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Old 04-21-2012, 02:00 AM   #253
Chris Li
 
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Dojo: Aikido Sangenkai
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
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Re: The Founder's Teaching Ability

Quote:
Jim Redel wrote: View Post
Presuming Ueshiba had an enlightenment experience ... do you think it was the same realization as other spiritual notables throughout history?

Say for sake of argument it was not exactly the same realization, but was yet extraordinary ... what do you suppose would constitute a truly extraordinary experience? Not specifically, but more to the question, could this experience ever be really articulated? Could it ever be 'really transmitted'?

If it could be readily articulated, if it could be readily transmitted, why hadn't it already been transmitted, why hadn't it already been articulated long before Ueshiba? If a 'single candle can light a thousand other candles', how is it the whole world was not already enlightened by the time Ueshiba was born? (There were a lot of potential candles between Buddha and Jesus and the late 1800's.) How is it we should have expected some diminutive, eccentric Japanese martial artist to do what no one else in history had yet figured out how to do?

Or is it more likely that an enlightened individual can, at best, ever hope to ever 'light the candle' of one or two others?
I think that's a rather large presumption. But even assuming that were the case - "spiritual notables" today are at the end of some very organized structures to transmit that very thing, which is why you are talking about it today.

Your argument about enlightening the entire world just doesn't hold up - everybody knows exactly how to keep physically fit, but how many people do it?

Going back to Ueshiba - we can see know, in his own very clear statements, the links to very old, and very organized, methods of technical transmission and conditioning.

Best,

Chris

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