Quote:
Ron Ragusa wrote:
When I write of Aiki as a state of being I mean:
"Aiki, in me, before Aiki between thee and me."
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This resolves to a circular definition: Aiki(being) = Aiki(me) > Aiki(thee-me).
Definition of a term in terms of itself, and similar figures of argument are recurring problems in these discussions.
Quote:
Ron Ragusa wrote:
Aiki is a state of being. It is a state I can achieve via training. Anything I do in that state is a demonstration of Aiki. The outer form is irrelevant. To call the thing being done Aiki is to confuse the state with the medium employed to express it (the state).
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A state of being is something that simply is unless you alter or destroy it.
I may loosely say that "I
am airborne." But flying is not a state of my being -- it is a state of my doing. To give credit to the present criticisms of aikido -- there is much in the practice of the art that analogously assumes a temporarily ballistic path is the same as flying. That is an assumption with a sudden and violent rebuttal in its not-too-distant future.
Aiki is not "being." It is doing. That it must be done in oneself is not disputed. The
me > thee+me is a proposition about the best order of learning what it is that must be done. That is certainly a debatable point -- though based on collective experience, I would certainly agree that it is an emphasis that needs to have greater prominence for mere re-balancing if nothing else. I would not agree that it is exclusively so, though -- and probably as variable in effectiveness as the variability of learning styles.