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Old 03-08-2012, 10:23 AM   #74
Lee Salzman
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 406
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Re: Morihei Ueshiba, Budo and Kamae

Quote:
Christopher Li wrote: View Post
Well, there is a language, at least 1,000 years old in Japan, and older than that in China, that was formulated specifically to describe and explain these ideas. Morihei Ueshiba used that language - the spirals and six directions are just one very basic example. More will be forthcoming.

Best,

Chris
The language by itself is only valuable so long as it points to concepts we can actually agree upon. And if we are agreed upon the concepts, then the language is not worth much, I would go so far as to say it is even worthless or less than worthless. This is especially problematic because terms like spirals or six directions can be very flowery and poetic, so you can attach way too many stupid and unproductive meanings to them that sound similar. So just giving people a new set of words to misinterpret seems sketchy.

I am not actually sure we accomplish much merely by pointing out that we mistranslated his verbiage. It's a start, but then you need to prove that when he said six directions he meant the certain concept you are thinking of, rather than, say, decontracted activations and some killer shamanic weed that made everything feel sooooo cosmic and totally made his ki tingle. That's the real task you face.

There's no shortage of people in the world talking about dantiens or yin-yangs or qi or yi or li or jin(g) or taiji or... And then you watch them move on video or such, and it can border on embarassing.

Or to put it one other way: what matters here is the specific training models and the results they produce, not what we call them, since it's all just made-up English labels for stuff anyway. May as well just call it fibewudgetmiklenok, so long as it labels a concrete physical experience that has already been adequately taught. So what are we trying to show? That M. Ueshiba used some set of words, or that he used a specific training model that we can actually dissect and use, especially when we seem so hesitant to really define that meaningful concrete training model?

Last edited by Lee Salzman : 03-08-2012 at 10:35 AM.
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