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Old 07-05-2012, 09:37 AM   #82
MM
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 1,996
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Re: Ki to the Highway

Let's take, for example, when Ueshiba wrote to stand in six directions. Now, people came along and decided that it meant to stand in hanmi of 60 degrees angle. They came up with opinions that meant something to them personally and enable them to function in obtaining true objectives of developing aikido skills and abilities.

Now, did that help them, in any way whatsoever, in replicating Ueshiba's skills and abilities? The answer is not just no, but emphatically no.

Let's overlay "ki" with "stand in six directions". Ueshiba meant something specific when talking about these concepts. Turns out, many of these specific concepts can be found in martial classics and there, they have specific meanings. How can you tell? Fairly easy. You take all those people who came up with opinions that meant something to them and see if they have the same skills and abilities of those martial masters who all talked about the same thing in the same way. 99% will fail that test. Those martial masters weren't guessing. They knew the concepts and when tested, showed those concepts in a martial environment.

That is what people in budo should be looking for. Not their own opinion of what something should be, but what the classics actually meant in regards to martial arts. What those men in budo meant when they talked about concepts.

When climbing a mountain, all those people at the very bottom look up and say, hey, there's all kinds of paths to the top. But those few who are 3/4 of the way up know that there are very few paths to the top. And those paths are well known by the few who have made it. They can be described by those few. And those few all look at the people and their opinions at the bottom, smile, and say, show me the truth of your opinion.

Just because all those people at the bottom get together and form a general concensus on an opinion doesn't mean that their opinion is right, true, or worthy. They can all stand at the bottom in hanmi at 60 degree angles and repeat that mantra for 20 to 40 years ... oh wait, they have ... and yet they are no closer to Ueshiba's skills and abilities. Meanwhile, men like Chen Fake, Hong Jungshen, Sagawa, Ueshiba, all talk about the same concepts and martial classics ... from the top of the mountain.

All IMO but what do I know? I'm
Mark
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