View Single Post
Old 10-28-2010, 11:20 PM   #77
George S. Ledyard
 
George S. Ledyard's Avatar
Dojo: Aikido Eastside
Location: Bellevue, WA
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 2,670
Offline
Re: Is two Days a week enough?

Quote:
Niall Matthews wrote: View Post
George you're being judgemental. Didn't Saotome Sensei ever tell you that it's the journey, not the destination.
Actually, no Saotome Sensei never said anything like that... He did say that there was no final destination, that one never arrived. Yes, he did say that. But the majority of what he talked about was how we made the journey... The quality of the journey was and always is important. That's all I am talking about here.

All journeys are not equal. Some folks put so little into their journey that it's too much to be asked to cross the street. Others will journey so far from home that they reach uncharted territory. Sensei ALWAYS talked about O-Sensei and how strict he was, how uncompromising when it came to the training. His art was most definitely not a hobby... His journey had been long and hard but he never stopped on that road. The point is that O-Sensei, even teachers like some of the uchi deshi, went so far on their journeys that regular folks don't even try any more. They accord some special status to these teachers and then tell themselves that however far they themselves get on their journey is fine. There is no sense at all that they should be trying to go down that path as far as the folks who blazed the trail had done.

O-Sensei is gone, the uchi deshi are passing, soon there will be no one left alive who has even journeyed to those far off realms visited by these pioneers who went before; not unless we do it ourselves.

George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Bellevue, WA
Aikido Eastside
AikidoDvds.Com
  Reply With Quote