senshincenter

I guess to me it sounded like you were saying that there is some relationship between "the Japanese Spirit" is how we should understand "Love" within the thinking of Osensei - I was hoping you would clear that up by explaining how the two terms came to be related in your earlier post. At this point, I'm afraid I still do not understand your exercise of relating them (how, why, etc.).

I think there are two other things you might find worth thinking on...

- There may indeed be Christian understandings of Love in the thinking of Onisaburo and perhaps then of Osensei. This notion of Love might very well be aiming at an all-inclusive understanding of the term/notion/practice.

and,

- Whatever Osensei's notion of Love may have been, it was heavily marked by universals - in my opinion. In that case, whatever it was, it was NOT ever meant to be his and his alone.

In other words, what one may be looking at may indeed be the confines of a cultural/historical context that delineates us all, BUT AT THE SAME TIME, what one is seeing are great efforts to move beyond such confines, to the Truth with a capital T, to absolutes, to universals, to vantage points where the confines of cultural and history are proven not only false, but irrelevant.

(Speaking abstractly here - with no reference to anyone) If that is the case, should one set out to know the history of Osensei, to make the historical-cultural context the end-all of understanding what Osensei was saying and/or doing, he/she may in the end be a very good historian, but he/she may also be by that very act a lousy and/or very ignorant Aikidoka.