When an individual departs this life, those of us remaining become acutely aware of our indebtedness to this person, to the sweat and effort he or she put into their life's work and to the gifts they left us as a result. We also become acutely aware that we no longer have direct access to them - ever. We are poignantly reminded that "Now is now," and that opportunities not taken now may be lost forever.

We owe it to ourselves and to others coming after us to open our minds to aikido, to take advantage of the wealth of experience and talent that is still available to us in the form of living, vibrant teachers. These individuals have persevered in their own training, they have discovered information unique unto them, and we have the opportunity to open ourselves and learn so much.

To become educated we read many books. We can take a similar approach to our aikido education, but in this case, seminars and classes with great teachers are our "books." They are the most valuable form of resource material available to us, real-time, for our personal research. For a paper or thesis in school, we gather many resources and distill and synthesize them to create a unique interpretation, to which we then sign our name. It is similar in aikido, where we are creating our own aikido knowledge and skill by learning from many teachers and synthesizing that knowledge with the hard work of our daily training.

In the end, aikido is experiential, body to body and skin to skin, mind to mind, and budo cannot be learned entirely from books or even videos. Let's not ignore the opportunities at hand, for we never know when they may disappear.

I would like to call your attention to our Featured Article by a very fine U.S. aikido instructor, William Gleason sensei, founder of Shobu Aikido of Boston. You won't want to miss this compelling account of his personal experiences in Japan in the late 1960's and '70's at Honbu Dojo and with his primary teacher, Shihan Seigo Yamaguchi. Gleason sensei continues a vigorous and dedicated practice today, operating his dojo and conducting seminars, passing on the gifts of Yamaguchi sensei and the influences of other teachers.