Quote:
Mary Eastland wrote:
Perhaps we should just call this site DanWeb.
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Dear Mary, even if I don't know you and your aikidō in person I appreciate very much your thoughts, insights, ideas about aikidō! When reading your statements I understand that you have gone a long way, that you have lived aikidō for a long time and with great intensity. You speaking seriously and humble makes me listening. Although what you think aikidō to be and how you think aikidō to work often sounds completely strange in my ears.
The above statement makes me just sad.
I sometimes tried to point out, that in my aikidō context the views of Dan are quite more "normal" than yours are. And I sometimes described here how happy I was to finally find a forum where people discuss on such a high level what I / we try to learn.
Having people like Chris who gives translations of Ueshibas words which reflect more his (Ueshibas) thinking than those of the translators before who did not understand what they tried to translate. Or people like Dan who are able to make this words alive, workable.
So aikiweb became an important place to me, long before I met Dan in person. Simply because what was discussed here matched perfectly the practice of aikidō that is common in my surrounding. But on a level of quality that is seldom found.
So I would beg you to be aware that this is not about a single person with some entourage conquering a website and force through his personal view. But about someone who's work is part of the work and practice of a very large part of the aikidō community. In your eyes it may be a suspect approach to aikidō. But in the eyes of a whole lot of practioners it is what they are looking and aiming for in their practice.
So as long as this is called "AikiWeb", it should be a good place for people who work on aiki to share their knowledge.