Nikon, Kansen, and Mushin

Its-san gives me an early lift to Shosenji. It is a beautiful Friday morning near the end of the cherry blossom season. Thunder and lightning are forecast for the night, but the mild morning hints nothing. T-sensei is standing by the pond in the middle of the garden when we arrive and waves hello through the sun. His little boy is sitting next to him, in the middle of this idyllic little paradise, watching the glittering surface of the dark green water.
We walk into the dojo’s little entry hall, take off our shoes and sit down in seiza to greet the dojo with a bow, our best greeting to anyone, always, says Shihan. B-san and Herr T are already engaged in bouts of tenchi-nage (Heaven and Earth throw) as we walk past to get to the changing rooms. I say Herzlichen Glückwunsch. Today, Friday the 13th, is young Herrn T’s 22nd birthday. He has brought me a little plant, considerate enough to notice the lack of greenery in my battlefield room and use some of his flying blossom life to change that. The round little plant is waiting for me on top of the fridge next to the changing rooms, and I say Danke to Herrn T for this surprising gift of green.
Right on time, as usual, B-san takes us through our warm-up routine, and Shihan enters to lead us through the next 80 minutes. Today’s training begins with a speech:
“The objective of aikido,” he announces the title of today’s lecture.
“One objective people usually have in mind when they train aikido is that they want to turn their aikido into good budo. Really good budo. It is an objective like going to the shop to do your shopping. But as for the shopping, when you come back and have bought whatever items were on your list, the objective is achieved. So in aikido, there is another kind of objective. It is called ‘nikon’.”
A detailed explanation of how to write the kanji “ni” follows, and the result in my slow mind looks somewhat like the “ni” used in “baggage”, but a conversation with Its-san after training reveals that it is likely to be less known, as apparently she, too, was unable to follow the mental calligraphy. Both word processor and mobile phone yield nothing but hiragana and katakana renderings. It must be another one, then, of the obscure words taken from the world of Zen and budō that Shihan teaches us, together with their obscure writings, and deep meanings.
This problem will be researched in more depth and published at a later stage. Today, the explanation of the word’s meaning must suffice. Enter Shihan’s speech.
“’kon’ is now. So it is about now. Not about some future thing we are trying to reach but about what we are doing at this very moment. If you are sitting there like that, then sit, for sitting’s sake, and just sit. Here. Now. This is not about training things to form them in a certain way, not training to aspire to a certain kind of posture or shape, but training to train well here and now. So keep that in mind.
Also,”
Enter the second concept of the day,
“there is kansen. This has the ‘kan’ from sightseeing. And the ‘sen’ from arrow. This means,”
Shihan makes a sudden jab at his own throat and mimes a face troubled by impending death.
“You have an arrow at your throat. You have the point of an arrow at your throat! If you are in that situation, you don’t think about anything else. You are either going to get out of it, or you’re going to die! That’s all you think.”
He leads us to the dojo entrance and points at the inscription on a large wooden board above the door. “Kansen”, it says in old writing order, read from right to left. “I carved out this word and coloured in the carved out characters to put this over the dojo entrance. And actually, I didn’t want it to be there just for decoration. When you enter the dojo, this is what I want you to think.”
Again, his hand turns into an arrow at his throat, his face into fear of death.
“You have an arrow at your throat. At all times. Try to train with this in mind.”
Respectfully, we re-enter the dojo and throw open-handed arrows at each other’s throats, diverted by swift taisabaki and flowing bodies moving from moment to moment, arrows at their throats in their minds.
When we sit down to finish with seated kokyūnage, we are introduced to yet another concept.
“When you do this, be mushin.” Says Shihan. No heart. No thought. “But mushin does not mean you are letting yourself disintegrate into useless idleness of the mind, carelessness, or unattentiveness. Mushin is simply a combination of pure kansen and pure nikon. Feel the arrow at your throat. Right here, right now.”
So sitting down, we have difficulty breathing with the arrows at our throats, trying to carry out kokyūnage, the breathing throw.
We finish our session and clean the dojo, followed by bouts of walking on hands, in which Herr T excels, and other experiments. When Its-san and I walk out, as she has kindly agreed to take me to the Midosuji line so I can reach Shinsaibashi for today’s Big Jump Training session number two, B-san and Herr T are on the mat again, putting things into practice. Its-san preserves it on video. To study. And learn.
Mushin. Kansen. Nikon.