Winding path

Today is the anniversary of the outbreak of the November Uprising and the first day of Advent. One of advent’s candles symbolizes Peace. The creator of Aikido Morihei Ueshiba, under the influence of sudden spiritual experience, discovered in a sense the truth preached by St. Paul that “to be a Samurai, that is, to serve the POWER OF LOVE AND ADORE IT.” Ms Ueshiba’s cosmology is a combination of Buddhism, the Japanese Shinto religion and the Omoto-Kyo shard. Omoto-Kyo’s followers worshipped as a god the creator of Esperanto – Louis Zamenhof, whose dream was a world of peace. The idea of peace became the meaning of M. Ueshiba’s life and teaching. Mr Zamenhoff was spiritually influenced by the Jewish scholar Hillel, who lived in A.D. and was famous for his meekness and for creating a new interpretation of Jewish law. Hillel is the author of the following teaching: “Love your neighbor as yourself, and do not do to your neighbor what you would not want to be done to you. Love peace and follow peace.”

Hillel could have been a teacher of St. Paul’s. The eight main samurai virtues recognized for centuries in the Land of the Cherry Blossoms are in part the same virtues which in Christian science have been recognized as the fruits of the Holy Spirit: honesty, honor, courtesy, composure, righteousness, goodness, fidelity and fortitude. The last general of the Uprising is General Rybinski.