View Single Post
Old 05-06-2009, 07:32 AM   #21
Erick Mead
 
Erick Mead's Avatar
Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
Location: West Florida
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 2,619
United_States
Offline
Re: The same basic teaching

Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote: View Post
This is not what I actually stated. What I did state was:

"Why is it that language is so necessary for aikido that we need to fill acres of Internet space in discussing the art—and in telling each other with great fluency that IHTBF (It has to be felt): that mere words cannot really explain what aikido is?" (Column 11)

"Even people who appear to believe wholeheartedly in the IHTBF (It has to be felt) doctrine give others verbal explanations of what the latter are supposed to be feeling and assume without question or further explanation that verbally expressed ‘intentions' can be ‘projected' around the body..." (Column 12)

You cannot conclude from these statements that I myself 'would have it that IHTBF'. I am simply noting the paradox that IHTBF also requires complex verbal explanations, in order to explain what HTBF and how IHTBF in a correct way.

PAG
Thank you for the clarification, but I see that I did not adequately express what I understood you position to be. It wwas a passing comment in this discussion, so I did not have the opportunity to give full flesh to your position.

I took your position to be that IHTBF is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition -- and that other conditions on what, as you put it, "HTBF," are also necessary -- both a priori to guide attention to the correct sensation of action, and a posteriori to interpret the results or correctives in the action. And that people differ widely on what those additional conditions may or should be. If I have it wrong, please let me know.

But what of John's larger point? Do you see a tantric link or model at play in the teaching? Do you have an opinion whether these mythic comparisons are some evidence of more direct influences on Ueshiba, more an artifact of Japan's syncretic history or something more abstruse, like an individual irruption of Jung's archetypes? (I myself don't see these as mutually exclusive categories.)

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
  Reply With Quote