Fig. 1
Copyright © 2002-2020 by Werner Kristkeitz Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic (pdf, e-book, or otherwise) or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Illustrations © Aleš Leskovšek, Ljubljana.
Cover design © Saskia Vandrey.
Cover photo © Ralf Hohaus, 2002. Used by kind permission of the artist.
ISBN eBook: 978-3-948378-06-6
ISBN printed edition: 978-3-921508-71-8
www.kristkeitz.de
Preface
Part One: Life
1 – What to do or how to do it
2 – Perception and Action
3 – What is perception?
4 – Total Perception
5 – Mind never moves
6 – Thought and Feeling
7 – How Society created the separation
8 – Meditation in daily life
9 – Life without decision
Part Two: Basic Concepts of Life
1 – Do not separate senses
2 – Why do you perceive?
3 – What is total perception?
4 – What is conceiving?
5 – Conflict between thought and feeling
6 – Living
Part Three: Perception
1 – Difference between body perception and feeling
2 – Difference between perception and recognition
3 – Centre of perception
4 – Perception and recognition of perception
5 – Do you perceive facts or movement?
Part Four: Meditation
1 – Meditation and enlightenment
2 – Culture and meditation
3 – Why do you want to be enlightened?
4 – To tell lies for a good purpose
Part Five: Reality
1 – What is reality?
2 – What is truth?
3 – What is modesty?
4 – What is respect?
5 – What is happiness?
6 – What is love?
7 – What is harmony?
8 – What is imagination?
9 – What is freedom?
10 – What is a problem?
11 – What is understanding?
12 – What is a strong mind?
13 – What is fear?
14 – What is a name?
Part Six: Humanity
1 – What is a sect?
2 – What is education?
3 – The function of language
4 – The limits of language
5 – The way your brain works
6 – Look at the good side of someone
7 – Life is irreversible
8 – Friendship is an enemy of peace
9 – Doubt and trust
10 – What is humanity?
Part Seven: Right and Wrong
1 – What to do or how to do it?
2 – Right and wrong
3 – Are they the same or different?
4 – My English or your English
5 – Objectivity and Subjectivity
6 – Do what you say or say what you do
7 – Conclusion and not decision
8 – Leading and Manipulation
9 – Communication and reality
10 – To discipline yourself is not being conventional
11 – Good condition and bad condition
Part Eight: Habits
1 – How to decide
2 – Illusion
3 – Interpret
4 – Can one do two things at the same time?
5 – Why do you want relaxation?
6 – How to understand a new concept
7 – Precision in control and in not controlling
8 – What is being strong?
9 – Listen
10 – Dimensions of space
11 – The difference between meditation and philosophy
12 – Science, psychology and meditation
13 – To live against society
14 – Culture, civilisation, and industrialisation
15 – Questions and Answers are the same
16 – One point in the lower abdomen
17 – Universal Principles
18 – Technique
19 – No Breathing
About the Author
Lord Menuhin is not only “The violinist of the century” but also a humanist concerned with education and problems of violence in our society. That is why he set up the MUSE project which promotes culture and harmony in schools faced with violence and discrimination. When Lord Menuhin heard about Ki Aikido, “The way to be in harmony with the Universe”, he wanted to know if this art could assist him on his project. Here is the first Ki Aikido lesson of a young minded violin master, eighty years old, still willing to learn.
From the video The beginner (1996),
by Alain de Halleux, Brussels
I came to Europe in 1977 in order to teach Ki Aikido. I have developed Ki Aikido not only throughout Europe but also South America and South Africa over the last 25 years.
I have always taught ways of living before teaching Aikido techniques but it demands a lot of reflection each day to understand life. Talking to my students during seminars has not been enough to communicate the many and varied aspects of life. I decided to write this book so that people can read it as many times as possible throughout their lives. Life is one integral entity so all human activity is based on understanding it. Without a correct understanding of one’s own life, what one does will never be complete.
This book was not meant only for my students but for anyone that wants to understand life. It could not have been published without the kind help of Fiona Gordon, Jose Lacey, and Marion Schweinzer.
Kenjirô Yoshigasaki
February 2002, Brussels
Many people find it difficult to determine how to live. No one seems to give a good answer. You may try to find a way which suits you according to your taste or personality but you never know if following your tastes or personality is really the correct way or not. You may eventually give up, saying, “It is impossible to find the correct way of life.”
When there is no answer, it is a good idea to reconsider the question itself. Actually, how to live implies how to do something. How to do it is a question that arises once you know what to do. If you do not know what to do, there is no question of how to do it. Most people do not know what to do and that is the real problem in life. If you know exactly what to do, you can always find out how to do it.
It is very difficult to find out what to do in your life. Just think of the difficult times you have had. You probably did not know what to do but once you knew what to do, you could always find out how to do it even if it might not have been the best or easiest way. So the real question in life is what to do and not how to do it.
Most people try to decide what to do by thinking or by feeling. If you start thinking about what you should do in your life, you become confused and get a headache. If you want to decide by feeling, you start doubting or become irresponsible. Eventually, you might go to an old woman with a crystal ball and ask her to decide for you but it is impossible to ask her everything about your life.
That is why you give up finding out what to do and start thinking about how to do what you have already decided. You then do not have to doubt your previous decisions and life continues without disturbances. You can enjoy improving your way of doing things. As long as you are enjoying something, you can forget the essential questions in life and life goes on without problems. However, the real question in life still remains. “What should I be doing in my life now?” When you hide yourself from the real question, there is always a shadow or doubt at the bottom of your life. Because of this your mind and body become weak. You can do physical exercises or psychological exercises to remedy it but that is not the essential point. The real question of “What to do?” in life always remains.
In order to solve a question, one must first face it. The question “what to do in life” is composed of three main words: “what”, “do” and “life”. I’ve explained the difference between “how” and “what”. Now we must understand “do” and “life”. What is the relationship between doing and living? Most people do not have a correct understanding of life because they are too busy thinking about what to do or how to do it. However, you must go deeply into the basics if you want to get a result. That is why you have to learn to understand life as perceiving and doing. Doing is easy to understand. You are always doing something. Even when you are doing nothing, you still perceive something. It is impossible not to perceive anything. When you have pain or unhappiness, you do not want to perceive any of it but you cannot help it. This is why many people drink a lot when they have problems or when they are unhappy. They want to get drunk in order not to perceive their problems or unhappiness. Whatever you do though, you still perceive your problems and unhappiness. You perceive something all the time.
So life is doing and perceiving. Since perceiving cannot be controlled easily, you normally try to control doing. The question then becomes “how do I control my action?” To do this you must understand what creates your action. Most people make thought and feeling the basis of life because they think action is based on them. When you want to know what to do, you start thinking in order to decide. If you have decided, you try to act according to your decision. If you cannot decide by thinking, you give up thinking but do not give up deciding. You try to decide by feeling or by instinct. This is still an attempt to decide.
This is the classical concept that most people accept but there are two immediate difficulties. The first difficulty is in deciding. Everybody knows how difficult it is to make an important decision in life. This is normal because first you have to interpret the reality with words when you think. The verbal interpretation of the reality is never the same as the reality itself. Therefore, your thoughts are not representing the reality, which makes it impossible to decide in a perfect way. Ultimately, you will have to force yourself into a decision even though you are in doubt. You do this by cutting your process of thought because as long as there is doubt, the thinking process will continue. How are you doing it? If you observe yourself attentively, you will notice that you are doing it by creating a small tension in your body. You put tension in your mouth or neck in order to cut your thinking process. That is why people who must make important decisions very often get a lot of tension.
If you don’t want to create a lot of tension in your life, you give up the idea of decision by thought and try to decide without thinking. You turn instead to feeling or instinct.
In this way you can avoid tension but you are not sure if your decision is good.
After you have made a decision, you still have to execute it with your body. Then there are two more difficulties. The first is that you find details of action that are not described by your decision. Since your decision is made in a verbal form, it will never describe an action completely. In the execution of your decision, you may easily have another question, which will disturb your action. The second difficulty is that your body may not want to act according to your decision. You can easily understand this by looking at the many people who have difficulty with giving up smoking or drinking. Often, even if you are able to make a decision, your body may not want to follow it.
After having experienced so many difficulties, it would be natural to doubt the basic idea of making a decision and following it. This is the beginning of meditation. Eventually you may arrive at the idea that action is not based on decision. When you understand this, you will feel a great relief and a deep sense of freedom and relaxation. Life seems very easy. Normally this is called enlightenment.
So what actually determines action? Action is determined by perception and not by thought or feeling. “What to do” means “what action should happen”. You unconsciously think that action depends on thought, namely, decision. So you want to decide what to do. That is the fundamental mistake. Action does not depend on thought, feeling, emotion, etc. Action depends on your perception at each moment.
Unfortunately you have a habit of perceiving separately. If you perceive only one thought, your action at that moment will come from that thought. If you perceive only one emotion, your action at that moment will come from that emotion. That is why you mistakenly think that your action is based on that thought or that emotion. Actions based on thought and actions based on emotion may contradict, which will create conflict and tension in you. For example, you see a beautiful new car and perceive some kind of emotion in your body. You call it the desire to buy a beautiful car. In the next moment, you also perceive a thought that says it is a waste of money and that you should not buy it. You start to perceive the desire and the reasonable thought alternately and find that you are in a conflict. (Fig. 1)
Fig. 1
You must perceive everything together as one and from that perception your action naturally follows. (Fig. 2) You do not have to make a decision to act. Since your action comes from the totality of your perception, this is a complete action. The only difficulty is in keeping this total perception all the time.
What you perceive at each moment creates your action. When you know what to do in your life, all the other questions disappear. The difficulty comes in understanding that action is determined by perception.