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Re: Poll: How often does your aikido instructor discuss the philosophy of aikido during class?
What is this 'philosophy of aikido' everyone talks about. I don't see it as a descrete thing or an accepted belief system. To a large extent I'd presume the philosophy taught is an off-shoot of the instructors philosophy, probably influenced by eastern thought!
The only unifying theme of aikido I can think of is 'blending', and thus the pricniples of yin and yang. I expect most people also attribute the notion of 'minimal harm'; although this could be interpreted very differently. Also I'm not sure that, even if you killed all your attackers, you would not be following a 'philosophy' of aikido. Maybe you'd have to do it in a very relaxed and easy manner (with little excessive force)! Ueshiba certainly killed people (during his Chinese expedition), and he surely had more of a 'philosophy of aikido' than we do.
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