Moerushin (燃える心) Dojo translates roughly as “burning heart/mind/spirit training hall.” Names are tricky things, and this name was suggested by Andrew Sato Shihan, the head of the Aikido World Alliance. It fits in several ways, and the meaning is worth a little reflection.
One meaning here might point to intense, passionate concentration. The Soto Zen teacher Taisen Deshimaru (1914-1982) once said “You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair,” and this is a useful approach to both meditation and training. Fire is intense, and the burning heart/mind/spirit is the sense of being “fired up,” enthusiastic, and focused.
On the other hand–and still drawing from Buddhism–in the Ādittapariyāya Sutta (a.k.a. the Fire Sutra) fire is used as a metaphor to encourage detachment:
…Everything, O Jatilas*, is burning. The eye is burning, all the senses are burning, thoughts are burning. They are burning with the fire of lust. There is anger, and there is ignorance, there is hatred, and as long as the fire finds flammable things upon which it can feed, so long will it burn, and there will be birth and death, decay, grief, lamentation, suffering, despair, and sorrow.
–The Fire Sermon
So, it is enthusiastic focus? Or detachment? “Burning Heart” captures both at once. There are plenty of other possibilities. At the end of the day, the important thing isn’t the meaning that the name brings–but the meaning that we give to the name. I hope that with time Moerushin will be associated with peaceful, enthusiastic attentiveness and mutual support.
-TM
*The Jatilas were members of a Brahman sect in India.