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Old 09-23-2002, 08:44 AM   #7
Dangus
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 48
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Quote:
The best Aikido you could have done would have been to let him take the money. In my opininon trying to get it back was probably just trying to appease your ego. (which we all struggle with!).
I've been sick for quite a while and hadn't noticed this reply till just now, sorry it took so long to reply to this.

Anyway, I disagree on this point. Aikido is not pacifism, it's pacification. In simple terms anyway. It's an art of defense, and defense means standing your ground, or taking ground when necessary. It is a martial art, it can be used to hurt and to kill, and indeed probably has been from time to time.

Though I am only a little bit into the physical training of Aikido, the philosophy has appealed to me greatly, and Aikido schools in general seem to spend far too little time on the philisophical aspects of the art, which are the very soul and core of the art in my opinion. The philosophy of Aikido indeed has greatly improved and otherwise benefitted my other martial arts training(limited amounts of kung-fu and karate). It's a mindset, an approach, a way of life. O Sensei himself was a student of many arts, and through those studies he created Aikido, and the physical practice of Aikido is largely a collection of specific ideas from other arts, which were chosen because they fit the philosophy. The philosophy was not chosen because it fit those moves. I think that even if he had gotten into a typical bar fight with this guy and had used the force as a means to control the situation and only up to the point necessary to solve the immediate problem, he would have been within the bounds of Aikido completely. I bet O Sensei would not have surrendered his wallet lol

"Those who beat their swords into plowshares plow for those who keep their's" -Ben Franklin
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