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Old 11-16-2005, 06:19 AM   #53
Misogi-no-Gyo
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 498
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Re: Aikido and being Vegetarian

Quote:
Jeff Miller wrote:
shaun: i find you comments on the macrobiotic versus veg ideas kinda strange. particularly since, while you can eat some meat (esp fish) in the macro diet, i've only ever met one person who did. everyone else (including some folks i've met who are a part of macro organizations in the u.s. and japan) has not eaten any meat, and often also referred to themselves as vegetarian / vegan. just found your comments curious...
Hi Jeff,

Thank you for your comments and questions.

Jun has politely asked us to keep our comments in this thread to those which talk about how Aikido and macrobiotcs/vegetarianism/veganism are related. While it may seem as though I will lead the thread astray, I will bring my thoughts all together at the end to do just that...

Let's start out with some facts.

1. In macrobiotics, there is no (natural) food that you "can't" eat.
2. Things that are eaten should be consumed in balance taking account a holistic approach to one's environment.
3. George Ohsawa (the founder of Macrobiotics) ate meat. Shiro Matsuoka Sensei (President of the Japan Macrobiotics Association for 30 years) eats meat.
4. Macrobiotics is not about food. They are holistic principles by which one lives. These principles may (and should) of course be applied to one's diet. Diet is not only about what one eats, but how one eats, when one eats and why one eats...
5. American and some European Macrobiotics is not true macrobiotics because they altered several tenets to appeal to the people in the area and make it more marketable to those who didn't want to embrace the principles as a whole)

Okay, now some generalizing for the consummation by the masses:

1. Unfortunately most people who practice macrobiotics don't know what it is, what they are talking about, nor what "healthy living" really is.
2. That is why you have most people who are macro saying they are vegetarian/vegan, or even healthy.

...a funny (not really) aside; I once brought a contingent of the senior-most people in the macrobiotics world into a "famous" macrobiotic restaurant at which I had been working at the time. I had asked permission of the "famous" owner-chef and let her know when I would be coming in. Supposedly her restaurant, according to the reviews in the papers was at the pinnacle of where one could find healthy food prepared by the most knowledgeable people around. I won't say what happened (exactly) but suffice it to say that the owner believed herself to know more about macrobiotics, healthy living and food preparation than Ohsawa-Sensei's disciples. Of course it was I who brought them there to see what macrobiotics was like in America... I guess she believed her own press. They on the other hand, did not.

Details...The owner was rude and ambivalent, and wouldn't you know it, so were most everyone else who worked there. The food, itself, was not in balance, was tasteless, over-processed and over-priced. It also made me fall asleep every time I ate it. Worse, she was a vocal proponent of supplements regardless of the fact that they are contradictory to the macrobiotic approach. She refused to cook with any salt (a necessary component of macrobiotic cooking - and any healthy cooking for that matter). Overall, she could really care less that these people were there at all, even though they were prepared to spend considerable time answering her questions, looking at the kitchen ...etc. to help improve the restaurant, if needed.

Afterwards, I conducted the interview I mentioned in an earlier post entitled Eating Aikido which went very far into the topic of this thread. Although not included in the printed version the interview started out talking about the experience we all had earlier in the day at the so-called healthy, macrobiotic restaurant. The bottom line of what came out was that the people in the restaurant did not understand macrobiotics, and were not healthy people at all. Worse, that those who came to them for healthy food were being led astray, were paying way too much for bad food, and were leaving less healthy then when they had come in. I was asked, "Why do you work there?" to which I responded, "I want to learn about macrobiotics and how to prepare macrobiotic food." That is when they spent a brief time introducing the idea (that like Aikido is not about techniques and how to do them), macrobiotics is not about food, or merely how to cook it.

Tying it all together...
Thus I was introduced to the idea of principle versus practice. Looking around me at the people who worked at and ate at the restaurant, along with the people who attended or ran the Aikido dojos I had visited (i.e. both the macrobiotic world and the Aikido world) it was painfully obvious that spending 5, 10, 20, heck even a hundred years practicing something didn't necessarily mean anything. What became clear was that regardless of how much a person wishes, wants or prays for it to be that knowledge is garnered from practice alone, it is that one must understand the principles in order to make the practice have any true value and be something other than empty ritual.

In the end I gave my notice and left the restaurant about two weeks later. Of course, wouldn't you know it, that restaurant is now even more famous, and now there are at least two of them that I am aware of. Which just goes to show you - the popularity of something has nothing to do with the actual value of it.

As Jun has noted, the discussion of the value of any of these paths, while interesting, is not really a discussion of the relationship between Aikido and Macrobiotics - Vegetarianism and or Veganism which I have stated is not recommended, aside. Like it or not, there is a direct relationship between breathing and Aikido. What you put into your body and how you live your life will absolutely effect one's breath. To say that the two have nothing to do with each other is tantamount to hoping, wishing and praying that such ignorance will nevertheless lead said practitioner to the promise land. On a lark, and as a way of speaking in mere generalizations, I will say that perhaps in 5, 10, 20 or maybe even 100 years or so, practice alone (aikido or macrobiotics) may lead one to the promise land, so to speak, but as my teacher used to always say, "...Somehow I don't think so."

All I can offer people who are training in such a fashion is a line from one of the Star Trek movies, "Good luck, Jim"




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I no longer participate in or read the discussion forums here on AikiWeb due to the unfair and uneven treatment of people by the owner/administrator.
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