Thread: 'Nen' in Aikido
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Old 11-17-2010, 01:45 PM   #3
Erick Mead
 
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Re: 'Nen' in Aikido

Thanks Professor. The native text lends no additional weight to my supposition from the description in context, then. I wonder however, if you agree or disagree, that these uses of 念 (nen = attention, feeling, sense) here are hard to reconcile with the commonplace usage as 'attention,' 'feeling' or 'sense' (emphasis added):
Quote:
This body is the concrete unification of the physical and spiritual created by the universe. ... In training the first task is to continually discipline the spirit, sharpen the power of nen, and unify body and mind. This is the foundation for the development of waza, which in turn unfolds endlessly through nen.... To develop the subtle movements of ki based on nen, you must understand that the left side of the body is the basis of martial art and the right side is where the ki of the universe appears.
... The right side brings forth power through the left. The left becomes a shield and the right the foundation of technique. This natural, spontaneous law of nature must be based in the centrum, and one must manifest the self freely as dynamic, spherical rotation.
I cannot help but to relate these associations of nen in the right-left connection with the mechanical principle of torque shear in this diagram:

http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/attach...9&d=1215185239

Nidai Dosshu in Aikido elsewhere specifically relates his concept of this dynamic "spherical rotation" analogizing it to the stability of a top (p. 169- of 1985 ed.), in which the "centrum" attains a "rock-like" stability through the "development of spherical motions which consists of centripetal and centrifugal forces." (p. 170)

The only way those forces coexist and imply a sphere is if they are at right angles to one another -- as in the diagram, and spiral both up and down. Centripetal is the tension forces shown in the arrows pulling away from the centrum of the diagram (tension or extension) and the centrifugal is the arrows pushing toward the centrum in the diagram. (compression or contraction)

Back to the point of how this is associated with nen -- at p. 171 of Aikido he, in two sentences, specifically equivocates this principle that leads to the keen and automatic sensitivity of the windmill to winds softer than we can feel (nen 念) but then again relates the analogy of the dynamic action of the top (nen 捻 "whose force of rotations extends to every part yet simultaneously stabilizes and concentrates its mass around its center." (i.e. -- centrifugal and centripetal forces combined).

As you can see my sense of this intended elision is not isolated to this text -- thought its relationship to the dual sense of nen as explained in TSOA is no where else made. Nen in this use seems to point to something rather more concrete than merely sense or feeling and seems to describe something very like 捻 (nen = twist, torque) as the right/left centripetal/.centrifugal connection in the center as the basis of BOTH the sensory and action components that are meant.

Last edited by Erick Mead : 11-17-2010 at 01:48 PM.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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