Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote:
My point is that even if you take away the commentary, you are still left with the problem of the gap between what people think they are doing and what they are actually doing and this would apply to others besides Mr Ikeda. It might apply to Morihei Ueshiba, for example.
|
It might. In fact it almost certainly does -- for the same reasons -- and the present efforts are not at all immune to the same problem.
Quote:
Cady Goldfield wrote:
A tangible lexicon for Internal Training, particularly for Western students, is only very recent, as in the past 10 years or so, largely thanks to a very small handful of individuals who have labored to create a comprehensive and transmittable language that is directly connected to physical training.
|
.. and as such -- is subject to the exact SAME forms of error in idiosyncratic perception and choice of verbal analogies (however systematic) that plagued Ueshiba, Tohei, Saito, Abe, and as noted, Ikeda as well. And this is true regardless of its success in relating the demonstrated skill -- ONCE DEMONSTRATED. It provides no guide to observe --indpendently -- the results of a properly objective and empirical concept -- which, if properly conceived should be observable, in any setting, by anyone -- subject only to their conceptual grasp and ability to observe critically.
Quote:
Cady Goldfield wrote:
The sayings and written teachings themselves are usually deeply couched in poetic, metaphoric language that is impossible to decipher without a guide who is willing to do so. Hence, all of the misunderstandings that have arisen from the doka and other sources of wisdom whose meanings have remained, until recently, largely hidden.
|
.. and this latest effort -- though divorced from poetic and mythic image -- is no less simply an attempt to find other forms of analogous images for descriptive purposes : e.g. --
Quote:
"Do <this> [applying action]."
"<This> is [insert descriptive <name of action>]."
"<Name of action> is [insert <analogy> here.]" |
In other words, whether we are using loose mythological concrete images or loosely analogized mechanical images -- it is and will remain simply a system of labels for a demonstrated action. Ueshiba's was such, and so far as is disclosed by those pursuing the current endeavor -- it is not different except in their preferred basis for analogies in choosing their labels.
It is not a conceptual system tied to empirically objective mechanics, bio-mechanics or anatomy. Only working out the empirically correct ties to objectively understood mechanisms and anatomical statics and dynamics will put the subject on truly different and less arbitrary footing.
Why would one choose any other "lexicon" than a proven successful lexicon of physical and mechanical concepts worked out over the last 500 years. Biomechanics is younger -- but hardly less empirical at this point. The Chinese and Japanese have followed us in applying this kind of knowladge in every other field of physical endeavor -- why are we -- in our efforts -- so devoted to conceptual approaches that the originators of these applied physical arts have systematically abandoned in every other ?
There has been resistance to this effort to define more rigorously the correct conceptual framework -- though why, I cannot imagine. Many seem to actively deny the usefulness of a conceptual understanding as though it is irrelevant --
even though their own choices of language in analogy imply conceptual frameworks -- rightly or wrongly.
It seems to me better that we should proceed much more explicitly, objectively and correctly -- rather than implicitly and -- as the history on point shows -- ultimately, unknowingly, when the labels and actions become dissociated -- as they regularly have been.