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Old 06-22-2012, 01:59 PM   #114
Chris Parkerson
Dojo: Academy of the Martial Arts
Location: ohio
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 740
United_States
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Re: My Spiritual Aikido.

Quote:
Don Hebert wrote: View Post
Graham,

Just to be clear - however much I admire the goal of being able to protect the attacker, I don't have the skill. If my life was in danger from a strong physical attack I would most likely have to become an animal to survive - so much for my training. During practice I don't think much about this. I spend a lot of my time in the feedback loop - discovering that something I am doing doesn't work and then trying to fix it. I am then often amazed at the counter-intuitve natue of the solution.

Best regards,

Don
Don,

In my experience, there is nothing wrong with becoming animal. Most hunter animals do not kill just to kill. They kill to eat and to survive. They fight, not to win, but to survive. And in the act, they will look into each other's eye as one gives up the ghost.

As a human animal, I choose to do one more thing. As we kill for food (most of us citified martial artists are very divorced from this practice), I try to honor the ritual of becoming a protector of the rest of the animal kingdom from which my food source came.

This, too, seems to be a major disconnect in modern Budo. Few of us question our food source, how it is raised, brought to market, and placed on our tables. We have no idea if the salmon will be running in 10 years or if the tuna will be radio active and die as a species.

And I suspect we will pay a very big price for maintaining such a disconnect. Soon, we will see horrific violence in our cities. Food wars, water wars, and terrirotial wars will be in our neighborhoods.

And I beleve only great courage, creativity and compassion will help us navigate our way out of it.

Fighting each other will only add fuel to the fire.

Waging Peace,

Chris

Last edited by Chris Parkerson : 06-22-2012 at 02:02 PM.