It has been a year since I lost my brother JD Sandoval. There remains a hole in my soul, and a hole in the aikido world. In our youth, JD and I had an unspoken agreement. We regularly tried to affirm one anothers greatness while also bearing joyful witness to our ignorance. Shibata Sensei added a solvent to our grandiosity on the training mat, keeping every moment real. Meanwhile beers, burgers and laughs medicated our young egos back to life in the late hours after practice. JD was my dear friend.
To know JD was to know what being loved by someone who would die for you feels like. Remarkably, JD spread his heart widely enough for countless others to be nurtured by this. He was clear on this task. This was his code. This was his mission, his dharma. JD’s fierce love came so naturally that its now clear to me that this is why he was with us and why aikido was the vehicle he choose for expressing this fierce love.
Legendary
True to form, I remain prone to grandiose thinking. For instance, I still tell myself there was something unique happening around the time that JD and I were in the pit of our aikido cauldron. This era was a highly concentrated period of Aikido training. JD and I found Shibata Sensei, one another, and the kenshusei training program at a time in our lives when we were physically and mentally ready and hungry. Shibata Sensei and Chiba Sensei brought the essence of aikido to us for years of intensive, immersive practice. We trained within a pool of aikido practitioners that spanned generations and included students from across the world.
Within his first years of aikido training, JD had surpassed any uke I had seen. He would burst forth to take ukemi with a clear readiness to die. He neutralized the convergence of any martial moment with lethal grace. Despite having the strength of a silverback, JD’s movements had razor sharp precision, and the delicate tenderness of a timeless control. All of this power emanated from one of the warmest hearts I have known. Pumping in JD was the fierce determination of a man pursuing a just world. He would willingly throw his body in front of any wrong he observed. JD wasn’t looking for a fight (well… sometimes) but he was always ready to make sacrifices in order to balance the scales of right and wrong. We called one another brothers, and anytime he did, I was honored and humbled.
JD and I would train together at Berkeley Aikikai under Shibata Sensei throughout a decade. Each day on the mat was an adventure. Walking into the dojo required letting go of the rest of the world and both of us could be a bit stubborn in this, occasionally challenging the patience of our teacher. During those years it seemed that the combination of JD’s talent and his relentless will power opened a doorway for others to see aikido’s essence. I watched as Shibata Sensei and Chiba Sensei painted the purest illustrations of aikido with JD’s ukemi as the vessel for their expression. The combined gifts of these men distilled aikido into martial moments where nothing remained but the instantaneous transformation of force. I believe these demonstrations, set in motion years of development for a community of practitioners.
Aging into Aikido
A few weeks before his death JD and I had a talk. We had begun having more frequent talks. I could feel each of us reconciling and synthesizing our three decades together and the interweaving of our paths. It was clear from our talks that he continued to know me deeply. Sometime in this life (or maybe some other) the journey of our souls had grown twisted together. In our talks we laughed the laughter only available to men who have shared love, admiration, passion, loss, disappointment, enduring hope and an obligation. We parsed through our path together like men who can only do so if they have know the same sorrow and joy.
Thirty years ago JD encouraged me to join the kenshusei program at Berkely Aikikai. I remember feeling honored at the time. It was hard to understand why this raspy voiced Oakland raised, force of a young man, welcomed my company on a martial journey. JD and I went on to train together for years. We sat together through numerous sesshin, watching the drip of each hour tear away at our desire to be anywhere else. JD was the best man at my wedding and he made up the full guest list of my bachelor party. JD was with me when my Mother died and then again when my Father died. He joined me at the hospital when our first son was born and he hosted a seminar for me before my family and I left the Bay Area. JD would later be a guest instructor for me when I opened my dojo in Fargo. The truth is, JD was with me in every imaginable, meaningful moment of my life over thirty years. Had I ever been on my death bed, I’m certain he would have been there beside me.
My Bodhisattva Brother
JD was living in his dojo when COVID shut down his live training. He was doing online sessions maintaining his vigil over his aikido practice. In our talks, I listened to him still enthusiastically carving out the essence of his art. Like always, he was stripping away the unnecessary debris of his masterpiece. Over the years, I had grown more worried about his health, and we spent some time discussing this in our talks.
In April last year, I called again, leaving a voicemail. We had been talking weekly, and he usually answered the calls, but I didn’t hear back. I called again a few days later… more concerned. In my voicemail, I anxiously told him that I needed to know he was well. It would take several days before I would hear from him. His trademark raspy voice was reduced to a whisper and he described a horrible few weeks with COVID.
JD always had a way with stories and his COVID illness was no exception. His temperature had soared to 105 as he holed up in his dojo. His room, filled with all of his possessions, was the size of a large closet. The illness had him in bed for days. He was often unable to move and had hallucinations and visions. He described an experience of dying in these visions. He told me that his training seemed to have prepared him to endure the relentless fires of the illness. He told me it was hell.
Years ago Shibata Sensei once wrote our “names” down in calligraphy form. They weren’t nicknames, but like names of initiation. The names felt like touchstones from our teacher describing some essence he saw in us. The name that Shibata Sensei gave JD was Bodhi.
As I listened to JD tell the story of his hallucinations I was reminded of the Buddha’s journey under the Bodhi tree. When I told JD the story about the Buddha’s path to enlightenment through hallucination and temptation under the Bodhi tree he said…”Wait what…holy @#$%& Bobby that’s the nickname Sensei gave me. His name for me was Bodhi!”
“Yeah, Sensei said it meant ‘carry on justice’, right?” I replied.
“Yeah” he said, still stirred by the connection.
“You’re a buddha,” I said.
“@#$%& no!” he scoffed, laughing off this notion.
“That’s what the Buddha would say.” I told him, pleased to know my brother had been to hell, and come back.
Tribute
I’ve often thought over the past year of how I can best honor my dear friend. I have tried to compose the words for that many times. What we shared seems so rare, precious and fleeting, as though one would need countless lifetimes to find such a remarkable connection.
But, now I think what is most remarkable is that my connection to JD was not unique at all. Innumerable people felt connected to him, cared for by him and even protected by him. The path he chose was to shoulder this burden for others within a world of ceaseless pain and injustice. JD isn’t gone, he’s just resting. What pulsed through his veins has found a home in each of us who knew him. To truly know him is to know that his work lives on. To honor JD is to honor his legacy of sacrifice, service, kindness and compassion…but with fewer burgers and beer!
My last words with JD came after he texted me saying he had been dreaming of me, Shibata Sensei and his friend from childhood, Eli. Something about this stirred me. Has heart had been damaged by COVID and was already compromised since before the virus. It felt as if his heart was at work reconciling a life journey through these dreams and I called him immediately. I remember nothing from that conversation, nothing except that it was filled with laughs and love. It would be our last conversation in this life.
To be honest, I am disappointed in how the world received my brother, his gifts and his art. He was marginalized by a culture so corrupted by capitalism and greed as to find little space for his gifts, his passion and his embodiment of the aikido path. Aikido never provided JD a livelihood. He literally died on the mat in his dojo. We must do better. My aikido brothers and sisters must work to communicate the beauty and integrity of this discipline and all of us who have been moved by this man must work to honor his legacy of love, kindness and sacrifice. The life of Jorge David Sandoval was surrounded by so many that knew he cared fiercely for them, this was a life well lived.
Katsu!
