Thread: Power Proud
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Old 09-28-2011, 03:54 PM   #37
Chris Li
 
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Join Date: Dec 2000
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Re: Power Proud

Quote:
Rennis Buchner wrote: View Post
As a complete aside to the current conversation, I can say with 100 percent certainty that this teaching and its use in Japan pre-dates Takeda/Ueshiba by a few hundred years (it pops up in the densho of my own ryuha) and I can also say for sure that it is featured in one of the ryuha that Takeda Sokaku is known to have learned in his younger days.

Not that this has anything to do with the current conversation per se, just something I noticed and just now connected the dots.

Rennis
In case anybody's interested. It's a section from the Tiger chapter ("Tora no Maki") of the "Rikuto" ("Six Strategies", or "Six Scabbards", also called "Liutao" in Chinese, IIRC), which is a well known Chinese book of strategy. The reason why it's relevant to Aikido is that M. Ueshiba cited this passage as containing one of the central "secrets" of Aikido. This translation is my rough English version of the Japanese version of the Chinese text, so apologies in advance to the original authors :

If it comes, then meet it, if it leaves, then send it away.
If it resists, than harmonize it.
5 and 5 are 10.
2 and 8 are 10.
1 and 9 are 10.
You should harmonize like this.
Intuit true and false, know what is hidden,
The large is everywhere, the small enters the realm of the microscopic.

There are chances for life and death, without reacting to changes.
Approach things without moving your heart (without being disturbed).

Best,

Chris

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