Quote:
Matthew Gano wrote:
What if we view ki as having a naturally positive nature which gets twisted into something negative? My meager lessons in Jinja Shinto would seem to support this view. "Genki" (source ki, yes?) implies positivity and health, despite the fact that we can describe states of ki that are unhealthy or otherwise negative also. So while we might say some person is byouki, it's only because the original nature of the ki has been twisted, and returning to health would be returning to a genki state (the original state of ki?). Just a quick thought I had anyway.
Take care, all!
|
Hello Matthew,
You can do this, however, only if you have already previously defined KI in some way. What you are doing is defining KI by looking at the way in which the Chinese characters of a Japanese word are combined and then using this to define the meaning of the Japanese word. You may start out by thinking of KI as a 'naturally positive' nature (whatever this means), but you should then be able to give a similar analysis with all the other 270-odd compounds of the character occurring in modern Japanese. Your analysis seems initially plausible with
genki and
byouki, but less plausible with terms like 気密
kimitsu (air-tight), where KI is clearly air.
I am stating this, not as a longtime practitioner of aikido, but as a student of the Japanese language.
Best wishes,
PAG