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Old 06-26-2013, 05:26 AM   #6
Lee Salzman
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 406
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Re: Post Modern Aikido?

Quote:
Mark Freeman wrote: View Post
True and thanks for responding Jorgen, appreciated

Perhaps this is true too.

The bold statement is one that I think every aikidoka should practice, but I am not sure that this happens in reality. The longer folk have been following the same path the less it seems they are likely to do this. The main reason I brought attention to Corky's post in the first place, was this is exactly where he is coming from. He questioned some of the fundamental approaches of Aikido and the way that it is practiced. Do the techniques really support the spiritual philosophy of the founder?
I don't mean to say the subject is black or white, but it is somewhat contradictory to on the one hand say you're trying to follow what O'Sensei said more closely, and on the other hand disregard what was passed down as the method of the founder as a 'fly in amber'.

I myself am totally sympathetic to going beyond what O'Sensei said and did, but then the burden is on whatever is produced to be our own work, to stand on its own, to not need the justification that it will one day make someone like O'Sensei to follow our system to get people to want to do it. It is rather silly to call the end result aikido, even with the qualification of being "my aikido" or "your aikido", because then we're still just using O'Sensei as a marketing tool for our own system.

Quote:
I have never planned a lesson in all the years I have been teaching... different paths up the mountain..
And one must ask, can you see the path up the mountain then? Do you know what the actual challenges you must face in your training are, that once solved/surmounted will lead you to a point where you can say you have arrived at exactly what you wanted to accomplish in your training? Progress should not come on accident, it should come on purpose. If progress is not happening purposefully or not appreciably well by accident (which usually it does not, in my experience, subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect), then using euphemisms about mountains and pathways does not really justify a lack of progress or a lack of having attained all that we want to have attained in our training.

Last edited by Lee Salzman : 06-26-2013 at 05:29 AM.
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