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Old 07-16-2004, 08:58 AM   #11
Ghost Fox
Dojo: Jikishinkan Dojo
Location: New York City (Brooklyn)
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 219
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Re: Article: Lack of Spirituality by George S. Ledyard

Quote:
Craig Hocker wrote:
huh?
scientist and magician ? who is "They say..."?

no offense, except this is absolute patent BS.

scientist are hardly cold and detached theorist. we willing jump in the pool too. are you referring to actual magicians like James Randi or Penn&Teller ?
or do you mean mumbo-jumbo BS artists ?

In studying nature, scientists have gotten themselves poisoned, burnt, maimed, killed and murdered. Chemists know a lot of noxious compounds taste, smell and feel because that was how 19th century would categorize newly made compounds - by direct sensory experience.



Having studied what Tempu Nakamura Sensei taught as compared with what Koichi Tohei Sensei teaches. It really comes down to the fact that they are interested much the same things. If you set aside metaphysical versus biomechanical/psychological/cultural discussions regarding conceptualizations of Ki, what you get in both men's practices and exercises is a fairly pragmatic no-nonsense top down approach to maximizing sensorimotor function by an experimental process where the student forms their own internal system. What you don't have is a lot of spiritialism, purple fogs, complex multitheisitic cosmologies, etc
some distortions and misunderstandings notwithstanding.

so please don't drag Shin Shin Toistu Do in to a talk of spiritiality.
It may be used as a tool like the technical movements of Aikido to enhance ones feeling and expression of personal spiritual beliefs
one already has and brings to ones practice, but it itself is by no means
a spiritual/religious system.

Craig
My apologies if my little parable riled you up.

But by BS artist do you mean the likes of Pythagoras, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and Immanuel Kant, whose discoveries in the realms of science and philosophy where offshoot of their occult studies, great men who treated their studies of the forces of nature and mathematics as a way or "do" towards enlightenment. As for modern chemistry, it wouldn't exist today if it weren't for the efforts of alchemist from of the 7th -- 18th century. It's interesting how people see what they want to see, and disregard what they don't understand as trivial and inconsequential. I'm sure Aikido will be stripped of all it's mystery and charm given a few more decades in Western culture, and I'm sure technically it will improve while leaving it with no more meaning than a toaster.

As my post was mostly about beliefs in general and how they can be used to enhance and interpret one's physical training, the philosophies of Tohei are more than applicable, especially as they provide a different perspective of the art then those of Shioda and O sensei. If you can only interpret and filter your Aikido training through your belief in neuroscience that's perfectly okay, but do not apply those same limitations to those who are willing to explore different avenues of thoughts. Just for the record, I have spent the last five years of my Aikido studies with an offshoot of Shin Shin Toitsu, simply because it provides a more mystical/transcendental point of view as oppose to one that is too scientific or too spiritual, and you spelled Shin Shin Toitsu wrong.

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