David Orange

It's hard to keep that view when you have a dojo to pay for, but I agree that if the student doesn't train very much, it's not my problem. It's my job to concentrate on developing myself.

Mochizuki Sensei once told me, "Treat your students like guests."

I often saw him turn up his hands and shrug at what some people would do on the mat, as if to say, "Well, he obviously didn't understand what I just told him..."

He had to take his comfort in seeing the few who did get it. Of course, his yoseikan was often criticized for being "not Ueshiba's aikido," but he always said, "Nobody did Ueshiba's aikido except Ueshiba."

To me, in a way, it's the same problem Jesus spoke of about a rich man's getting into heaven. It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Maybe aikido is too big to pass through the eye of a needle--too rich to achieve the heavenly aim of reaching the student's heart. If it takes years and years just to get the most basic principles down...maybe something is lacking in the formal content of the art or the formal teaching curriculum.

If we try to make sure that all students absorb the entire technical curriculum of aikido, we might miss passing on the most essential nature of the art. I think there's an essence of aikido that can be passed on with almost none of the external appearance of aikido and that it can be passed along very quickly.

Mochizuki Sensei told me "Teach as much as possible as fast as possible" and "Teach something in every lesson that the student can go out and use that very day."

From that advice, I created my "Zero Degree" teaching method. But it's only a five-hour course, it carries no rank (except Zero Degree) and people get tired of going over and over the same five lessons again and again.

But I think it does contain the most important essence of the art of aikido and if I only have five hours to teach them, I want them to at least experience that much. If I have only one hour to give them the best I can, the first one-hour lesson of the Zero Degree program can give them that. So if I only meet them once and never see them again, I'll know I have given them a congruent piece of the best I know to give them.

Still, in trying to maintain everything his teacher gave him, I think Ledyard Sensei is very worthy and admirable. I just think that maybe that really was a thing for that time only--something he and his teacher shared that can't be preserved like a museum piece because it's not appropriate to the current day, much less the times to come.

If we can find the essence, though, and share that...I believe we will have done the best that can be done.

FWIW

David