Symbolic Lecture by Michael Thompson – 1987
Two years ago, I gave a lecture at an East Coast gasshuku (workshop) in which I tried to explain a phrase coined by Aoki-sensei in the Shintaido textbook: “The locus of one swing of a sword is a sign.” (The Japanese word kigo was translated as sign, but it can also mean symbol). This phrase is confusing because it seems incomplete; a sign or symbol of what? Since then, I have done some research, especially in the writings of the French anthropologist of religion, Mircea Eliade, and have come up with some tentative answers which I would like to share with you today.
In his book Images and Symbols, Eliade lists four characteristics that he says are inherent in any truly religious symbol.
The first is that it will express a deeper or hidden life that cannot be expressed through ordinary language. It is something you can perceive with your five senses that cannot be expressed through ordinary language.
The second is that it is something that can express a paradox such as the unification of opposites which in reality are conflicting or contrasting. A familiar example might be the yin/yang symbol, wherein opposites such as night and day, dark and light, male and female arc unified. The next characteristic is that a symbol will have many levels of meaning. So it is not a simple A = B equation. A = B, C, D, etc., and of course A. (Eiko is just Eiko!)
Lastly, a religious symbol can transcend language. Language tends to objectify, to erect a kind of wall around the thing, person, idea it seeks to define or designate. The use of symbolism can tear down these walls and allow us to experience something inexpressible directly.
True poetry is full of this kind of religious symbolism even when the topic is not specifically religious. In fact, Henry Miller once wrote that religious truths could only be expressed through art and almost never through organized religion because art shows man trying to understand his place in the universe.
Although Eliade does not talk about the symbolism of body movement, there is no doubt in my mind that Shintaido embodies the kind of symbolism he writes about. The goal of a symbol is to enable us to unify with realms (of reality, of consciousness) we cannot experience through ordinary means. Eliade does write of the symbolism of the body which he calls “anthropo-cosmic symbolism,” symbolism that unifies man and the universe. It seems to me that this is just another way of saying an expression which is familiar to Shintaido: “the body is a message of the universe.” I would like to turn to this symbolism with the caveat that we are not just talking about the body that we are constantly enjoined to keep “fit” or “young.”
The specific image I would like to explore is that of “ten-chi-jin” – heaven, earth, man(kind) which is a key element of all mystical philosophy. For example, a 15th century mystical poet in India wrote: “The body is my scripture, herein the almighty has written his message.” Of course, there are many levels of interpretation beginning with the structure of the spine itself extending from the archaic tail bone to the brain.
When Buddhism moved from India to China, it was greatly transformed in part because the Chinese weren’t very comfortable with the metaphysical abstraction so dear to the Indians, preferring a more concrete and “down-to-earth” approach. Since their language is ideographic wherein pictures represent ideas, it was natural that they preferred to stay close to home rather than taking off on abstract metaphysical speculations.
The word for heaven, ten, is a picture of a man with his arms outstretched standing under something (天). So ten is something both visible and invisible: sky, cosmos, space. Chi (地), on the other hand, is all flesh and blood. It contains two elements, one (土) representing earth, dirt; and the other (也) representing generation or cyclical time. So you might say that jin, according to this idea, exists somewhere between the realms of time/space and timeless infinity. These apparently irreconcilable dimensions can be wedded in man, but he can only become aware of it when he becomes homo symbolicus.
The specific ten-chi-jin image relevant to the martial arts is that of a straight line extending through the earth, through man (人) to heaven. This is a familiar symbol – the axis mundi * which forms a part of the mystical vocabulary of many ancient cultures. All movement to be true, must incorporate this relationship, and it can be found in Shintaido updated, as in various ancient disciplines. It is the way modem man can express Eliade’s “anthropo-cosmic symbolism.”
In the 20th century, we often hear about how alienated modern man has become: alienated from nature, from God, from his fellow man and, ultimately, from himself. A way to express this more simply would be to say that jin has been cut off from ten and from chi. We have isolated ourselves, through our hubris or overweening intellectual and technological pride, from our real selves. This is one reason the opening feeling of Shintaido’s movements is so important. Body movement allows us to bypass that part of our being/ consciousness that dissects, objectifies and destroys.
Henry Miller once wrote that religious truths could only be expressed through art and almost never through organized religion …
One way to evaluate the various types of body movements proliferating in our time (in itself, a healthy sign) might be to see whether they reflect or contain ten–chi–jin philosophy without which they might be good for developing certain “useful” qualities and personal well-being, but without which they cannot affect conscious-ness, in other words, can have no symbolic value.
I don’t think it is so difficult to achieve the union of jin and chi. The growing ecological movement is testimony to the fact that we have become, as a species, aware of the need for this union for our survival on this planet. Much of Shintaido keiko is geared toward the attaining of this unification, and this helps to explain why we would much rather practice outside than indoors.
The unification of jin and chi can be achieved with time and a willingness to continue past self-imposed limitations. But this unification is only half the story and can easily degenerate into a kind of mindless romanticism or cultishness in the absence of the ten element.
The original nexus in which Shintaido was developed in Japan was called rakutenkai, which might be translated as the “enjoy ten group.” Of course without chi, the philosophy of ten can also degenerate into other worldliness and abstraction. But without it there can be no inspiration and no real progress. Of course ten is the under-pinning of Shintaido’s movements and of Aoki-sensei’s philosophy. For it is the world of silence, of nothingness, which gives birth to the symbol and to which the symbol points. Ten is expressed most directly in the language of Shintaido by eiko, which is translated as “glory”, and which contains the Chinese ideograph hikari ( 光 ) or ‘light.’ It is the way we can express and discover the world of ten.
Two of the movements of tenshingoso, ah and um, also express this ten–chi–jin philosophy. But Aoki-sensei also added A, E, Oh because we have to live and act in this world. Much of human history might be represented as an attempt to express A, E, and Oh without Ah and um. In other words, the alienation of jin from ten and chi. So we come back to the point of having to complete the symbol, to expand our horizons, to redefine our concept of self, other, nature and God. All this through body movement? So far, I haven’t found a better way, or at least a way that helps to avoid the pitfalls of ego-centered self-delusion that have gotten us in the mess we find ourselves today.
But as I said before, the Symbol Ah is also just Ah. Eiko is just Eiko: running, stretching, yelling, breathing, suffering, enjoying, being imprisoned, being free. As Verlaine wrote, ”Tout le reste c ‘est de la littcrature.” All the rest is literature.
*Editor’s note: The axis mundi (Latin for “world axis”) is a mythological concept representing the symbolic center of the world or a connection point between Heaven and Earth.
In religion, mythology, and folklore, it functions as a central pivot point that connects three cosmic spheres: the sky or celestial realm (Heaven), the terrestrial realm (Earth), and the subterranean realm (the Underworld). It is often viewed as the place where humanity can closest approach or communicate with the divine.
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