Budo and criticism
My favorite part of George Ledyard's article was the first two paragraphs part of which I repeat here because I think by the end they are easy to forget
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People do Aikido for a variety of reasons. There are many people who are not in this lifetime going to be martial artists. ...
I have no problem whatever with that. Your practice must be a reflection of who you are and who you'd like to be.
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The rest of the article is a discussion of who George Ledyard is, and who he'd like to be, but is cast as a discussion of what he thinks we should be and what he thinks aikido should be. This part was more troubling to me. Ultimately, I find myself agreeing most easily with importance of honesty (with self and others) in aikido training, partly because I have found this to be such good practice for learning to seek honesty in the rest of my life.
As for the rest, I think I would say that my experience is that aikidoka can be good in many different ways and can teach me about things that I would not have thought were important. When I decide ahead of time what it is that I'm supposed to be learning, I usually lead myself into dead ends.
Opher
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