Conclusion
Sumi-Kiri: Clarity of Mind and Body
The first time I met my aikido teacher, Professor Iwao Yamaguchi, I was lost. Literally.
It was 1990, and I was a young Marine who had just been sent to Okinawa, Japan. I'd been introduced to aikido in California and had practiced for two years, but I still didn't know much about the art. Okinawa is actually the birthplace of traditional kick-and-punch karate—aikido was a mainland Japan invention. And the Okinawans and mainland Japanese have a pretty tense relationship, dating back to atrocities committed by Japanese Imperial Army troops stationed on the Okinawa islands during World War II. So there was only one aikido school on Okinawa. And I couldn't find it.
I had an address and a phone number that a fellow Marine had given me, but that was it. I didn't speak Japanese. I didn't have a smartphone with Google Maps. The crowded streets of Okinawa were totally overwhelming to a kid from Erie, Pennsylvania. There was no way I was going to find this place on my own. So I just handed the scrap of paper with the address on it to a Japanese taxi driver and hoped for the best.
The taxi got hopelessly lost. Obviously, I was no help. So eventually, the taxi driver stopped the car, got out, and called the phone number on my scrap of paper. Two minutes later, this guy in a black-and-white martial arts uniform showed up. My future teacher had stopped in the middle of a lesson and driven his own car the very short distance to the place where the taxi driver and I had gotten stuck to come and pick me up.
Professor Yamaguchi's warm smile immediately set me at ease. He didn't speak much English, and I didn't speak any Japanese yet, but he made it clear to me that I was welcome. He brought me to his dojo, which was right above his house, and I became his student at once. It's no exaggeration to say that my life has never been the same.
Clarity of Mind and Body
Throughout this book, I've shared amazing stories about Master Ueshiba, the founder of aikido, dodging bullets and defeating better-armed opponents through his preternatural ability of focus. That kind of total clarity of mind and body is called sumi-kiri, and it's the summation of everything we've talked about in this book.
The word kiri comes from the verb kiru, “to cut.” Literally, sumi-kiri means “cutting through the clutter” of distractions, fear, ego, anger, and anxiety. It's the ability to find your calm energy, hold on to your one-point, achieve mushin, and understand the heart of a problem with zanshin. It's all of the concepts explained in this book, all rolled into one preternatural ability to remain calmly focused in the midst of chaos—whether in battle, the boardroom, or the bedroom (family/personal life).
When you embrace sumi-kiri, you know without knowing, see without seeing. You're aware of everything that's happening within and around you, but you're not zipping around or darting your eyes from place to place like a startled squirrel. You're alert, and not in an agitated, overcaffeinated way—you're completely calm and yet completely ready to take decisive action.
I don't think even Master Ueshiba lived in this state of full enlightenment all the time. I have achieved this state in fits and spurts. I have moments when I can feel my awareness expanding, when I know I'm fully aligned, personally, professionally, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. I see this state in glimpses—and those glimpses are powerful enough to keep me striving for more of a good thing.
Achieving sumi-kiri won't erase all the problems and obstacles from your life. But when you are at or near that state of sumi-kiri, problems will become opportunities. They will cease to unsettle you. You'll be able to see that counterintuitive answer, that hidden path, that win-win solution nobody else can see. What's more, you'll be comfortable with the problems you face. You will be able to accept the world as it is and as it is not.
The Road to Acceptance
This kind of acceptance is very difficult, even for someone like me, who has been studying aikido for many years. When you look at a situation that is not as you want it to be—a relationship that's encountering difficulties, a product that's not selling, a boss who never seems satisfied—it's hard not to want to keep tinkering around the edges of that problem. It's hard to suppress that very human impulse to deny the reality of the situation and try to “fix” the problem with a Band-Aid solution: We just need to spend more time together. We just need a new tagline. I just need to get this big project off the ground.
Aikido and sumi-kiri show you a different path. They show you a way to look at that problem head-on, accept it as it is, and get comfortable with the way it is not. They show you how to confront the heart of that problem and use your energies in the most direct and efficient way possible. Maybe it's having the strength to end the relationship, or going into counseling, or just having an honest conversation about what's not working. Maybe it means scrapping that product because it's just not going to work—or accepting customer criticism and redesigning the user experience. Maybe it means moving to a new department, or a new company, to get away from a toxic boss. Whatever the action is, sumi-kiri helps you see the answer clearly and find the courage to do something about it.
Master Ueshiba was a truly special individual. He was an old-school Japanese warrior in the samurai tradition. He knew how to crush his opponents when he had to. He also studied meditation for many years. In the end, he combined those two strands of his personality—the warrior and the mystic—to create this beautiful martial art. Aikido was the culmination of a lifetime of work and study.
But sumi-kiri is not something you have to wait until the end of your life to achieve. It's not something that only an extraordinary warrior-monk like Ueshiba can achieve. It's something to strive for, find, lose, and find again, over the course of your entire life. Starting today. Starting right now.
Listening to the Inner Voice
The more you practice the principles I've explained in this book, the more you'll experience this state of sumi-kiri. The closer you get to true clarity, the more you'll reap the benefits. I wouldn't suggest that you go out and try to dodge bullets or evade sword-wielding opponents, but I can promise you'll be better able to find and maintain your true path.
As you move closer to sumi-kiri, you'll find it becomes easier and easier to listen to your inner voice. In the Christian tradition, this voice is referred to as the “still, small voice,” the voice of God that speaks in the silence of your heart. In Eastern traditions like Buddhism, clearing the mind and letting go of attachment and ego are believed to lead to insight and enlightenment. Personally, I like to call the insights that arise from clarity “inklings.”
One of my favorite definitions of inklings comes from coachville.com:1
Inklings are higher intelligence: The definition of an inkling is a subtle sense of something, even with no evidence to back it up. An inkling is even quieter than intuition and even more powerful. Inklings are at the gateway of truth and as we sensitize ourselves to feel at this level, we get access to inklings and have the courage to act on them, vs waiting for them to become intuition or fact. As clients come to trust their inklings, they make better choices sooner.
An inkling is like intuition, but only the first, earliest stirrings of intuition. Like the Christian “still, small voice” or the insight that comes through meditation, an inkling develops only when your mind is still—when you've entered a state of mushin and you're working on all the principles we've discussed in this book.
The more you learn to quiet your mind, the better you'll be able to pick up the first hints of a gut feeling. Every major change I've made in my life has been the result of an inkling. When I chose to enter the Marine Corps, I did it because I had this faint intuition that it was the right course for me, and that intuition slowly grew stronger and stronger. When I decided to stay in Japan after finishing active duty in the Marine Corps, I did it because I had a gut feeling that it was the right place for me—that the next right step for me was to devote myself to studying Japanese, meditation, and aikido. And when I decided to leave Japan and return to America, I did it because I felt it was time to make a change and move on to the next phase of my life.
Clearing the Way for Action
To truly hear these subtle, life-changing whispers, you have to start to quiet your mind. Then you can hear the message in that silence. Think of it as the voice of God or the universe or your deepest self—whatever you feel comfortable with. But listen. Really try to hear what that inner voice is telling you. And then take relevant action with massive, massive support to help you succeed.
It's the relevant action that's the hard part for most of us. Maybe you have this nagging feeling you might want to go back to school—but it's just not practical, it's so expensive, you're too old, it just doesn't make sense. So you don't do it. And you keep drifting further and further from your true path. But if you're maintaining your one-point, if you have deep connections to yourself and the people around you, if you're practicing mushin and regularly emptying your mind, if you have kokyu keeping you present, you're unifying through aiki, and you have the courage to take action and enter on the center of a problem, then that little inkling of an idea will become clearer and clearer—and you'll find the courage to take relevant action. Action that leads to true victory through harmony. And a BA, or MBA, or PhD.
When you don't listen to that little voice at the center of your soul, that's when you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, anxious and afraid. Refusing to listen to that voice causes analysis paralysis. That's what makes you sit at your desk staring at the phone, waiting as time slowly creeps by. That's what makes you ignore your potential and underperform—because you're not channeling your energy in the right direction.
When you learn to listen to that little voice and take relevant action on what you hear, you may find that you need to make a major change in your life. Or you may find that you are more fulfilled than you had let yourself believe. Only you have the answer. Only by seeking clarity will you be able to hear what that small voice is telling you.
What will your inklings tell you? Where will sumi-kiri lead you? What would your life look like if you were on your true path?
My Teacher
From the day I met aikido teacher, Professor Iwao Yamaguchi, he has been a constant guiding presence in my life. I was literally lost when I met him, and even now, Professor Yamaguchi is still showing me the way. When I get the chance to talk to him or visit him in Japan, it's like a spiritual reset. He's like a bright beacon in my life, showing me the way, and every conversation with him helps me correct my course and sail on with confidence.
Yamaguchi-Sensei was born during World War II. Okinawa was the site of a horrific land battle, and the civilian Okinawan population was tragically abused by the Japanese imperial soldiers. There were more Okinawan civilian casualties during the war than among Japanese and American soldiers combined. During the fighting, civilians and imperial soldiers alike retreated to the caves that dotted the landscape on this volcanic island; there are tales of Japanese imperial soldiers murdering infants so that their cries wouldn't give away their position. The island was decimated by the war, and Yamaguchi-Sensei's family suffered greatly. He grew up poor, and he never went to college.
Japanese society is organized around an orderly progression from primary school to high school to college to the keiretsu. Young people push themselves to study as hard as they can, fighting at each step of the way to get into the best primary schools, the best colleges, the best companies. Everyone suffers together. Everyone ends up in pretty much the same place—toiling away in a giant corporation for the rest of their lives.
Yamaguchi-Sensei didn't do any of that. He graduated from high school and then decided to do something very un-Japanese: He became an entrepreneur. He started his own import-export company. And it was a huge success—Yamaguchi-Sensei became wealthy at a very young age. By his late 20s, he already had a fancy car, home, and all the consumer trappings. By his early 30s, he even owned his own property, an almost unheard-of accomplishment in Japan. The country has so little land that real estate is often sold with 90-year generational mortgages, on the expectation that your kids and your grandkids will inherit the property and carry on the work of paying it off. To purchase your own property as a young adult was a huge accomplishment.
And yet Yamaguchi-Sensei had the wisdom to look past all these external trappings of success and realize that he wasn't happy. He decided to sell his company and dedicate his life to the study, teaching, and dissemination of aikido. Meanwhile, his wife continued to work for one of the two major Okinawan newspaper companies. They raised four wonderful children together in a very unconventional, un-Japanese fashion.
At almost every turn, Professor Yamaguchi flouted convention. He chose to be an entrepreneur instead of going to college; he chose to devote his life to study instead of pursuing more success. He chose a wife who, unlike most Japanese women, kept working after getting married and having kids. His path kept curving in an unexpected, beautiful direction. He had the wisdom to see this, and the courage to go his own way despite all the social pressure to conform.
Even his choice of aikido as opposed to another martial art was countercultural. Karate is the traditional Okinawan martial art. Aikido was developed on the mainland, and particularly in the years after World War II, most Okinawans viewed anything from mainland Japan with suspicion. Like many young boys on Okinawa, Yamaguchi-Sensei grew up studying karate. Later, after graduating high school, he also started studying a very austere, physically demanding form of yoga. This practice started him on the path toward more spiritual practices. Eventually, he discovered aikido. Like Ueshiba, he found that this practice blended the physical and spiritual disciplines. So, despite the fact that he was an Okinawan and aikido was a mainland discipline, he opened an aikido school on Okinawa. Ultimately, that's how I found him—his was the only aikido school on the island. He was the only game in town.
Duty and Obligation
Yamaguchi-Sensei must have been operating from something like sumi-kiri even before he began to study aikido. Sumi-kiri cuts through the clutter of “should” and “woulds” and “coulds.” It helps you see beyond the roles that have been imposed on you. It helps you see where in your life you've compromised yourself because of someone else's expectations. Did you choose your career because your parents wanted you to live up to some narrow definition of success? Do you always organize the family vacations because you're supposed to be “the responsible one”?
When you're operating from a place of sumi-kiri, you're not weighed down by guilt or obligation. You're able to cut through all those ideas about who you're supposed to be and make the right decision, the decision that protects your own essential energy, as well as the energy of those around you. After all, when you're distorting your own ki, the people around you can sense it. They'll be uncomfortable because they'll sense your discomfort. Plus, you won't be as effective as you could be, and whatever role you're playing, you'll be taking it away from someone who would be better suited for it.
Sumi-kiri helps you see your true path and gives you the courage to follow it. That's what Professor Yamaguchi has done at every step of his journey. There are many people in the world for whom that straight-line life that's so common in Japan works beautifully well. For many people, that life creates a structure in which they're able to strive to be their best selves. But that life wasn't right for Yamaguchi-Sensei, and he had the clarity to see that and, more important, the courage to find his own way.
Of course, there are many forms of duty and obligation that are honorable and encourage us to be our best selves. The sense of duty we feel as children of our parents, the obligation to help them as they age is, in many families, a beautiful and honorable thing. We all have obligations to our friends, our spouse, our children, and these obligations structure our lives in enriching ways. But the clarity of sumi-kiri helps us determine the difference between a useful duty and a sense of duty born in guilt, an obligation that does nothing but hold us back.
Strength Forged in Pain
As a cancer survivor, I'm particularly drawn to stories of people who have survived tragedy or fought back against seemingly insurmountable odds. I can't think of many people who have faced greater odds with more courage than Nick Vujicic.
Vujicic was born without limbs—he has no arms or legs. Doctors couldn't find any medical explanation for his condition. It didn't seem to be a genetic disorder, and it wasn't related to damage from anything like thalidomide.2 It seemed senseless. Doctors now know that his condition is due to something called tetra-amelia syndrome,3 an extremely rare congenital defect that essentially just means exactly what happened to Vujicic—a child is born without limbs. Most children born this way don't live very long.4 But Vujicic has not only survived but thrived.
Of course, it hasn't been easy. Vujicic's differences made him a target for bullies in school. He contemplated suicide when he was just 10 years old. “I felt I had no value,” he has said. He eventually found hope through the idea he might be able to help someone else. “I saw a boy with no arms and legs like me, and I knew I could help him,” he has said.5
Vujicic turned that desire to help others into a lifelong mission. He now travels all over the world, speaking to antibullying and suicide prevention groups as well as corporate audiences. His message is simple: Don't give up. “We sometimes wait for a miracle to happen in life, but the miracle never comes,” he says. “I wish many things were different in my life. But knowing I can be a miracle for someone else makes my life worth living.”6
Those words exemplify the clarity that comes from sumi-kiri. Vujicic knows better than anyone that you can't wait around for someone else to solve your problems. You can't wait for the universe to drop solutions in your lap. You have to look at your life with clear eyes, stripping away all the shame and fear that might hold you back or keep you waiting, and choose a course of action.
Aikido teaches us not to choose or prolong conflict unnecessarily. But it does not teach passivity. In fact, the clarity that comes from practicing the techniques we've discussed in this book helps move us into distinct, life-changing action. An enlightened warrior like Ueshiba wouldn't start a fight unless he had to. But he also wouldn't back down from one. And he certainly wouldn't sit around waiting for someone else to solve his problems. Sumi-kiri strips away all that's inessential and leads us to the right and honorable action. For Vujicic, that honorable action was to speak up and let others learn from his example that life is always worth living, no matter what challenges you face.
Tempered Steel
Vujicic faced unbelievable odds. My teacher, Yamaguchi-Sensei, grew up poor, his family and his people devastated by war. I wouldn't say I have suffered anything like the way these warriors have suffered, but I know I wouldn't have written this book and accomplished everything I have if I hadn't suffered through cancer. Obviously, I wouldn't wish suffering on anyone. But it's undeniable that suffering can make us stronger.
Suffering can help us cut through that clutter that obscures our true purpose. Remember, the kiri in sumi-kiri comes from the verb kiru, to cut. Think of those beautiful, elegant samurai swords that cut so cleanly. They're created through pressure, through fire. They're beaten and tempered, and that's what makes them so beautiful and powerful.
It's the same with us. The hard truth is that none of us gets through this life without encountering any hardship—unless we hold ourselves back and refuse to push ourselves to grow. Taking risks, failing, going through trials, all of these things help us become beautifully sharp, elegant, graceful, and powerful. Suffering a setback, whether it's personal, physical, emotional, or professional, can be enormously clarifying. It can help us get to that state where everything inessential falls away and we see our way forward with clear eyes.
We're all wonderfully imperfect, beautifully flawed human beings. We all fail sometimes. Ultimately, that's what makes life interesting. Failure pushes us to learn something new, to grow. Hopefully, each time we suffer a setback, we gain some insight that helps us make our lives, and the lives of those around us, more abundant and joyful.
A World of Enlightened Warriors
Through the clarity of sumi-kiri, we can all learn to make better decisions, to expend less of our energy fighting pointless fights and devote more of it to improving our own lives and those of everyone around us. It's a beautiful vision of a better, more useful, less stressful life. But it's even more beautiful to imagine a world full of people who see clearly and act decisively, remain centered in the midst of stress, and seek win-win solutions whenever possible.
We've talked a lot in the course of this book about the overstimulated, overstressed, always-on nature of our world today. Particularly in American culture, work is slowly but surely eating up all of our free time. We work longer and longer hours, take fewer and fewer vacations, and even when we're not technically at the office, we're expected to answer e-mails and be on call 24/7. We teach our kids to push themselves harder and harder in order to fight for a place at the best school so they can rack up tens of thousands of dollars in debt to join the same rat race that's killing us. What time we do have between crises at work, we spend distracted, connected with everyone and yet not truly connecting at all.
An enlightened warrior would never agree to live like this. When you look at our modern world through the crystal-clear lens of sumi-kiri, you can see how incredibly inefficient and badly designed our lives are. You can see, immediately and urgently, that your life has to change. You can see that you have to cut out distractions and focus on what's truly important. You can see how all of this stress and chaos is pulling you away from your one-point, and you can let go of the strings of ego and fear that keep you tied into this daily grind.
Are You Ready to Transform Your World?
Imagine what your life could look like if you stepped away from all that day-to-day insanity and recentered your life around your true priorities. Imagine the time you'd free up by eliminating distractions. Imagine the mental energy you'd free up by letting go of the ego and fear that keep you tied to all these worn-out patterns of behavior. Imagine the creative new solutions you could come up with if you let go of your need to fight for the sake of fighting.
As you start to apply the principles you've learned in this book, you'll find your life starts to open up, to expand. You'll be less stressed and more focused. You'll make better choices. You'll have fewer enemies because you won't let your ego push you to pick unnecessary fights; instead, you'll look for ways to cooperate with or work around your opponents. You'll devote more time to what truly matters. You'll have more time for friends and family. Your life will become one of abundance, joy, and harmony. This is what allows access to effortless peak performance and balance.
And it's not just your life that will change. Your colleagues and your boss will find that work is getting done faster, with fewer pointless fights and more creative solutions. Your spouse, friends, and family will find you're more present when you're with them. The ripple effects of the changes you're making could expand well beyond your immediate circle. What if you decide to start your own business? You could end up giving people jobs and improving the lives of multiple families. What if you come up with an innovative new product or service to help your company win without fighting? You could end up improving the lives of all of your company's customers.
Imagine a world full of people who live their lives deliberately, staying focused on their core values, seeking harmony, and acting without regard to their own fear and ego. Imagine a world full of those kinds of positive changes, rippling outward in hundreds and thousands of circles of virtue. Imagine a world full of passionate, committed, clear-eyed people like Nick Vujicic and Yamaguchi-Sensei. What would our world look like if we all freed ourselves to live our best lives? What kind of peace, balance, and abundance could we create?
I invite you to take the first step toward creating that world today. Embrace the exercises, tips, and techniques I've outlined in this book. See if you can live a more deliberate and honorable life. I promise you, you'll see positive changes immediately—and those changes will ripple outward from your life to touch the lives of others, helping to make the world a better place, one decision at a time. That's the world I want to live in—a world where we all work to make the seemingly impossible, possible. Will you join me?