are you combat effective!

Aldie Vilan wrote: I'm sure that what I have written below will spark anger or whatever. I don't care I'm just simply sharing to you my personal view on the issue… .

I reality, we also don't care what you write, it is only excellent pretext to chat with friends

Aldie Vilan wrote: If you are after this then wow clearly your wasting your time with Aikido why not join a religious organization and there you will find where all this principles are and I'm sure there is no entrance fee or monthly fees for retaining your membership. Surely the teachings there are far reaching than what Aikido is offering.

I'm still very new to Aikido so what I've "learned" so far has a long way to go, but I try to learn Aikido to avoid smacking into forces more powerful than myself. In the same way I avoid a direct punch and use the physical movements of an attacker, I also try to avoid a fight by using the thoughts or behaviors of a potential attacker. I also learn Aikido because if I fail at avoiding a conflict, I want to know a better way of moving so i prevent myself from being harmed while at the same time trying to control the situation as best I can.
I suppose I could simply join some religious organization (to a large degree I have, in fact) but that doesn't mean I can't compliment what I learn from just such a group with what I learn from a martial art. I'm not sure how much sense I'm making, but in the same way I can apply the study of psychology or sociology to history, I might also be able to apply the study of conflict with the study of peace.
Sorry if I don't make much sense, but I guess in a way you could say I'm still figuring out what the heck I am doing when i train.
Take care,
Matthew

Aldie,

I appreciate where you are coming from. Why study a martial art for non martial purposes?

Get a copy of Miyamoto Mushashi's "The Book of Five Rings" - get a copy that includes a history of this hero of Japan. After totally mastering the sword, and ways of combat he put aside fighting. He wanted more out of life.

I have read that fully spiritually enlightened religious seekers in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions - continue to sit and meditate as they did before they realized the ultimate truth. Why?

I'll leave it to you.

In a practical sense - when you do multiple opponent and begin to see all the space on the mat - not the attackers - you begin to realize how very safe you are. There is more 'safe' space - all around the hand or weapon that approaches you. When your mind flips around to this you will (you may, sir) feel your mind open. There are other things to learn - things you don't know, that you don't know.

Imagine the things we don't know.

dave

David Knowlton wrote: Imagine the things we don't know. dave

Thank's for that Dave, do you realise I'm not going to get anything done for the rest of the day

regards,

Mark

David Knowlton wrote: I discovered my true power when I let the techniques turn into expresssions of joy.

Funny how that works, right?

I was similarly distracted from my intention of being a karate bad-ass by the intrinsic beauty of well-executed technique and the real feeling of harmony felt in intense KUMITE.

My attacker was my father. Killing him would have been to kill myself. I literally had to love my enemy. When I felt free of the need to learn to kill, the movement of judo was a pure expression of the joy of life.

Tough stuff, this. Good you found a good dojo. Glad aikido is working for you.

It's been very educational to me, someone sort of a rough-neck in youth, how horrifying the ritualistic, sometimes rather artificial attacks we go at each other with in aikido can be for someone with a traumatized background.

Thanks for the post.

Thanks for listening. The enlightened are silent. I think I'll become more quiet when it hurts less.



dave

Aldie Vilan wrote: ....conflict resolution, fighting without fighting, and on and on.. well this principles and this teachings is not new just about any Religion teaches this. If you are after this then wow clearly your wasting your time with Aikido why not join a religious organization and there you will find where all this principles are and I'm sure there is no entrance fee or monthly fees for retaining your membership. Surely the teachings there are far reaching than what Aikido is offering.

You sure?

Prominent American minister Pat Robertson has called for the covert execution of Kim Jong Il. He must have the footnoted version of the Ten Commandments. None of mine are followed by such terms as "except" or "unless it's totally, like, unconvenient, ya know?"

In fact, as Zen practitioner Brian Victoria suggests in his books on Zen in war, religions usually follow the lead of the governments they exist under. So much for rendering unto god that which is god's, right? Religion is no sinecure against brutality.

Let's see, who has been against the current catastrophe in Iraq?--Aha! the men in the military who would have to fight it. Start with Colin Powell.

How ironic, peace through the military. And other martial arts?

Perhaps far afield of the concerns of most aikidoists, I found a source in The Weaving of the Mantra: Kukai and the Construction of the Esoteric Buddhist Discourse, by Ryuichi Abé which most satisfyingly explains to me the very real dilemma you face so conclusively and dismissively.

He traces religious patriarch Kukai's efforts to actualize Buddhism "in this very life" and distance believers from the empty disputation and endless grinding of fine logic characteristic of Buddhism in his time. He did this through ritual which was intended to give one the experience of Buddhism before and beyond words or conceptualizations.

FWIW, this ritual entailed that mantra (sic) so familiar to aikidoists—"unification of mind and body." This was a linchpin of Kukai's practice, the SANMITSU, the three mysteries, of mind (mandala), spirit/speech (mantra), and body (mudra). While contemplating the Buddhas in some mandala and reciting the "true words" of mantra and forming further iterations of truth with hand gestures, one came to be the dharma. No, the practitioner's DNA didn't change into said Buddhas, and maybe the aikido doesn't work as self-defense. Those are smaller questions than what is being aspired to.

My own thought on Osensei's intentions is that he took Kukai's efforts as paradigm to his own: aikido is meant to give one the experience conflict resolution before and beyond words or conceptualizations.

That a search for spiritual peace ought to be realized in violent form, I think, speaks to the psychology of those brutalized by the cowardice and hypocrisy of religionists and politicians and other purveyors of mellifluous words. Some folk just need to work it out at the lowest common denominator and refine their BS detectors back up to civility.

But it is, indeed, the explicit goal of aikido to work its way back up.

Aldle wrote:

Aikido why not join a religious organization and there you will find where all this principles are and I'm sure there is no entrance fee or monthly fees for retaining your membership. Surely the teachings there are far reaching than what Aikido is offering.

most religious organizations only concern themselves with one aspect of a persons development...the spiritual side. Many, like myself, would submit that religion does not necessarily equate to spiritualism. Although, most that go to mainstream organized religion are there for spiritual reasons.

Aikido on the other hand (and things like yoga), are more holistic in nature as practices. The attempt to align the mind, body, and spirit. Aikido also deals heavily with conflict resolution, both internal within yourself, and in your interactions with others.

If you can resolve conflict or better deal with it, you will be happier, if you are happier, then I think it that is a perfect reason to study something with aikido.

I personally think you are wasting your time if you are studying budo or martial arts for self defense...why not take a gun class, or learn how to use mace, or a taser, or take a risk avoidance seminar? money and time better spent if this is what you are going to reduce martial arts and aikido to.

Don Modesto wrote:

How ironic, peace through the military. And other martial arts?

Yea go figure, I am an infantry officer at the largest military training site in Eurpoe directly training soldiers to go "down range"....on top of that I practice the tenants of buddhism and I am a devote vegetarian/vegan. The world is a very complicated place! I have learned over the years that conflict is very complicated.

If it was not, we'd have no use for all this "art of war" stuff....we'd simply get the biggest and most effective weapon we could find and use it whenever someone disagreed with us for whatever reason.

tenets