View Single Post
Old 07-20-2011, 04:34 AM   #42
sakumeikan
Dojo: Sakumeikan N.E. Aikkai .Newcastle upon Tyne.
Location: Newcastle upon Tyne
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,266
United Kingdom
Offline
Re: The Word "Aikido"

Quote:
Dan Harden wrote: View Post
Joe.
I think my points have been pretty clear.
We have the founders aiki-do
We have modern aikido,
Apparently your argument is that Modern aikido is equal to the old mans aiki? I clearly dissagree. Your replies express waza and ot aiki. Over the years, instead of discussions and displays of what the old man was talking about, we got confusion and waza based nonsense. Even now you reduce yourselves to asking what style do I do. It's sad, but its how you are programmed to think. While claming you are free, when pressed, you retain all the trappings of those stuck in a box..

As for my background and ranks;
I've said it before, when it comes down to it, it's easy to go after me, but why is it that you have nothing to say to ten shihan, and dozens of 5th dans and 4th dans, who now agree and train this way? Or that it is a 100% success rate, written about here.
No teacher has shown up to state otherwise.
Which pretty much sinks the nail in the coffin of any counter argument doesn't it?
Yet I have not seen you, David, Graham, or any detractor commenting on the publicly documented and witnessed accounts of what keeps happening when we stand in rooms with teacher after teacher, shihan after shihan, and manage (without using any technique) to convince them of the superiority of their own arts aiki. And then make friends and work together
Why is that, Joe?
No comment on that?
No thoughts on how weird and odd that is, to keep happening over and over.
I think you do not comment because there is no argument that can be successfully made. You would have to take on too many teachers in your own art, and then have to admit that some thing has gone desperately wrong with the art over the years.
.
As for insulting;
I am sensitive to the fact that it is hard to hear someone tell you that the majority missed it, harder still when it is not from a recognized teacher, I left to pursue aiki. But truth stands on its own legs. I stand alone in rooms all over. You might want to consider, where I've been and what I could say. but don't, While you choose to individualize the argument, I don't. It's bigger than individuals, grander than a single art and it is a bridge that is making friends between arts.
Ueshiba's aiki is what we should be pursuing. His aiki (and he knew this too) is that bridge, not some made up hollow shell that we have made of it. No amount of discussion will make them all equal.
It's the power in his aiki, that reveals the imposters who have no claim to it. Their work cannot stand in the face of it.
I love the quote from one of Doshu's close friends; a Shihan in the art. He told his people "I hve stopped teaching aikido. I have discovered aiki." When he tried to show Doshu, Doshu agreed his power and aiki had changed, but he said "I can't do that, they would kill me, I have to do what my father did."
And so it goes.
Dan
Dear Mr Harden,
Thank you for your comments. Let me make these points.
1.Have a never indicated whether I thought Modern Aikido was /is better /equal/worse than the Founders Aikido.
2.You must have a persecution complex.You indicate I go after you.If by seeking information or asking questions is going after you ,
well what can i say?
3.You constantly quote that you train loads of 4th /5th dans/shihans yet you do not state their names.Especially the alleged conversation between one of Doshus close friends[Mr X]
and Doshu. Could this be an urban myth???
I do not consider myself someone who is a detractor.I have asked you openly and honestly for your lineage.
I also stated that I think you may well have something of value to
teach.Hardly a message I would write if I were a detractor.
You use carefully constructed blogs which in my mind are less than respectful and are judgemental.You suggested in an earlier blog that I was /am unfamiliar with SOFT POWER.Whether I am or not is not the point.The point is you know nothing about me yet you make such statements.
I will however agree that we as aikidoka should engage in a quest which enables us to fully realise the potential that lies at the heart of O Senseis art.
Cheers, Joe.
  Reply With Quote