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George S. Ledyard wrote:
Over and over the Founder stated that Aikido wasn't about fighting, yet so many people try to take everything back to a fight. What's the attachment to the idea of the fight? Why is it so hard to let go of that and do something that goes beyond?
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Hi George -
Perhaps it has to do with age. Younger people harbor many fears that we older folks have, over the years, purged from our makup or at least come to terms with. And what better way to meet one's fear than with aggression? That is until one has trained for a few decades and begins to realize that most fear is an illusion.
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George S. Ledyard wrote:
When O-Sensei lamented that no one was doing his Aikido, it was not him worrying about his students inability to defeat enemies. It was that so few of them saw in Aikido what he saw.
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Could it be that rather than lamenting he was admonishing them to not do his Aikido but their own?
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George S. Ledyard wrote:
O-Sensei saw Aikido as a means to transform society and promote a peaceful world. I absolutely believe that tailoring the art to the mind of conflict will never achieve that. Then it's just another jutsu and a rather funky one at that. If it is fighting everyone's worried about, then do a combat art. That makes more sense. But I think that not fighting was much more what the Founder had in mind and Palmer Sensei speaks to that model in what she teaches in and out of the dojo.
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Nice.
Regards,
Ron