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Old 08-26-2009, 06:01 PM   #14
Rob Watson
Location: CA
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 697
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Re: How To Teach Power & Harmony?

"Unifying of opposing qualities without destroying any part of their distinctions."

In the battle of good versus evil just how much of the evil shall we retain? How is it possible to unify good and evil? Perhaps you mean to say that evil is vanquished by good while good remains untarnished by evil (the end does not justify the means) and evil is still clearly evil- but I still fail to see how there is any unification going on here. Destroy evil without becoming evil I get but where and what is unified?

It seems you have posed an unsolvable problem.

Morihei Ueshiba wrote:
Those who desire world harmony must dedicate themselves to its realization and to the accomplishment of the Divine Plan for their own nation. The assigned task of a nation is the realization of national harmony as One Family. We must all accomplish our own missions, that is, our assigned duties, as our share of the Divine Plan. Thus, we must perfect our own selves before the perfection of others in order to render any service in accordance with the Will of the Great God. The very act of perfecting oneself is a rendering of services towards the perfection of the Universe.

Nothing there to clarify the nature of the divine. Seems the elliptical paths are woven by those 'in the know' and they are just playing with us. Still begs the question as to who is the arbiter of the 'Divine Plan' and who knows the 'Will of the Great God'? Assigned duties? Seems like someone with some kind of power is in play here. Not to nit pick overly but is O'senseis harmony the same as your definition?

Either way O'sensei still makes the point that the universe needs perfecting - what, exactly, is 'broken'? Maybe the only thing broken in the universe is the disconnect between our perceptions and assumptions and the world around us doing its thing according to the 'Divine Plan'. Seems excessively fatalistic but then again why not 'rage against the night'?

Prof G's proclivities aside O'sensei certainly did invoke the divine powers as one would be want to do given the intractability of the issue from a logical point of view. The solution to Gödel's trashing of logic is to invoke some power from beyond logic to rectify the situation - certainly he couldn't do it and went insane in the process. There is more to it than logic can describe so how to teach such in a logical progression (so as to make it more easily learned) - it can't be done.

Some things simply cannot be taught but they certainly can be learned. We just figure it out on our own and are similarly confounded as to the manner of passing on the pearls.

I can't help but feel out of my depth but I keep on swimming anyway ...

"In my opinion, the time of spreading aikido to the world is finished; now we have to focus on quality." Yamada Yoshimitsu

Ultracrepidarianism ... don't.
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