Abundant Peace [Paperback]

John Stevens (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 1987

Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), the founder of Aikido—whose name means "abundant peace"—was "undoubtedly the greatest martial artist who ever lived," according to his biographer, John Stevens. "Even if we accept every exploit of all the legendary warriors, East and West, as being literally true, none of those accomplishments can be compared to Morihei's documented ability to disarm any attacker, throw a dozen men simultaneously, and down and pin opponents without touching them, recorded scores of times in photographs, on film, and by personal testimony." How did the diminutive master—barely five feet tall—attain this uncanny power? In Abundant Peace, John Stevens tells the real story behind Morihei's achievement, illuminating the man and his message in a way that will delight and stimulate the reader. Focusing on the how and why of Morihei's career, Stevens describes the people, events, and ideas that influenced his lifelong spiritual quest, which culminated in the unique teachings of Aikido. Illustrated with photographs of Morihei in action and filled with revealing anecdotes about his life and times, the book also offers a valuable discussion of the Founder's conception of Aikido as a path of harmony and love, unifying mind and body, self and others, man and the universe.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Abundant Peace is the simply told biography of 'the greatest martial artist who ever lived,' Morihei Ueshiba. Barely five feet tall, Ueshiba trained himself to be the world's most amazing—and indestructible—fighter. Yet he was a man of peace and his personally created martial art, Aikido, has been called a path to love. John Stevens, author of Aikido: The Way of Harmony, has now written an inspiring and anecdote-rich account of Ueshiba's relentless pursuit (and realization) of universal truth. Abundant Peace, though short, reveals many little known facts about the master's life and includes rare photographs and illustrations." —East West

From the Inside Flap

Focuses on the "how" and "why" of the quest of Morihei (the founder of Aikido-Japanes Martial Arts), concentrating on a discussion of the people, events, and ideas that most influenced the master.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 129 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1st edition (May 12, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877733503
• ISBN-13: 978-0877733508
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #699,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Overview of the Origins of Aikido, December 29, 2000

By 

Smerdyakov - See all my reviews

This review is from: Abundant Peace (Paperback)

Stevens' biography of Morihei Ueshiba goes a long way towards providing the interested student with great information about the origins and philosophies behind Aikido. His examination of the Omoto-kyo religion and Ueshiba's esoteric Shinto beliefs provides a great background on the philisophy of Aikido, while the information on Morihei Ueshiba's teachers and personal investigations into the martial arts shows both the origonality and relation to other arts of Aikido. The book moves reletively quickly over Ueshiba's life, and at times it feels as if a lot of time is being rather quickly skipped over. It would be interesting to know what other information there is to fill in these gaps. The author also makes obvious his own personal admiration for Ueshiba; the many stories of O-Sensei's unbelievable feats are presented uncritically, and with no more concrete attribution than any of the other apocryphal reports of Ueshiba's power. Abundant Peace is perhaps most valuable as a source of information on the martial and philisophical origins of Aikido, particularly for its focus on the origins of the Omoto-kyo movement, Ueshiba's own beliefs in kotodama, and the innovation involved in the techniques of Aikido. As a biography of Morihei Ueshiba it is at times too brief and too uncritical, but serves as an excellent starting point for learning about the life of the founder of Aikido.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "In true budo there are no enemies."---Morihei Ueshiba, November 26, 2006

By 

J. H. Minde "Everything I need is right here" (Boca Raton, Florida and Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Abundant Peace (Paperback)

ABUNDANT PEACE is akidoka John Stevens' rather quirky (coffee table paperback) biography of the rather quirky Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), the founder of Aikido, usually referred to by Aikidokai (but interestingly, never by Stevens himself in this book) as O'Sensei, the Great Teacher.

Stevens unhesitatingly says that Ueshiba was "undoubtedly the greatest martial artist who ever lived" and this claim may well be true. The diminutive (5'0'') Ueshiba was able to pin sumo wrestlers with one finger, evade multiple attackers with such grace that he literally became invisible to them, and could defeat an opponent simply by uttering a "peculiar kiai."

Ueshiba ultimately became a universalist, but very little in the first half of his life indicated that he would do so. Ueshiba was idiosyncratic at best (he was given to pounding his head against rocks hundreds of times a day in order to thicken his skull and enjoyed uprooting small trees barehanded in contests of strength), temperamental, moody, and given to egoistic adventurism (he founded an agricultural colony on barren Hokkaido, later leaving it suddenly and without explanation, and was intimately involved in the Great Mongolian Adventure, a Japanese expansionist incursion into China for which he was nearly hanged by that country's leaders).

The one constant in Ueshiba's life was martial arts, and even here his choices seemed strange. As a young man he came under the tutelage of Sokaku Takeda, a hard-drinking, violent and mendacious street fighter who was also the last Samurai-trained warrior in Japan. Although Ueshiba later broke with Sokaku, early Aikido clearly owes much to the man.

Following his break with Sokaku, Ueshiba became a close disciple of Onisaburo, the founder of Omoto-Kyo, a messianic Shinto sect. The odd Onisaburo was part charlatan, part clairvoyant, part spiritualist, and part Liberace (at least in his theatricality). In the 1920s, Japan was undergoing a spiritual crisis as those who followed the old ways finally died out and modernity and militarism became key. Dime store messiahs seemed to be on every streetcorner, but Onisaburo maintained his credibility. The Omoto-Kyo sect became so popular that it was violently suppressed by the government around 1932. A few selected personages (Ueshiba among them) were spared. In Ueshiba's case, his martial arts prowess was such that he was appointed to teach the Japanese military. It may seem ironic that Ueshiba (whose name means "Abundant Peace") was teaching Aikido ("The Way of Peace") to what was unquestionably one of the most bellicose organizations ever formed, but it was not the first, nor would it be the last, time that irony ruled Ueshiba's life.

In 1942, Ueshiba underwent the second of his three great enlightenments in which he perceived the oneness of all life, soon thereafter resigning his offices and becoming a committed pacifist. Stevens rather cynically points out that his second enlightenment occurred not long after Pearl Harbor, when Ueshiba's retreat from public life would mean that he had little chance of being marked as a war criminal after the Pacific War, a war he knew Japan could not win. Be that as it may, Ueshiba is proof positive that human beings can grow and change throughout their lives. There is no greater difference ever seen than between the dour middle-aged Ueshiba, looking like a Mexican bandit while being photographed in leg irons as a Chinese prisoner during the Great Mongolian Adventure, and the aged will o' the wisp bearded sage who created a kakemono which reads, "The lovely form of heaven and earth lovingly created by the Great God, Father of Humankind."

Stevens rather bizarrely divided ABUNDANT PEACE into three sections. "The Man" is a straightforward, honest, but rather colorless recitation of the facts of Ueshiba's outer life. "The Martial Artist" addresses Ueshiba's development of Aikido over his lifetime from a form of attack and defense into a philosophy of love. "The Message" is a discussion of Ueshiba's inner life, the spiritual underpinnings of Aikido, the importance of ki (life energy) in the practice, and (though Ueshiba was Shinto not Buddhist) Aikido's relationship especially to Zen (Stevens himself is a Professor of Buddhist studies, which explains this otherwise inexplicable focus on a faith not Ueshiba's own). Despite Ueshiba's Omoto-Kyo Shinto practice, so much of his writing is identical to Zen philosophy that the cross-pollination of Japanese culture is completely evident throughout.

The problem with this three-way division of ABUNDANT PEACE is that each section presents us a dynamically different Ueshiba, dividing him into three parts. Unlike Caesar's Gaul, it would have been better if Stevens had given us a unified portrait of this incredibly complex, self-contradictory, earthy and spiritual man, and brought him alive. As it is, ABUNDANT PEACE is a fine if brief introduction to the world of Aikido and it's amazing founder.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good look at Aikido and it's founder., November 26, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Abundant Peace (Paperback)

This is a great book to all those who are interested in aikido. But not just the martial side. You will learn to appreciate how the style came to be, and the life of the man who brought it to be. The parts I realy enjoyed with this book was it went right back to the childhood days of O Sensi and showed right from the start where he begen his training and the resons why. After reading this book you can feel like you lived a lifetime with one of the greatest masters of our time.