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Old 05-25-2007, 10:51 AM   #13
Don_Modesto
Dojo: Messores Sensei (Largo, Fl.)
Location: Florida
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 1,267
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Re: Aikido is a pair of ducks- tantric practices and aikido

Quote:
Jennifer Smith wrote: View Post
On some other threads People have commented on the volume of teachers including sexual tantric references in their lessons....

In John Stevens Book, The Philosophy of Aikido, he commits a section to the shingon( book not in front of me) tantric practices and how they relate to aikido. ...

What are your views on Tantric practices and aikido?
Not an expert but have done some reading.

As I understand it, sexual practice was only one small--and vigorously repudiated--school (Tachikawa ryu) in Japanese Tantrism.

Tantrism seems to imply a discipline using the imagination to find similarities amongst otherwise disparate phenomena: "I am the universe", e.g. and integrating them through meditation with MANDALA, MANTRA, and MUDRA, or, as the tantra promised, "Mind and body united." Sound familiar?

It was through such esoteric practice that profane practices such as poetry, carpentry, and the martial arts came to be regarded as proper venues for spiritual practice we now call MICHI (DO).

The history I've read seems to point in this direction, anyway. I don't know how much of Osensei's practice or Omoto was tantric. It is safe to say, however, that most of this influence is dying or dead.

Osensei's son, the second Doshu, had little desire to pursue it, much reason to jettison it (GHQ down the block), and most aikidoists seem pretty secular, too.

Don't know of anyone bringing it into their practice except perhaps what Omoto practitioners remain in aikido, and perhaps Kooichi Barrish or Mary Heiny.

Hope this helps.

Don J. Modesto
St. Petersburg, Florida
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