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Old 07-05-2010, 07:18 AM   #13
Marc Abrams
Dojo: Aikido Arts of Shin Budo Kai/ Bedford Hills, New York
Location: New York
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,302
United_States
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Re: Life Question - Harming Another Human Being

Michael:

Unfortunately, we do not live in some fantasy world in which peaceful people rule the planet.... There is a Japanese expression: "katsujinken" that can be translated to mean "The sword that gives life." It is a concept that you should spend some serious time contemplating. Let me create this image for you: You and your child are walking down the street in the way to a little league game. Your child lags a couple of steps behind. You turn around to see a person running at your child with a knife. You have a bat in your hand. If you do not take out this person, this person will kill your child. What would you do?

Harmonizing with deadly intent can easily result in death. It is not some macho fantasy of toughness and it is not an issue of need or want. Need/want require some serious thought. Real life, deadly encounters rarely if ever allow for time to engage in serious thought. The sad, cold fact is that sometimes a person must kill to preserve life.

Our training should be shugyo. We should work hard at making peace with our sense of inadequacy and vulnerability (existential reality for all of us). If our spirit is clear, it is not a question of need/want. If the situation dictates that a person will die, I want to be the person wielding the sword that gives life. At the end of the day, I want to return home to my family. I have no personal problems with exploring adaptations of techniques and finishing moves that can kill a person. I would rather have useful tools if a situation ever dictates that I use them, rather than my last thoughts being sadness over not learning them because I tried to gain some higher, philosophical moral ground that the attacker conveniently was not interested in exploring.

Marc Abrams
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