Quote:
Fred Little wrote:
Perhaps our apparent disagreement is over nothing more substantive than the use of the word "merely."
|
perhaps.
Quote:
Fred Little wrote:
The danger, as I see it, is that western students of the way established by Ueshiba ... begin by searching for liberation from their own cultural conditions and end with the adoption of an alternative system of bondages ... this seems to me to be an area that necessitates great dangers that can only be safely navigated with the assistance of unflinching willingness to examine both historical and current circumstances as they are, and a commitment to critical thinking regarding both those conditions and the choices one makes within them.
|
No argument. A certain facile wooly-minded spiritualism foolishly thinks one can be trivially freed from one's history and circumstance. That verges into one form of error. The too-willing fatalist assumption that a man is a prisoner (willing or not) of his circumstances is verging into another.
History (the truth we have made) and faith (the truth we would make) are subtle admixtures of fate, chance and choice, wherein God does his work, and invites to do also, at least in my tradition. We cannot understand the truth we would make without understanding the intricate processes that formed the truth that has been made. And all the while it outstrips us as we try to keep up.
Quote:
Fred Little wrote:
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't again thank Peter Goldsbury for the way in which in he has taken the matter of aikido's history and transmission in hand and pursued just such an approach in this series of articles. The series thus far has been has a major step forward and all of us who have been following it are beneficiaries.
|
Many thanks likewise, and let not we crabbing commentators slow it down.