Thread: Ai-nuke
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Old 07-18-2018, 10:40 AM   #33
jonreading
 
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Re: Ai-nuke

This is an interesting read... Couple things that interest me:
1. I am not a huge fan of conflation an argue of skill with an argument of philosophy. I think we see aikido draw upon the ethos of virtue as a substitute for the ethos of skill. "I can't fight my way out off a paper bag, but I am a better person than you." Conversely, we also see this argumentation come up when we cannot oppose someone of [perceived] lesser morals. I think when you separate these two issues, you get a different picture of things.
2. I think much of Ueshiba's history is tainted (good or bad). We tend to rely on second-hand (or third-hand) accounts of stories that we rely upon as bedrock fact for an opinion. The problem is the reliability of the content is not solid and so the arguments [at best] are shaky, and wrong at worst. To make matters worse, Ueshiba did communicate differently over his lifetime and so in some cases we even have conflicting recollections of O Sensei depending on which time period the source experienced O Sensei.

I am not sure what to think. For me, a firm account of Ueshiba indicates he had significant martial prowess, confirmed by his students and peers. Some of his students were able to successfully receive his instruction, some not. There seems to be a correlation with the declining excellence of aikido people with the rise of Doshu and the aikido that emerged in the 60's and 70's. In a previous post, I responded to a question from Peter regarding my personal opinion that our art has been in a decline from a skill perspective.

I would like to see an argument and a premise. What are we trying to say? That spiritual aikido is better than physical aikido? That O Sensei was better because he was religious? Why?
Quote:
I do not reject the ideas that internal power brings to Aikido, the coordination of body that it takes to understand how these things work brings a strong understanding of how we function on a physiological level as efficient human beings, but I would argue that the concept of Aikido that the founder saw in his latter days had more to do with the concept of the spirit than that of an efficient body.
You are speaking about a person who was in possession of an efficient and connected body, why would you expect him to talk about his body after years of talking about how to learn aiki? The premise of aikido training is that you have "aiki body". Without this understanding, why would you assume you could understand his philosophical teachings that rely upon this foundation idea? Why is it OK to skip his foundation physical instruction and go right to his spiritual teaching?
In the previous post, Peter mentioned a book that contained many of O Sensie's teachings - enough that it is one of the rare instructional pieces we know came first-hand from Ueshiba. Yet we don't do many of the exercises and waza found in that book. Why?

I am asking these questions somewhat rhetorically because they are good and deep questions to ask.

Jon Reading
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