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Old 08-13-2002, 07:46 AM   #8
Dennis Hooker
Dojo: Shindai Dojo, Orlando Fl.
Location: Orlando Florida
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 456
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This certainly has been an eye opening and revealing discussion, and for the greater part a civil one. We have had personal opinion, casual speculation and well educated discourse. I am not a very literate nor well educated man myself, nether am I well traveled and schooled in the Japanese language. My education comes more as an act of God and the GI Bill than of my scholastic ability. Though I have studied it's budo arts for the better part of a lifetime I do not read and write the Japanese language. I have been told by people I trust, that were students of M. Ueshiba Sensei, that he often chastised his students who sought to parrot, in words and action, his religious activities without the corresponding faith and or knowledge of what they were seeking. In fact I am told that he got very angry. However he must have felt that these students had a chance to realize their full potential as human beings through using his art of being human. If not I believe such a zealot man as he would have cast them out quickly. So perhaps it was not his religious path that he wanted them to walk. Perhaps he pointed to no particular path at all except the one of our own making or choosing, one we could each without measure hold as true. Perhaps it is pure faith in a godhead that he felt was needed. I believe as I am told that he was a very pious man. Aikido is an extension of him and being so how could it not be principally founded upon the development of a persons spiritual nature. Perhaps Aikido is the tool that is there for likeminded folks. A tool that helps us develop the phases of human existence from seed, sprout, flower, fruit and death. Perhaps it's the hoe that helps us do the weeding. Perhaps it is the literal plowshare beaten from the sword. You ever walk behind plow. There is not much left at the end of the day except to be thankful, and war sure is the last thing on your mind.

Dennis Hooker: (DVD) Zanshin and Ma-ai in Aikido
https://www.createspace.com/238049

www.shindai.com
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