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Old 02-12-2015, 09:28 PM   #44
Erick Mead
 
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Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
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Re: Is aikido a budo?

Quote:
Jon Reading wrote: View Post
I would argue that pointing to a general populace to demonstrate that most people don't know martial arts is not that compelling. I am also not necessarily pointing to a contemporary general culture but rather a very specific culture in which budo was originated. This is important because my later comments were directed at the understanding of how things worked as some earlier point in history. I am an advocate of studying that culture as a means of unlocking the context in which the education was developed. In my lifetime alone I read from history books in Illinois that taught a different perspective than history books I read at Vandy...
Judging from Ueshiba's effort, which though unburdened by any commitment to koryu secrecy -- was still hamstrung by an obscure conceptual vocabulary from that tradition (plus his own eccentricities), I'd say the prospects are not great in proceeding in that way. The history of effort so far seems to bear that out. On the other hand, objective physiology and mechanics can be both understood and applied, and thus unified through rigor in training and knowledge. Don't get me wrong -- we have much yet to mine in that tradition -- but we do it best by applying what WE already know to it... which is what Oyomei taught -- through and through.

Quote:
Jon wrote:
I could argue several occurrences of poor translation that not only were simply incorrect, but actually damaged the transmission of aikido instruction in other cultures. What I am saying is that in a rush to "do it ourselves" we are removing elements we have no idea have value. What's worse, I don't speak or read Japanese, so I am dependent on others who do - it is frightening to re-read some of the "revised" translations that 25 years ago would have been considered gospel. At best, it's learning using the "telephone game" with as twist to change the language at some point during the game. That anyone can learn within that environment is something of a miracle, let alone become proficient at it.
You are actually paraphrasing a point of criticism of the external principles schools made by Oyomei. Yomei also asserted the primacy of Qi as origin of patterns or form (Li) was the plain teaching of the classical texts and that the earlier schools had just read their own conceptual prejudices of the primacy of Li (form over substance, basically) into the classic texts.

The doctrine of innate knowledge and 知行合一 : the unity (or "harmony") of knowledge and action are antidotes to conceptual traps such as those you note. The human being must walk on two legs -- mind and body -- which are never separated -- We learn all new knowledge through applying knowledge we already possess and in no other way. I point this out in class so often -- that what we are doing is really things so simple that we already do -- we just think that in applying them in some new way they must be something radically new and different -- when they are not. Tonight for instance we did ushiro-waza, and I pointed out that for all the seeming flourish in the mutual interaction -- the basic tai sabaki was really nothing more than pacing the floor: step, step, step, turn, step.

Quote:
Oyomei wrote:
"Innate knowledge is to minute details and varying circumstances as compasses and measures are to areas and lengths. Details and circumstances cannot be predetermined, just as areas and lengths are infinite in number and cannot be entirely covered."
Quote:
Jon wrote:
I don't disagree that there are ideological and philosophical perspectives that seek to unify knowledge and action. Again, I don't think there is anything new about this, if only to say it is actually very difficult to accomplish that feat. That budo has their own variation of that philosophical goal is to put it in line with some large number of philosophies and ideologies.
The point of my summary of Oyomei is that it is actually THE underlying philosophical system of what we now know and practice as budo that developed in the Edo era. It therefore has far more salience to the problem that just some ad hoc philosophical choice of mine or anybody else's. For instance the entire corpus of "internal" arts -- both Chinese and Japanese -- with focus on "intent" in driving action is vocabulary drawn DIRECTLY from this system of concepts. It is certainly an aid in trying to properly translate them into other cultural contexts -- not least because Oyomei-gaku was itself an adoption from the Chinese (Oyomei = Wang Yangming) in the first place.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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