What Is The Dharma Of Aikido? | w/ Teja Fudomyo Bell

The word Dharma comes from Sanskrit and can point to spiritual teaching, universal principle, or ultimate reality.

Aikido is not always spoken about in these terms. But beneath its techniques, forms, and martial expression lies a deeper question:

What universal principles is Aikido actually asking us to realize and embody?

For me, this is the Dharma of Aikido.

O Sensei’s Aikido emerged from a profound spiritual vision. Whatever language we use to interpret that vision, the art points toward something more than technical effectiveness.

At its deepest, Aikido explores how conflict can be transformed into greater wholeness.

That does not mean avoiding conflict.

It does not mean becoming passive.

And it certainly does not mean pretending that aggression, difference, or power do not exist.

The practice asks us to enter conflict directly while discovering a response that does not merely reproduce the same opposition we began with.

From Technique To Universal Principle

If Aikido is genuinely a spiritual path, then its deeper principles must become directly knowable.

Not only as ideas.

Not only as something O Sensei realized.

And not only as techniques performed on the mat.

We have to learn to experience these principles ourselves.

To understand them.

To embody them.

And eventually, to express them through the way we practice and live.

This is where the distinction between form and source becomes important.

Technique is a form.

The Dharma is what the form is pointing toward.

The deeper question is whether our practice gives us increasing access to that source.

An Aiki-Discussion With Teja “Fudo Myo” Bell

In this conversation, I explore the Dharma of Aikido with Teja “Fudo Myo” Bell, a Zen Buddhist Roshi, Qigong teacher, and Aikido teacher.

Interestingly, this was our first meeting.

Yet because we shared so much common ground in Aikido, meditation, and contemplative practice, we were able to move very quickly into deeper territory.

Our conversation explores questions including:

• What do we mean by Dharma?

• What might the Dharma of Aikido actually be?

• How does spiritual realization affect the way we understand and practice Aikido?

• What is the relationship between meditation and martial practice?

• How does awakening to an absolute or non-dual dimension reorganize our relationship to conflict?

• What does it mean for Aikido to evolve without losing contact with its spiritual source?

We also touch on a question that has remained central to my own path:

Are we looking for spirituality in the form of Aikido, or are we learning to recognize the spiritual source that Aikido can express?

That distinction became especially important in my encounter with Sayadaw U Pandita, who once told me:

“When you have spiritual protection, you don’t need martial protection.”

That experience fundamentally changed my relationship to Aikido.

It helped me see that the martial form can express spiritual realization, but it is not itself the source of that realization.

Watch The Conversation

As you watch, I invite you to hold one question:

What is the Dharma of Aikido for you?

Not merely what you believe it should be.

What do you actually experience as the deeper principle organizing your practice?

And how is that principle showing up beyond the dojo?