Erick Mead

And quasi-mechanical trappings are no less subject to abuse. The premise -- of your own paragon Sagawa --is that NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO -- the training of aiki takes at least twenty years. His strong suggestion (if Clear Power is to be believed) that mindful approach to a diligent practice will reveal it, in whole or in part, and once a part is grasped the whole begins to reveal itself to effort and study. Argue with him.

I take a different tone, because a claim to "save the exploited" (added to the knee-jerk resort to ad hom attack) is a mark of a narcissistic ego typical amongst political animals. People who tell other people how to do things because they have resolved themselves to be better, more talented and well, just darn well more noble than the poor oppressed peonage.

No. I am arguing that it can and should be. If it is so described -- then who did it makes no never mind, as the fact is independent of its manner of being revealed. I very likely have many portions more muddled than not in my efforts to digest a HIGHLY non-linear subject into linear terms, and to advance a long-neglected subject area. All I care about is the knowledge and its correctness and in the service of that I am entirely willing to dare and to correct significant conceptual error -- in public. You notably discuss nothing of your actual training process in public. Holding back knowladge is suspect; it ain't nuclear weapons. And you can look that up on the internet anyway, since it takes far more in hard capital and time investment to make it useable any way -- sort of similar, actually.

But the terms I use become steadily clearer by this process. Comparing data to construct and refining the construct to fit the data. It's called science. It may have managed one or two rather more complicated areas of knowledge in its time, but I could well be wrong about that, too.

Never contested it - nor in the least belittled it. I have been complimentary of Rob's approach to describe the training and the purpose of their training approach -- and because of the relative transparency. I have no problem with it. I have criticized certain persons' demonstrably wrong mechanical explanations and have endured one or two person's competently challenging some minor points in my own. I'm willing to take what I dish out.

They are highly motivated, competent self-learners who have come as far as they have on their own resources and have reached a the top of a growth curve, as occurs in any endeavor. As with any topped out growth curve ,it requires substantial additional investment and the endurance of actual retrenchment before new growth can begin again. That's the real meaning of "beginner's mind." It's not a mark of fresh vision, but a willingness to faithfully work through a period where little hopeful is seen. One might observe that such people are just vulnerable as beginners to such a pitch -- to save them from that unavoidable dark night -- but day comes again all on its own, if they do not give up.

Yes. And they have so far trounced Western thinking on warfare in the last hundred years, have they? Might do to follow the demonstrably more successful strategy in that regard. The PLAN is not following the naval architectural plan of Zheng He.

Who said it wasn't? I just think that some of those you preach to lost faith at a point because of the natural progression of growth requires periods of no progress or actual regression to foster new growth. People are always impatient of the plow and the seed, and vulnerable to products that will purport to hasten nature ( and may well . But hastened nature is not the same product as steady growth -- ask any lumberman. As long as they continue to tend their patch with diligence and attention, they'll get through it with you or without you -- and how do I know that? Simple -- because they got this far.