Ei Mei Kan Aikido Dojo

We are pleased to announce that Genjo Roshi will be returning to the UK in May 2025 to hold sesshin. Please see https://www.touching-heart-mind.com/ for more details. Registration is OPEN.

Home Sesshin (接心 — "touching heart-mind") is an intensive meditation retreat in Zen Buddhism. Participants immerse themselves in a focused environment, emphasizing silent meditation, mindfulness, and deep self-inquiry. During sesshin, practitioners engage in zazen (seated meditation), walking medit...

“The true science of martial arts means practicing them in such a way that they will be useful at any time, and to teach them in such a way that they will be useful in all things.“ - Miyamoto Musashi, The book of Five Rings

What is rooted is easy to nourish.
What is recent is easy to correct.
What is brittle is easy to break.
What is small is easy to scatter.

Prevent trouble before it arises.
Put things in order before they exist.
The giant pine tree
grows from a tiny sprout.
The journey of a thousand miles
starts from beneath your feet.

Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion,
you ruin what was almost ripe.

Therefore the Master takes action
by letting things take their course.
He remains as calm
at the end as at the beginning.
He has nothing,
thus has nothing to lose.
What he desires is non-desire;
what he learns is to unlearn.
He simply reminds people
of who they have always been.
He cares about nothing but the Tao.
Thus he can care for all things.

- Tao Te Ching [64] (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Let me reconfirm that what is essential is found in the doing, and not in its mastery or consequences. Let doing (practice) alone be the reason for doing and let the consequences take their natural course. Otherwise we fall again into the trap of making our practice nothing more than a means to achieve something. I am only able to say this because I have an immovable faith in Aikido and its practice. --- T. K. Chiba, Sansho (Fall/Winter 1988)