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Old 10-05-2012, 06:18 AM   #5
Carl Thompson
 
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Location: Kasama
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 507
Japan
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Re: The House of Pain

I've heard it said that Osensei would not award shodan to those who cried out from the pain of nikkyo. The founder often talked of reishutaiju - the concept of the spirit being master of the body. Everything has reishutaiju, including animals, plants, rocks and the universe itself. The manifest body is but a vehicle for the spirit - in the case of all things. The deportment and mastery of that vehicle is imperative: The spirit is the most important, for that is what leads the body, and yet some who claim to practise Osensei's "spiritual" aikido are the first to cave in and become subject to the will and intentions of another through their subservience to, and lack of integration with the mere vehicle in which their spirit resides. Good training modifies the dosage, so that the experience frees us from that paradigm without injury and without just going through motions in which there is nothing to be spiritually (and thus physically) overcome. In fact shugyo (austere training) should be an inoculation against injury, physical or mental/spiritual.

At least that is how I have come to interpret this.

Regards

Carl
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