Aikido

[Dmitri]

Those who want to make refutes absent of the proper treatment of the subject apart from handling the subject and context on a proper level, can. Though, making a simple formed refute doesn't allow for a deeper analysis of the purpose or reason behind the refute. A better formed refuted, an in-deepth analysis, indicates research, knowledge and expertise in the subject. Something that would be more helpful. But this is the internet, and when in Rome do as the Roman's do.

Not so long ago you were ignoring (on another thread) my on-topic, detailed response to your post with this:

Someone has a bright future in political debates. I have to side step that one, I am not good at those tricks and methods of political debating.

....ummm ...yah.

[WVMark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMOgjHxxZRY

alternatively Ueshiba taught the aiki power to try and get folks interested in the deeper meaning of his art..

some feel they need aiki power training, some don't... some are looking for body power, some are looking for immovable inner peace.

the body gets weak, the mind keeps on going....deeper into the heart of peace..its all aikido...

facets of a jewel, twirling in emptiness..

Your

Rich

No, Ueshiba didn't teach the aiki "power" for that. Even Ellis Amdur (who has done far more research and in person interviews into aikido history than most of us) thinks that post-war Ueshiba was just using his students for crash test dummies. Paraphrased greatly but you get the point. I think that's in Hidden in Plain Sight. Great book, btw.

And that vid you referenced ... the person in it is wrong about Ueshiba. Other than that, if you're talking about Modern Aikido, it's all good. Different lineages with different visions. But people really should stop pointing back to Ueshiba when they don't have a clue as to what he was talking about.

Henry Kono, who was there training, asked Ueshiba ... Sensei, why can't we do what you do? Ueshiba replied, Because you don't understand yin/yang. I think I referenced that quote already.

When Kisshomaru wanted to to an aikido demonstration for the public ... the PUBLIC, mind you ... and wanted his father to be part of it, Kisshomaru was extremely hesitant to even ask for fear that his father would fly into one of his rages. Public demos weren't really "approved". This was sometime in the mid 1950s, I think. Reference from Stan Pranin in one of his issues. I think that's where it's at.

Ueshiba teaching aiki to people? Post-war, not really. Not to the public, at least.

[Ah Louis]

Avoiding that Chinese whispers game.

[Doc Stier]

Actually what he said...repeatedly was references to heaven/earth/ man. Among which he said.
"Heaven is not some place outside you. It is within you. Heaven and earth, the two powers."
Then you had his frequent references to ka/mi (fire and water or yn/ yang) which many mistook for the Kami.

The hippies who went to japan as well as the peacenick crowd in Japan, openly admitted that they didn't understand most of his references so they, by and large made up most of the peacenick references. Some of which he openly made fun of. Like the time Terry Dobson heard him yelling at a vegetable vender and was shocked. Ueshiba, well aware of the worshipful tenor of some of these guys, glared at him and said. "What? A saint can't get mad?"

Its no surprise to read more of the same here. Thankfully we have fluent, professional translators, who are well versed in internal nomenclature and methodology now winding their way through his writings and revealing a man using cosmology and known internal concepts to define physical training.
As Chiba said.. " No one could understand him. We couldn't wait for him to shut up so we could train."
Or maybe he said.. "Better to have training right now than the right training later! " ;-)
He might as well join the twenty somethings here. The correct statement should have been- "We were too young and ignorant and had no interest in understanding him."

Agreed. Your final comment above is undoubtedly the truth of the matter. It has long been my personal observation that most people are not only unwilling to seriously train any martial art with consistent self-discipline, but they are also disinclined to seriously listen to those who have already achieved the skills they seek. Go figure!

[emptycloud]

I for one am looking forward to the publication/dissemination of the peer reviewed new translations of Ueshiba writings.

Many people see aikido in separate parts as witnessed by threads and standpoints all over the net.

This problem of separation is easily dissolved when one sees aikido as a jigsaw puzzle.

There are many pieces which ultimately come together as seamless whole. A big unified picture, a story.

The whole is equal to the sum of the parts … versus … The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is the crux of augment.

Many have a key piece to the puzzle but they do not posses the entire picture.

Every piece of the puzzle is the key piece depending on your perceptions of the twirling jewel, the facet of entry defines your standpoint, grasp the jewel.

Aikido can be a ladder or a door..

We need each other, in aikido (& in all aspects of life), bottom line, no other, no aikido, no nothing.

Every man is an island - and the tide is coming.

yours fading fast, fading slow

Rich

[Bodywork]

They have already been peer reviewed for accuracy. The professional translator, Chris Li, has also tackled Ueshiba's speaches and portions of the three books out on Takeda's involvement with and the relevant internal training portions of shingon Buddhism.
Rich, maybe you would do better to stop *defending* ignorance, as a virtue. Even though it is the majority view.
It is bad enough that all your skills would be neutralized on contact, without exposing your knowledge to be equal to your physical understanding of the same subject.

[Bodywork]

Actually what he said...repeatedly was references to heaven/earth/ man. Among which he said.
"Heaven is not some place outside you. It is within you. Heaven and earth, the two powers."
Then you had his frequent references to ka/mi (fire and water or yn/ yang) which many mistook for the Kami.

The hippies who went to japan as well as the peacenick crowd in Japan, openly admitted that they didn't understand most of his references so they, by and large made up most of the peacenick references. Some of which he openly made fun of. Like the time Terry Dobson heard him yelling at a vegetable vender and was shocked. Ueshiba, well aware of the worshipful tenor of some of these guys, glared at him and said. "What? A saint can't get mad?"

Its no surprise to read more of the same here. Thankfully we have fluent, professional translators, who are well versed in internal nomenclature and methodology now winding their way through his writings and revealing a man using cosmology and known internal concepts to define physical training.
As Chiba said.. " No one could understand him. We couldn't wait for him to shut up so we could train."
Or maybe he said.. "Better to have training right now than the right training later! " ;-)
He might as well join the twenty somethings here. The correct statement should have been- "We were too young and ignorant and had no interest in understanding him."

Agreed. Your final comment above is undoubtedly the truth of the matter. It has long been my personal observation that most people are not only unwilling to seriously train any martial art with consistent self-discipline, but they are also disinclined to seriously listen to those who have already achieved the skills they seek. Go figure!

Hi Doc
I'm in a weird place as I have so many men and women with decades of training in and out ofJapan (and now China as well) realizing they were never truly taught. This combined with recent admissions by the Japanese that they never taught this to foreigners, to sit and read defenders of the Japanese and their racists views of teaching foreigners by the ner-do-wells who have no appreciable skills in the first place.
I am friends with the two highest ranked Westerners in Daito ryu in the states who find it ironic that the men with the lowest skills in that art, take up its defense and attack me on the internet for saying..... the majority of people in that art are not taught. It is particularly rich when those two guys know it is absolutely true.

I'm not arguing with these people. I am, for the most part using their rhetoric and speaking past them to a wiser reader who are *thinking* their way through their career instead in blindly opting for the Aikido now referenced in that article! But we could be speaking of and art really, as you have aptly stated.

[emptycloud]

They have already been peer reviewed for accuracy. The professional translator, Chris Li, has also tackled Ueshiba's speaches and portions of the three books out on Takeda's involvement with and the relevant internal training portions of shingon Buddhism.
Rich, maybe you would do better to stop *defending* ignorance, as a virtue. Even though it is the majority view.
It is bad enough that all your skills would be neutralized on contact, without exposing your knowledge to be equal to your physical understanding of the same subject.

Sooner or later everyones skills will be neutralised on contact and all physicality rubbed out, why make such a big fuss about little ole me.

I am not sure I am defending anything as when I look for it the I is not really something I can affirm or completely refute.

All I seem to find is change and mystery arising out of apparent nothingness, its a curious thing. Which can be proven strangely enough by anyone.

Many around me claim they are on solid ground and that reality is concrete. They are going places, they have control...
Many go even further and claim that they have the truth in the palm of their hands, rather desperately so it seems..

Looking forward to the books..got a publisher..self publish is easy these days...big market..well done to Mr Li

yours - actively disintegrating

Rich

[emptycloud]

my personnel defence of aikido would be this -

At one end of the spectrum you have a highly sophisticated, sublime & devastating martial art.
At the other end of the scale you have a highly sophisticated, sublime & devastating insight into the illusion of separation.
Between these two points you have myriad facets of standpoints.
I tend towards the latter end of the spectrum as it uses the art to address existential absurdity.

If I was ever to defend my interest in the art this spectrum of expression would be the thing I stand guard over.... In full knowledge that each person believes that their aikido reality tunnel is the only tunnel to walk down...so be it...all realities are virtual realities and will be unplug unanimously. That's how cute life is.

I am an open system

I am thus defending you Dan...

yours in absurdity

Rich

[Bodywork]

my personnel defence of aikido would be this -
At one end of the spectrum you have a highly sophisticated, sublime & devastating martial art.
At the other end of the scale you have a highly sophisticated, sublime & devastating insight into the illusion of separation.
Between these two points you have myriad facets of standpoints.
I tend towards the later end of the spectrum as it uses the art to address existential absurdity.
If I was ever to defend my interest in the art this spectrum of expression would be the thing I stand guard over....

I am an open system

I am thus defending you Dan...

yours in absurdity

Rich

There is no aikido if you are not doing aiki.
What Ueshiba truly meant was that once you knew sangen (heaven/earth/man) aikido became yours.
That's why he said.
"The working of the attraction point, between yin and yang, is the birthplace of all techniques. This... Is my takemusu aiki."
And
There are no techniques in aiki do.
And Sagawa said.
"Only amateurs think you can learn aiki from techniques "
There really is no *devastating art of aikido* without internal power. At best, its crappy jujutsu with low percentage techniques. Not that there's anything wrong with that. People are enjoying themselves. It just isn't what the founder was doing or talking about. Rather, it is the stuff that people who -SELF admittedly didn't understand him- figured out and taught.
Rich you aught consider that virtually all of Ueshiba's students, showed up at his son's dojo after the war, poked their heads in and to a man said.
"I don't know what you are doing. But, That...is not aikido!"
So Rich, enjoy what ever it is you are doing. But I will state at every turn what his own students said when watching standing wrist lockes and watered down throws.
That's not aiki....do!
Then again I feel much the same about taiji. That shit isn't EVER going to work, unless you know the body method behind it, that gives it real power and then...you learn to fight

[Ah Louis]

Taiji (Yang style) came off of the original Chen style. Legend has it, Chen style was used on a marital level way back when village life dominated. Since then, what Chen style is known for is influencing other more popular Taiji sytles. Out of all the Taiji styles, Yang has become the most popular worldwide. Yang style popularity is because it offers health benefits. Back in the early 1900s, Yang style seen the writing on the wall and shifted its focus to being a health benefit, instead of promoting itself as a martial art.

[emptycloud]

"We practice to give up the habit of practice"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeOCkLRphXg

yours

Rich

[Bodywork]

Rich
Bad example.
Bill is a good friend and trains under me often. He wouldnt recognize the stuff you talk about.

[emptycloud]

Rich
Bad example.
Bill is a good friend and trains under me often. He wouldnt recognize the stuff you talk about.

He would be in the majority...

[Bodywork]

Hey, you are the one who keeps bringing up aiki as if you understand it. And aikido as if you can do it well.
You are the one who brought up aikido as:
*devestatingly effective
Or
*they address existential absurdity.
1. That's not hard to understand.
2. Your claims are not hard to understand.
But there are no ends "to a spectrum" you either do a martial art or you don't.
*You do a health movement
*Or you do Martial art (or sport)
*Or you do both
But you then should never claim your woo woo, airy fairy, descriptions of what you know, has any practical credibility AS A MARTIAL ART.
Martial arts are a tough field for discussion, Rich. Theory must lead to practical method and ability or you will be called on it.
For many people their theories end up as just pure fantasy, utter bullshit, false, not real.
We need to all change that. We need to call each other on the bullshit. Enough already.
If ya want to just do woo woo stuff, that's fine. But don't claim its devastating martial skill.

Thee, one and only thing to make aikido truly powerful is IP/aiki. Without that its semi cooperative, low percentage jujutsu - not that there's anything wrong with that- is just simply wrong to claim that, THAT, is in any way "devastatingly effective."

Be who you are with some sense of balance: humility, confidence born of testing yourself, and respect for those who truly have been tested and have the suffered damage to know what they know and know what they can and cannot do. That includes all manner of arts and sports.
Everything else hurts the reputation of the arts in general.
It is the number one reason internal power or soft arts, get a well deserved bad rap. People who are full of shit, and have never been tested, keep talking like they have.