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The Basics of Kindness
In Aikido, there are over a thousand empty hand techniques. Over a thousand! I’ve practiced a couple hundred, perhaps, at best in my 30 years of training. There are just four basic Aikido body...
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Life in the Art of Losing
— “Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win. But never to accept the way to lose. To accept defeat, to learn the way to die is to be liberated from it. So when tomorrow comes, you must free...
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Art in Getting Others
— I often find myself angry and annoyed, when I have to repeat myself over and over and over again to others. Not so much now, but up until several years ago, yeah. I would repeat myself because I had...
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Take Care To Evolve the Greater-Than Version of Yourself
Please indulge my fleeting thoughts in the life before us. I’m just some dude looking at and talking about life. Specifically, what I’ve gotten so far from the life lived. Take what’s useful. Discard...
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Time To Go Back to School
Back in 1999, about a week after Sensei, Ron and I go back from our trip to Japan for Doshu’s Inauguration Ceremony as the new Chief Instructor of the World Aikido Headquarters, I took my Sandan...
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The Human Context
Usually, when we say, “Let’s frame the conversation…” it’s about providing context for what we talk about. So how do we frame a life, frame our life? What’s the human context? In Shakespeare’s...
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Making a Difference for Others
One of the epiphanies of thought leader Werner Erhard’s work was getting that whatever he knew was an “in order to”. He got, “Nothing was inherently significant.” Thus, he got that he was free to be,...
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Older in Forgiveness
I’m a big fan of NBA Superstar Lebron James, who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2003, Sports Illustrated anointed 17-year-old Lebron the “Chosen One” on its cover. Coming out of high school in...
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In the Bigger Picture, What’s Possible in Suffering?
Buddha had said, “All I teach is suffering and the end of suffering.” In “Buddha’s Four Noble Truths,” according to Tulku Thondup Rinpoche: “They are the noble truths of suffering, the cause of...
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The ‘Rough Ways’
Writer and Director Scott Cooper’s “Hostiles” is among my all-time favorite meaningful movies. Set in 1892 New Mexico, the poignantly vulnerable Rosamund Pike plays widowed Mrs. Quaid, who buries her...
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A Simple Life
In martial arts legend, Buddhist monks studied animal movements to create the five fighting styles that constituted the foundation of Shaolin Kung Fu. The five styles were the dragon, the snake, the...
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Invent Life
Those who are possessed by nothing, possess everything. – Morihei Ueshiba I can and have become attached to my expectations in my own trials and tribulations. In Director Martin Brest’s Meet Joe Black...
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Give Flowers
Who’s giving us our love? Who’s giving us props? Who’s giving us our flowers? By human design, we all yearn for acknowledgement for who we are and what we do. That being said, I hope that in the bigger...
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Cowboys and Astronauts
I found an old photo of 3-year-old me wearing my Cowboy hat, holding my favorite grape flavored shaved ice in a cone at the Honolulu Zoo. I found another photo of me at 3, dressed in Army fatigues,...
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On the Journey, Let Go
“The way of the warrior is to give life to all things, to reconcile the world, and to foster the completion of everyone’s journey.” –O-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba In Japanese culture, samurai is warrior....
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Beauty in Uncertainty
In the mathematical field of Information Theory, an event has a probability of occurrence. When that event occurs, it provides a measure of information in units called bits. Consider that flipping a...
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A Good Man
In Sunday Aikido class, we practiced ryote-tori yoko-iriminage (strike to the side of the head). The uke (the attacker) grabs both of my hands. As the nage receiving the attack, I draw the uke to my...
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In Our Mortality
A lifetime is finite by definition. We shall all discover Shakespeare’s undiscovered country. Life has a beginning and an end. The human design. That’s just life. Just saying. There’s an infinite set...
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Be With Sadness
On Friday, my friend Cheryl Hunter texted that she wanted to take off early from work and see a movie. She asked if I wanted to join her. Of course, sure. That was my Friday off for my 9/80s work...
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Your North Star
My Mom passed away three years ago. On that anniversary, I texted my best friend John Inamine my homage to Mom, Have Your Meaningful Life. John and I have been friends since high school, brothers for...
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