Thread: My Rope Theory
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Old 01-23-2011, 01:53 PM   #72
graham christian
Dojo: golden center aikido-highgate
Location: london
Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 2,697
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Re: My Rope Theory

Quote:
George S. Ledyard wrote: View Post
Ok Graham, I think I get where you are coming from... but maybe not as the discussion is a bit obscure. So let me take a more earthy and less intellectual example.

Last weekend I attended the Bridge seminar in San Diego conducted by Ikeda Sensei, Christian Tissier, and Doran Sensei. I had a wonderful time and found every single person I worked with to be a pleasure, with one exception.

I had a partner who chose to do a total passive aggressive number on me. It was Ikeda Sensei's class and he was as usual doing connection work. My partner gave me a grab with absolutely no energy in it, a completely uncommitted grab, and then proceeded to look away and watch everyone around me training. It was so monumentally disrespectful that it was clearly intentional. I have encountered guys who play this game before. They give you nothing until they feel you try to move to do what the Sensei did, then they counter you. So I just sat there looking at him. I could see it register that I wasn't even trying to do the technique, and he almost looked at me, but he caught himself and didn't react. So I started walking forward to get him to give me some energy but he simply refused to engage and he literally allowed me to back him into some other folks rather than give me anything to work with.

So, "little mind" George is telling me to knock this sucker cold for dissing me. He'd have never seen it coming because he was so busy not looking at me. But "big mind" George prevailed and took the "high road". It certainly wasn't my problem that this guy was such an "anal pore". He wasn't my student and not my responsibility although I cannot imagine what teacher tolerates such an idiot in his dojo. But, not my problem... So I did the proper thing and ignored him the rest of the weekend.

However, the next day I was happily training with someone and I looked over and saw one of my female friends on the side crying and holding her shoulder. I happened to know she had a very fragile shoulder from a previous accident and it had clearly been re-injured. So I went over and asked her if she was ok and what had happened. She said that someone had cranked her shoulder hard and re-injured it. This being after he was too rough and she had told him to go easier because she was hurt.

At that point I was pretty pissed. I decided to go out and train a bit with whomever had done it. At first she wouldn't tell me who had done it but I insisted and low and behold, it was my sphincter friend from the first day. Now this fellow as a very tall and pretty strong guy and my friend was a diminutive female of just over 100 lbs I would say with very fine bone structure. Certainly someone I would exercise the utmost care with under any circumstance.

Now, I am a fairly mellow guy normally. But there is one thing that is totally calculated to bring out what I call the Wrath of God George (some I keep deeply buried most of the time) and that is the kind of guy who when he trains with me, a big, senior guy, he gives me nothing and won't take the risk of even participating and then turns around and manhandles some virtually defenseless 6th kyu woman and actually injures her after being asked to go easier. That's not an accident at that point, that's intentional.

When I realized whom she had pointed out, I told her that I had wanted to go out and "play" with him, but because it was him in particular I didn't trust myself to do it. I was SO angry I could barely see straight. I came very close to full Wrath of God George and had I done so it would have been blood on the mat, broken bones time. So, I restrained myself. Instead I went to one of the hosts and told them what had happened. In talking to some other folks I discovered that virtually all the women who trained with him and felt that they had been manhandled. One of my female friends told me that she had come inches from attacking him herself.

Anyway, as far as I am concerned, two possible outcomes would have been appropriate. One was that I beat the crap out of this fellow... Good karmic payback within minutes of the offense and all that. The other would be that the seminar organizers had acted on the information I had given them and dis-invited him to any future events held by them. I think I would have felt ok about either one. In the end, to my knowledge, neither happened.

My wife was adamant that I should have taken the guy out, then and there. One of my other senior friends said he would have told the guy to meet him in the parking lot. I've spent some time thinking about why I ended up not nuking the guy. I'm pretty straight with myself that it wasn't because I was afraid of being hurt in getting into it. I am not saying that I couldn't have been, this guy was pretty strong. But I didn't think that possibility was what restrained me. I was actually afraid of being embarrassed on some level. I didn't want to create a scene, I didn't want to put out a lot of bad juju into an event that was so overwhelmingly positive. I think I didn't want people to see that not so wonderful party of me that I know is there but I keep hidden.

My wife, who comes from a rough tough Western martial arts background asked me what was wrong with Aikido people that they didn't protect their own? I have plenty of rational answers as to why I didn't but that's really all bullshit. I could have, I didn't and no one else to my knowledge did anything about the guy. He will almost certainly hurt someone else before he is done.

So, I don't feel at peace with the outcome. I don't feel that I did what needed to be done and I feel the system failed to do what it should have done. Justice was not done and someone else will certainly suffer for it.

So my question is, how does all this wonderful ki good stuff, treating people wonderfully, respectfully, etc which you seem to always do... How does that handle people who are simply not good people, who are victimizers and prey on the weak? Isn't it really the responsibility of the strong to protect those people who can't protect themselves? That's what I have always told my kids that martial arts is about. I feel like I failed to do that. I did what was civilized, I wasn't violent, I didn't disturb the "wa" of the event. But I feel like I failed in some elemental way.

So tell me, how does all of your good ki, mutual respect, perfect equanimity (which is impressive the way) handle bad stuff. Conflict resolution is easy when there's not much conflict. I am not happy with my efforts to be civilized in this case. I feel like I should have done Conan on this guy. Unless I am convinced otherwise, I think if I am ever on the mat with this guy again and I see him pulling this stuff again, I will not make the same choice at all.
Hi George, thanks for the response. It's a shame there wasn't a woman there who could pretend she was 'weak' and then give him the fright of his life.
On the situation you found yourself in I think you handled it perfectly from the view of budo as we all must do what we consider the best action at the time and then later in review look over what we could have done better and what it would have been better for others to do. So well done is all I can say there.
I have been in similar situations and many years ago I had found there was an Aikido dojo near a friends house and she wanted her son to learn some Aikido to try and get him on the straight and narrow so I advised her to send him there.
Two weeks later I visited her expecting good news and to my horror found that he had returned home black and blue and basically had been beaten to a pulp as a demonstration by the teacher to the class of what to do with a thug. She was very upset and so was I as I knew his intention to improve himself was real.
The next day I went to the teachers house, my friend had been told by my girlfriend that I was pretty pissed off which was a bit out of charachter for me and so he said he would drive me there. I left him in the car and told him not to worry as all I wanted to do was find out what had happened.
On entering the house and meeting the guy I introduced myself and told him why I was there. He got offended as if to say who the hell are you questioning what I do. I proceeded to explain I just wanted to know if the boy had done anything untoward or if there was something I hadn't been told. He proceeded to tell me it's none of my business and said he would now teach me a lesson.
He told me to take his wrist and as I did so he did a fast Kotei Geishe which didn't work. This made him angry accusing me of resisting at which point he threw some chairs and table out of the way, his wife left the room in a hurry and he told me to try that again. I saw the rage in his eyes and recocnized he was actually quite mad and that only made me think he's the one who needs the lesson. Anyway I proceeded to grab his wrist and then with all the power he could muster he proceeded to do a Kotei geishe twisting the hand at the same time designed to rip out all the tendons. I went with it entering in to the center of the technique dropping my elbow and turning into him whilst thrusting my elbow straight through his sternum and acrooss the floor and pinning him to the wall. I was now seeing red and wanted to break his kneck and the thought of what budo meant prevented me from doing so. I left without a word more, got in the car outside with my friend saying 'what happened?' and all I could say was drive! It took a few minutes for me to regain my composure at which point I said 'owww!' as I noticed and felt my wrist had been damaged, I had indeed strained a few tendons.
Now in review I wondered what the hell had happened there and was it all my fault etc. etc. but in the end decided I had done the best I could do at that time and yet could learn a lot of lessons from that experience for the future.
One lesson I learned there, after much soul searching and put down of self was the realization that I had actually been Kind. I had been in a position where I found I was willing to cause seriouse harm and the other person knew it and thus by not doing so left him knowing that and me free of Karma so to speak. Hence my view of kindness changed. I also learned that I had more to learn and if I knew the type of kokyu that O'Sensei had then it would have been simple and super effective without any anger or rage etc. (that's my opinion anyway)
So what I'm basically saying here George is that in my experience I have found that each time it was due to my not knowing the depths and power of these things called love, kindness, goodness etc. or if you like Ki, kokyu, center, koshi etc. And what really annoys us? Our own lack of Wisdom if wisdom is seen to mean that which brings about an optimum solution, a solution where all win. The fact that we can't see it doesn't mean there isn't one. What's the point of learning non-resistance if you can't non-resist agresssion, badness, unfairness etc.? What's the point of then gaining ability if you don't use it to help in some way in those precise situations? For me both should be done as I believe that is part of 'the way'.
Regards. G.
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