Thread: Ueshiba's Aiki
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Old 11-15-2011, 12:06 AM   #322
Ellis Amdur
 
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Re: Ueshiba's Aiki

That book was one of Terry's greatest regrets. Insecure about his own writing (despite being brilliant, he was afflicted by terrible writer's block until near the end of his life), he associated himself with Miller, a hack writer who turned Terry's ideas into New Age pap. It's funny - just as with Ueshiba, one has to wend one's way through the rococo religious imagery, with this book, to glean even a little of what Terry really believed, you have to push your way through marzipan and New Age. And sadly, despite deciding consciously to sell out, in hopes of disseminating the moral ideals of aikido, as he saw them, to the wider populace, he ran smack into the 1980's (when the book was originally published), when the thrust was how to run your life like a hedge fund manager.