UC Aikido Club

O’Sensei Ueshiba, the Founder of Aikido,
has been widely acclaimed as the greatest
martial artist of all time. Decorated by
the Emperor and honoured by the Government
of Japan, he was an enlightened sage who
achieved that extraordinary state of
insightfulness Zen Buddhists call satori.
From his deep insight into the nature of
the Universe he developed new concepts and
techniques about the way martial art should
be practiced to enhance life, creating the
art he named Aikido.

But his Aikido did not spring fully formed
out of nowhere. O’Sensei built it on the solid
foundation of empirical research and inspired
discovery which had already been underway in
China, Japan and India for many centuries, and
which had resulted in an immense amount of
information being gathered about what we
now call bioenergy. Much of O’Sensei’s contribution
lay in the way he consolidated a huge range of
already existing erudition concerning medicine,
meditation, philosophy and martial art from the
Shinto, Zen, Yoga, Buddhist and Taoist systems with
his own insights, creating a new Tao -
“The Way of Aiki”.
The “ki” in Ai-ki-do is pronounced “key” in Japanese
and “chee” in Chinese. (It is spelt “chi” in old
translations from the Chinese and “qi” in modern ones,
and it is written as in both languages.) It refers
to a form of energy which cannot easily be described,
although it is usually translated as life energy,
bioenergy, life-force or creative energy. It
is that wonderful quality in living things which
is most evident when a creature is in good
health and high spirits, but becomes weak when
an organism is ill or dis-eased. It is that
quality which vanishes completely at death even
though the organism otherwise appears much the same
as before.

The word Aikido is a combination of the word “ki”
with two other Japanese words - “ai” (harmony) and
“do” “(Do” is the Japanese pronunciation of the
Chinese “Tao”, meaning “The Way”). Together they
mean “The Way of Harmony with the Ki of the
Universe”. To understand the inner meaning of this
term, we should first realise that the concept of
ai-ki had long existed in Eastern philosophy, for
it is the underlying concept in the Tao. (Tao is
pronounced “Do” (dough) in Japanese, and “tow”
(like the first syllable in “towel” or “dowel”)
in Chinese.)

Tao is usually translated as “The Way”, for it it
is “the way” in which the Universe exists and its
principles - what we call “Nature” - operate.
Taoists seek to live in harmony with nature’s
principles and activities. For experience over
the millennia has clearly shown that this is the
only way in which the creative human activities
which are so rewarding (because they are a part
of evolutionary progress and so of life) can occur.

  Home
  About Us
  Committee
  Courses
  Training
  Timetable
  Grading
  Links
  Pictures