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Old 07-23-2006, 03:32 PM   #89
Erick Mead
 
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Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
Location: West Florida
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 2,619
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Re: Religion and Aikido

Quote:
Grant Wagar wrote:
I came across this article on another website. I'm not sure whether to laugh or feel sorry for this person.
http://www3.telus.net/st_simons/arm07.htm
It basically argues that taekwondo and other martial arts
Quote:
a Trojan Horse in the House of the Lord, eroding the spiritual barriers between Zen Buddhism and the Christian Gospel, and potentially leading vulnerable children and teens into the early stages of eastern occultism. As a result of this research, our Christian School Board decided to no longer offer Taekwondo or other Martial Arts. The good news about religious syncretism is that it is never too late to repent and start afresh, serving one Master and one Master alone, Jesus Christ our Lord
I guess when we meditate we're suposed to be thinking about God and not clearing our minds.
It is exceedingly sad what poor theology does to people.

"We need to be reminded, as the Hebrew prophets insisted, that it is much easier to worship God than to do His will."
Dom Aelred Graham, "Zen Catholicism."

As to aikido and martial arts in the true spirit of budo -- every attack I become able to redeem to better purpose is in the pursuit of His Will.

It is God in whom I live and move and have my being. The task of Zen is no more than to discover my original nature. How can Zen thus be anything but a path toward God? "I AM who am." To think anything else in the context of Christianity is to be merely superstitious and to betray deep ignorance of one's own religion.

That Zen says nothing about God is of no consequence. "What God actually is always remains hidden from us; and this is the highest knowledge we can have of God in this life, that we know Him to be above every thought we are able to think of him." St. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, 2, 1, 9. Thus, truly clearing our minds, even of the most profound thoughts of God, is the most profound contemplation of God conceivable. As Lao-tse and many Zen roshi's since would have it -- "Those who know, do not say; those who say, do not know."

As a suitable antidote to such nonsense, I heartily recommend, BTW, this website for the Morning Star Zendo:

http://kennedyzen.tripod.com/

At the bottom of the page, check out the statement made to Kennedy Roshi (White Plum lineage) who is also a Jesuit priest of the Roman Catholic Church, by his Dharma teacher, Yamada Koun Roshi

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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