether I chose this profession so that I might indulge my curiosities. Why such wanderlust, such restlessness? I have wondered, searched both inside and outside myself for answers, and even come up with a few. I’ll share them now because they will help convey the significance of my recent experience with Sensei. Forgive the brief philosophical digression.

Without going too deeply into different cosmologies or world views (mine or anyone else’s), I have to say that I don’t like to draw very many rigid distinctions; for instance between mind and matter, what is me vs. what is other, etc. This may be what attracted me to Aikido, or what fuels my passion for it. We discover every practice period that mental control of the breath influences our physical being, whether in the performance of a technique or during relaxation at the end of class. Similarly, the practice of Aikido (physically) influences our attitude and mental state. It is like a feedback loop. Where does one end and the other begin? Another loop I’ve discovered is between conception and perception; between how we think and how we “see” or “notice”. How this applies to travel, to other peoples, and to our attitude is profound.

If we don’t have an experience of something, then most likely we have a preconception of it. I’ve heard people tell of stories they’d heard about India, for instance (of course they’d just heard the stories, they hadn’t been there). There are dead bodies in the street. The desperately poor are everywhere. Foreigners are targets. One told of a boy who was so poor he committed suicide by walking right out in front of a bus; afterwards the bus didn’t even stop. How many assumptions are being made in THAT one? My point is that with just a few tales like these, our fears become stoked and its very unlikely that we will ever venture out to India. We will probably even be very wary of the Indians in our midst! Our unfamiliarity will lead to suspicion and distrust. Conception will influence our perception. Can anything be done? How about take the attitude that it’s better to see for yourself? I’ve had plenty of stereotypes and preconceived notions, and found that the best remedy is experience. No special technique is required. Once there you don’t have to try to perceive, it just happens. The best part about traveling to new places is that you can’t help but be surprised and shocked out of your expectations.

There were no dead bodies in the street in India (except the occasional animal that hadn’t been too traffic savvy). Not only did this help dispel a cloud of myth about an irreverence for life, it was a small miracle in itself. The traffic scene in India is notorious, mainly because it contrasts so sharply with our standard. Traffic lanes were pretty much ignored. If a vehicle could be fit somewhere, then it was fair game. Where a car would not fit, that space was taken by one of the many three-wheel motorized rickshaws, motorbikes, bicycles and/or pedestrians trying to move across. Roads were moving torrents of machine and human (with the occasional camel and trailer combo). It seemed the norm to pass someone and then slide in front, cutting them off. Horns were incessant, used to alert drivers of your intention to pass. Yet with all of this going on I did not witness a single accident (minor brushes and side mirror taps evidently don’t even count), not even any road rage, swearing or fingers. Everything operated according to an unspoken but universally acknowledged order. The more people there were, the more tolerant everyone seemed to be. I couldn’t help but think that if our own traffic system was to be transformed to something similar overnight, that half the population would be dead in a day from accidents, shootings, or heart attacks. So does that make their system better, worse, or just different. Hence the other lesson from my travels; I learn just as much about my own culture by virtue of contrast.

We actually did witness several dead bodies during funeral rites being conducted at a Hindu temple we were visiting. In another marked contrast, the “service” was accompanied by brightly colored flowers and dress, and the bereaved wore pure white (we were told this continued for one full year after the death of the loved one). Of course there was wailing and tears, but it was also a more public spectacle. The group of attendees was huge, made larger by passersby like ourselves and pilgrims that had come to the temple. In all I would say that it fit with what I noticed about spirituality in India and even more so in Nepal; spiritual practice was much more a part of daily, public life than it is here. In Kathmandu it was common to see one or a group of monks, and there were huge temples and stupas in the middle of the city. When meeting up with the rest of the group my first day there, I was dropped off by a taxi on a bustling city street and told to walk down a pedestrian side street. I did so and it quickly opened up onto a huge square dominated by a towering stupa. Prayer flags radiated from the top and throngs of people were circling it clockwise from the street level all the way to the top (it was built like a four story soft-serve ice cream cone and there was no inside, but rather steps that let you walk around on top of it at various levels). Significantly, it seemed that the personal state of mind ranged from the devout and meditative to the casually social. There were even monks sitting around on top of it chatting. It seemed a very welcoming and relaxed environment that blended easily with daily life. The scene was similar all over Kathmandu. Vendors sold garlands to devotees, temples were interspersed among stores and other buildings, and corner shrines were ubiquitous. In comparing it to what I’m familiar with, it seemed that the people there were more involved with their spirituality, or at least they manifested it more outwardly. At the same time the trappings of religion were similar; it was surrounded with (what I thought to be) excessive ornamentation and ritual. Is it a universal human tendency to embellish spiritual truth with gilded decoration?

Lastly, I’ll make a comment on my impression of people’s state of mind. All the places we visited met our official and colloquial definition of “third world” in that relative economic wealth and state infrastructure lagged behind the standards we hold here in the West. That said, people seemed very happy overall. With the exception of the destitute, people seemed content with what they had, with personal levels of happiness at least equal to ours here. This was not due to ignorance. They were very aware of western culture, we saw signs of it everywhere, but they didn’t seem to measure self worth like people tend to do here; according to physical possessions. Maybe I’m wrong. There is a caste system in place in both countries and the invisible social hierarchy probably functioned similar to our own. I’m sure people were involved in trying to better their condition and achieve greater and greater comfort in life; something that I’m sure is universal. I guess it’s more important that I am continuously struck (in the developing world) with how happy people can be with relatively little. My opinion is that we have a continuum of comfort and misery that we slide back and forth on. That as soon as we achieve greater comfort, happiness or success, we discover another irritation or misery in our life, hitherto unnoticed. Similarly, women walking barefoot to a public well in order to carry water home, people digging up mud and shaping it to be fired into bricks, and whole families sitting around with hammers pounding big rocks into small ones, can have the same heights of pleasure and depths of despair in their lives as we do in ours. So with this perception I start to change my conception. What happiness is there to be attained that I don’t already have? Experiences like these point me away from trying to achieve my way “out” of all misery; it’s not even possible.

The Chinese have a term that’s important in Taoist thought called wu-wei (mui in Japanese). It has a complex definition and I don’t pretend to understand it completely (let alone the Chinese or Japanese language and culture). It is very interesting in that it seems to connote “not striving” or “no intent”. I don’t believe the concept is the same as that of an unemployed couch potato. Rather it seems to advocate an approach to life without preconception, without looking to get anything “out” of it. To take this approach is to allow yourself to be surprised, to be open to the unknown experience that’s right in front of you. This seems to me to be central to the practice of Aikido. We practice it in the dojo when we blend with uke and don’t remain rigid, trying to force the situation that we desire. We practice it outside the dojo by setting aside as many preconceptions as possible. These preconceptions and thoughts of the future are part and parcel of how the mind works. They have allowed us to survive so well and have vastly improved our capabilities. We fall victim to them, though, when we begin to live in the world of concept instead of reality. For me it’s a continuous game of discovery where the boundaries of my “self” are pushed away by blending with everything and everyone else.

Brian Grabowski
March 31st, 2006