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Old 06-12-2005, 07:29 PM   #225
Ketsan
Dojo: Zanshin Kai
Location: Birmingham
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 865
United Kingdom
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Re: Aikido minus mysticism: a step forward

How you attain budo purely from learning bujitsu I don't know. Budo is love I can understand, how you attain that from repeatedly smashing an uke into a mat I don't understand.

Martial arts are for dealing with martial situations. Put simply, for decking someone who is trying to deck you. That's it.
Martial arts don't make you into a better person, you make you into a better person and the things you learn from martial arts can help.
Things like confidence, self knowledge, self discipline. Indeed these lessons learned in martial arts can lead you to make yourself full on evil. Confidence can easily become ego and arrogance can mask itself as self knowledge.

If you're in MA to become a better person, then you're spending a lot of time and money to achieve something that can be achieved simply by being mindful of what you do, what you say, what you think and by continually challenging yourself to improve.
When you can do that, in my opinion, you really are practicing Budo and that can be achieved without even knowing how to take a proper fighting stance or entering a dojo.
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