Quote:
Erick Mead wrote:
And as such, this illustrates a compulsion -- showing the person has not mastered himself so as to allow someone else to win -- to get to something more important than winning in the immediate sense. Always looking for the "win," is a very sure way to simply die in true bujutsu. Among other things showing that it is not a truly martial attitude -- it is trivially predictable.
In true bujutsu, and also in its enlarged sense as budo, the objective is larger than the immediate engagement and planned, or allowably contingent, losses have strategic purposes in achieving larger goals. A chess game is won by carefully losing pawns and handing tempting pieces to the opponent that he "wins" -- the battle, but not the war. This is what Aikido training is for -- in small and large scales of budo, and in dimensions beyond physical confrontation.
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I'm just observing the Osensei was a very competitive individual and engaged in competition all his life, so much so that even in his 80's he boasted of never been beaten (so I guess he never mastered himself), which to me means Aikido was meant to be a competitive MA. Also, the plain truth is, in a confrontation with skilled opponent, if you don't take them out, they're gonna kill you., so all that chess business flies right out the window.