Thread: Defining Aikido
View Single Post
Old 03-19-2005, 11:19 AM   #8
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
United_States
Offline
Re: Defining Aikido

Quote:
Brion Toss wrote:
(snip) But it has always been recognizably the same building, not just from how it looks from the outside, but how it feels inside (this from people who were here when it was new). There is something about its character that persists, no matter how much people mess with it.
It could have been otherwise; the place could never be, for instance, a welding shop, shooting range, balloon hangar, bank, or foundry, partly because some of those activities would probably destroy it in short order, but largely because it naturally tended to attract enterprises that didn't require too much fussing to fit in. The building has remained itself because it had a real, if difficult-to-define nature to begin with, and because it would be too much bother to make it into something entirely different.
That's how I've come to see Aikido, as a large, accommodating structure that is somewhat plastic, but you know when you've tried to make it into something that it isn't.
I'll counter your assertion that "you know when you've tried to make it into something that it isn't" by saying you first have to really do Aikido before you can change it. I'd say you have to be one of the recognized experts (by the peer uchi-deshi of Ueshiba) of Aikido before you can claim your grasp of "Aikido" is such that you couldn't do anything counter to the essential intent of Aikido. I'd say a lot of people do or easily can do absolutely bogus stuff and claim that it's really Aikido. Until they have the go-ahead from the Do-Shu, they have no legitimacy and are just assumptive amateurs. And that's not just my view, either... that's the traditional view. If you have support for your position that counters that traditional view, I'd like to hear it.

Regards,

Mike Sigman
  Reply With Quote