Thread: Vantage points
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Old 01-02-2013, 02:01 PM   #86
hughrbeyer
Dojo: Shobu Aikido of Boston
Location: Peterborough, NH
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 653
United_States
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Re: Vantage points

@Nathan, and others in the same boat, I have all kinds of sympathy for you and none at all.

All kinds of sympathy, because I know how frustrating it is to be told you have to put hands on and you can't (yet).

None at all, because there has never been a time in the history of budo when it's been so easy to get ahold of this stuff. O-Sensei searched his whole early life for it, and when he finally found it on a godforsaken frozen island in north Japan he abandoned his wife and children for months to make a start on acquiring it. Others left the US and lived in Japan for years, studying diligently, only to have their own teachers say that they never taught the good stuff to them. We are living in the days of wine and roses, by comparison.

And IHTBF isn't a one-time thing, either. I recently got back from a IS/IP seminar with a whole new understanding of the most basic exercise and how it relates to my Aikido practice. And then someone made a comment about the Asahi News video and suddenly I could see the same insight operating in O-Sensei's movement.

Partly this is because I'm a little dense. But partly it's because insights come in layers, and when you've progressed enough to be ready for them. So you have to keep going back to the stream, because the water you drink from it is never the same.

Evolution doesn't prove God doesn't exist, any more than hammers prove carpenters don't exist.
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