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David Henderson wrote:
So, if I understand you, this would suggest a particular sort of awareness to be cultivated in multiple attacker situations, and would provide a different perspective to view O-Sensei's demonstrations against multiple attackers and his descriptions of what he experienced in those situations?
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Yes. An awareness of what it means to deal with the change of center, as the center of perceived action is made progressively more remote from the center of perceived contact. I have illustrated this shift in a very simple tabletop comparison model.-
manipulating one chopstick in two
different ways from the same point of contact.
Quote:
David Henderson wrote:
Then, his imagery had content as knowledge about the world that guided his development of his art, rather than as romantic but ultimately arbitrary and hence meaningless stories?
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At one point I would have been more in the latter camp -- and essentially divorced his physical accomplishments from his idiomatic (or idiosyncratic, as you prefer) way of expressing what he felt was occurring. On this point, I would say it is not mere opinion but closely correlated set of facts -- that his imagery closely tracks correct concrete sensibilities of real physical phenomena -- but combines them with more elusive descriptions of "feel," that the mere mechanics does not easily capture. They are not very prescriptive in terms of method or approach, but very descriptive of entering the margins of performance. I don't think he thought very highly of "method" -- I think he though more highly of "pattern".
Quote:
Budo(1938) wrote:
"Though the virtue of training, understanding of aiki is acquired naturally."
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Quote:
David Henderson wrote:
There's a story I recall about the guy who discovered the shape of the benzene ring having a dream in which a snake swallowed its own tale; is that similar to what you're suggesting?
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Well, Leo Szilard was inspired by H.G. Wells to envision the atomic bomb, work out its technical basis and then drafted the letter that brought the project about ...
So, yeah... that, too.