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Old 06-04-2007, 12:44 PM   #101
DH
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Re: Parsing ai ki do

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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
Yes. Yamabiko.

But wait -- surely, surely, you do not mean Hibiki.

"Hibiki Dan"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiki_Dan
You rock Eric
Though I expected the response from a younger crowd-as thats where I heard of it.
There are several references on other sites. I loved the "loudest battlecry-but utterly useless technique" comment myself. There are other ones -supposedly related - who are just as bad. I guess he is a useless character in the game.
I was made aware when I started talking about being an echo and having no resistence to force-a whole other internal training comment and I used the term Hibiki. The response I got was hilarious and it all went downhill from there.
It is appropriate to use yamabiko for the larger idea but hey... with the general opinion of me around here I just couldn't resist. It's just too damn funny. It's almost as funny as the Dan Harden male gigalo website they pulled out on E-Budo
Dan Habiki. Lovely, just lovely.

On a serious note, I dissagree with your take on other points. There's a surprise huh? I just don't have time to respond right now maybe later..
Thanks anyway see ya.
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Old 06-04-2007, 01:29 PM   #102
DH
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Re: Parsing ai ki do

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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
A few points. Dan's contention is that few ( if anyone) practice (or seek after) Ueshiba's aiki. I think he is wrong, but let's leave that.
No. I think everyone, or at least most, are in fact hoping to do that very thing. I just think that many, if not most, are running in circles-literally- while doing so.

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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
The Chinese proverb says that the first step to learning anything is to call it by its proper name. That is what this "parsing aikido" thread is exploring. What we are actually debating in discussing the "name" of anything is not the thing aimed at but the tutoring method.
But you must know the name and what it means in order to enter a debate over it's tutoring method. I claim no expertise, But I contend you do not understand what the name implies.

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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
Put this in Taoist terms to make the pedagogical point. The Nameless way begets the One, One begets Two, Two begets Three -- and Three begets the Ten Thousand Things. Dan is trying to teach people to learn the One -- directly. An awful big bite for many, many people. It is like the same terms of the Rinzai/Soto debate in different dress. Surely, a lot of "sleepy sitting" is just as useless as "mindless intellectualism" in paradox-wrestling, but the fault lies not in the method -- but the sincerity in doing either one of them
Your very definitions of how I am right or wrong and why I cannot make a definitive statement applies to your own observations about me. Your logic makes it impossible for anyone to discuss anything definitively. It renders all discussion meaningless.

No one, not one "needs to learn through ten thousand techniques"
Anyone and everyone can clearly learn to approach the art from the source or from "the one" as you call it. In truth it is the only way to approach it. Whether you start from there or learn it backwards like most –if and when you start to get it –you got it from understanding you and your body well. Not from anything you ever did to anyone by blending. Otherwise you never got it and were just blending for your whole life
And I and others can get you there faster and more efficiently then any of these waza laden methods.
Period.
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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
Problem is, most people are stuck on the phenomenal perception of events -- the Ten Thousand things. Dan criticizes the teaching of many, many techniques as a distraction from the direct route up the face of the cliff, going -- as he says -- the "wrong way."

His problem is in assuming that all people start the problem from the same position or with the same relative impediments to learning. That simply is not the case. He mistakes the purpose of techniques as embodiments (phenomena) as being about themselves. In fact, they are ultimately to be discarded, but are not useless per se, even if meant to be superseded along with the phenomenal perspective they represent.
I make no assumptions about where folks are when they come to me. I simply share with them what I do. For some stragner reason it seems to instanly change the way they think and move. THe approach to the problem hets resolved very quickly as they all- for some strange reason- see where the arts, all become one. Inside them
And you my friend have not been privy to the look of startled surprise on the faces of so many who have struggled for years to make things work , and in a moment I make so many things clear to them. In my hands, I have them begin to understand how to do these things, about the use of their own bodies. Nor have you seen the anger and sense of betrayal from their years of struggle- when in an afternoon I have them doing aiki no jutsu of Daito ryu or kokyu of aikido in efficient ways they thought not possible. In short that their skills shot up immediately, and with the beginnings of an understanding of the pieces.
It is THEE reason you hear no one. NOT ONE who has trained here either countering me or agreeing with you. Why Eric? It's not arrogance. It's honesty of purpose and training. Because I share with a blatant honesty and openness that has an immediate impact on peoples skills and understanding or their given art. and it goes uphill from there. With all due respect you simply do not know what you are talking about. Either with what I know, how I share it, nor what happens when I do.

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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
Point being, Ueshiba's aiki points even beyond that One ans singular poiont -- to the Numberless, the Nameless. Takemusu Aiki. The road from Ten Thousand to Three, and then Two and then One -- and then -- Not Then... Dan is correct that the One is a thing to be attained ( fr. L. attingere -- "to touch, to arrive at,"). Dan is wrong that it is to be attained in only one way - or that one way is necessarily better than another when it is not in accord with one's nature. Dan is wrong if he means that the One is a thing to be grasped, possessed, or a place in which to dwell. "I went to the rock to hide my face / But the rock cried out / No hiding place/ There's no hiding place / Down here." One must move on -- even from the One.

The Unnumbered Takemusu Aiki and the Ten Thousand techniques are not apart from one another -- but they are not the same, either. The mountain is again the mountain, the river again the river. But at a point it was both and This and Other, but neither of them. And then we moved on. This is the lesson of both Western Scripture and Fudo. At some point we all come down from the mountain. Even Moses came down from the mountain, and still was left to deal with the mess "down here" from which there is "no hiding."

That was and is Ueshiba's Aiki -- from the perspective of this particular One.
Well written, well constructed, total nonsense.
The trained body presents in/yo it is held tensions of the universe it is the connection in man that echoes with the fabric of all things. When we are in balance and others are not they are easily moved in accordance with their measure of balance in themselves. And even that is disrupted by a choice of will to attack and disrupt further. The reason strength is mentioned so much with Ueshiba, and point you and so many others are ill equipped to understand is that the strength is emblematic of the internal connection on several levels. It is a type of current and flow in a body unfamiliar and it is the contact with it that is highly disruptive of others efforts.
To that end, the one with the internal strength of Aikido does not blend and need to match to move others, he simply exists and moves. His will predominates while not resisting at all. Learning it from ten years or ten thousand techniques is simply the saddest, most staggeringly stupid way to learn it imaginable. And it is thee reason many martial artists suck and can't really fight worth beans, and the remainder are merely good technical fighters.
Neither captured or understand the true power potential in us all.
Those that do know- know there are faster ways to get there. And there are real experts who can do so
Ai-ki-do
not
Aikido

Last edited by DH : 06-04-2007 at 01:44 PM.
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Old 06-04-2007, 01:47 PM   #103
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Re: Parsing ai ki do

Just wanted to add that I still contend there are real masters of these things who can't or just won't teach how to do these things specifically. They parcel it out to us in doses. Finding fellow students and getting them to share is a great step up to the next, then the next. For most of us- its all we can do. It's why I don't call myself a teacher.

Erick
While I dissagree with you all ove the place-I wanted to say thanks for your taking the time to be nice about it. I hope to meet one day and have it be pleasant.

Last edited by DH : 06-04-2007 at 02:01 PM.
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Old 06-04-2007, 03:15 PM   #104
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Parsing ai ki do

Glad you liked the Hibiki Dan bit. Teenage son. I osmose.
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Dan Harden wrote: View Post
No one, not one "needs to learn through ten thousand techniques" ... Anyone and everyone can clearly learn to approach the art from the source or from "the one" as you call it. And I and others can get you there faster and more efficiently then any of these waza laden methods.
For you, yes, I suppose. Me, I'm coming along fine. Others? Maybe. Maybe not. The question is whether they are prepared to go where you are ready to take them. Your own post discloses a measure of people who were frustrated in the gentle path, so what you report is not only not surprising, it is much to be expected. But, as a result, you cannot escape the blinders of self-selection in the people that you are teaching and the inferences and conclusions you draw from their reported reactions and frustrations.

As I said, your students may not be representative. Experience of many sincere, very knowledgeable teachers around the country says otherwise. There are large classes of people who see the world from a different perspective -- not without its own flaws, certainly, but a style of learning that may be as ill-suited to your paradigm as those who seek you out are ill-suited to the one in mainstream aikido.

The way things are now, you cannot very effectively rebut the self-selection fallacy that underlies your point, because it is in the data reported to you. To correct it you need more data. Teaching a broad sample of persons successfully with your methods would tend rebut this counter-argument. In a more cooperative mode, even if it failed in part, it may help to find ways to better identify students and their needs in learning this stuff more effectively. That is what I perceive to be occurring in Ikeda Sensei's project with Saotome Shihan's blessing in the Aikido summer camp workshops featuring Ushiro Sensei and others.

That is the real point of Jim Sorrentino's invite, actually, to see if the reports given to you are reflective of a real difference of result, or simply an artifact of a categorical difference in learning styles By successfully introducing your methods to a wider and more representative body of aikido students, you can accomplish that. There really is no other way to make the determination.

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Dan Harden wrote: View Post
Well written, well constructed, total nonsense.
Thank you. It is a gift. I can't take credit. That is something of my point, actually, as I made it earlier, in my emphasis on the poetic and non-rational sense of the kanji and their many associational clouds of meaning.

Learning these things is fundamentally NOT a logical enterprise. Why? Because learning such things involves working on the very assumptions from which the logic of the martial action proceeds, and therefore, logic does not (and cannot) operate at that level of learning or perception of new concepts. We are schooling intuitive premises, not operational efficiencies. It is one reason why these debates are interminable -- and why it also must be so, and everyone should simply resign themselves to the turn of this particular wheel from time to time. .
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Dan Harden wrote: View Post
When we are in balance and others are not they are easily moved in accordance with their measure of balance in themselves. ...
To that end, the one with the internal strength of Aikido does not blend and need to match to move others, he simply exists and moves. His will predominates while not resisting at all.
One word refutes this. Sword. I occasionally perform the odd good cut in a mess of tameshi giri when we have done it -- and the good one's involve about as much resistance as there is to unzipping a jacket (and almost the same sound, actually, in the tatami) -- hardly any resistance at all -- on the part of the target, that
is.

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Dan Harden wrote: View Post
Learning it from ten years or ten thousand techniques is simply the saddest, most staggeringly stupid way to learn it imaginable. ...
Those that do know- know there are faster ways to get there.
I hope you understand that it does, it must, seem that way to you, and very likely most who seek you out. But that does not necessarily make it so, on either point. All relevant perspectives on the nature and shape of the goal are not to be had simply by arriving at the "destination" sooner or more directly. If you climb a mountain, you climb THE MOUNTAIN. Not merely the peak.

There is a "TWO," before we get to the ONE in the progressive elimination of distinctions in phenomenal perception. From my perspective, and that of a teacher I greatly respect who has both seriously considered and seems to respect your views as far as they go, your One is but one half of the TWO. The other element of the TWO is more predominantly about the things (movement, blending) you dismiss, but which actually form a coherent whole. From that perspective, an intermediate position on your proverbial cliff-shortcut is equivalent to the intermediate position on the winding, twisting trail coming from the other perspective. Both are only unified close to the top.

In fact, this is a recurrent theme of learning: at any stage we may give in for a while to the temptation of assuming that This -- FINALLY -- is IT. We tarry and fail to move on, and violate the first and last rule of budo, and risk getting skewered, literally or figuratively for our lapse. I have done this. We have all done this. I will very likely do it again. But at some point I have always moved on -- so far.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 06-04-2007, 04:09 PM   #105
DH
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Re: Parsing ai ki do

Erick
The entirety of your post suggest that all training and all truths are subective. and therefore there is no constant to be trained in-no underlying truth. So each has to go show or train increasgingly larger numbers of people to gather a consensus enough to make a whole other construct of Aikido.
The entire discussion becomes a non-starter so...yah... er...ok.

Takeda and Ueshiba were in fact real and their training method and the way to get there is well established across many arts in Asia. It doesn't need to be "proved" or validated by ignorant masses of westerners to have worth. I think its all too clear that the masses never got it in the first place-so seeking validation from them is a bit ridiculous-even comical. Those who know- know. Those who don't quickly realize those who do. And it is not just in Aikido the truth is universal. The rest is just sharing training methods.

The truth of Aikido does exist and it is a living model to follow. It is replicable and teachable and not subject to -for example- the whims and composite belief systems of new age shaman seekers, nor technique-junkies. It's real and it begins and ends inside with solo training.
Some can demonstrate very real aspects of his arts power. Others do techniques.
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Old 06-05-2007, 08:29 AM   #106
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Re: Parsing ai ki do

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Dan Harden wrote: View Post
Erick, The entirety of your post suggest that all training and all truths are subective. and therefore there is no constant to be trained in-no underlying truth. So each has to go show or train increasingly larger numbers of people to gather a consensus enough to make a whole other construct of Aikido.
The entire discussion becomes a non-starter so...yah... er...ok.
No. I am suggesting that the objective truth is larger than you credit. And that the subjective modes of experiencing that objective truth are more varied than you would allow.

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Dan Harden wrote: View Post
Takeda and Ueshiba were in fact real and their training method and the way to get there is well established across many arts in Asia. It doesn't need to be "proved" or validated by ignorant masses of westerners to have worth. I think its all too clear that the masses never got it in the first place-so seeking validation from them is a bit ridiculous-even comical.
You mistake my point. Of course, the art needs no proof in its own objective terms. It is what is. The point of this discussion is that it does need communicating to people who have no (or very few) points of reference to understand its significance and its differnt approach from their "normal" assumptions about physical power and repsonses to it.

The point of parsing or deconstructing the word and concept of ai-ki-do is to see what means may allow those unfamiliar with it as such, to gain a better understanding of it. The difference between us is that students of O-Sensei, spoken or unspoken, tend to have a sense of mission about their practice. It is in full flower in this forum. Plainly, you have a similar sense from a different source. It may be in accord fundamentally, but coming from a different source is different in its terms of reference. It is therefore a source of potential misunderstanding. Common references are important to mutual intelligibility, and this is true of non-verbal as well as verbal forms of communication.

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Dan Harden wrote: View Post
The truth of Aikido does exist and it is a living model to follow. It is replicable and teachable and not subject to -for example- the whims and composite belief systems of new age shaman seekers, nor technique-junkies.
Umm. Shaman? No, I have a priest and Church and need no substitutes, and make no apologies. I do not allow that perspective to stop me from speaking to people in terms they may be more likely to hear. In this discussion about what "ai-ki-do" means as an expressed concept, all the ways in which that communication can occur are worth considering. The medium is not the message.

You are correct that people who may view "technique collection" as the end of discussion, are making this mistake. But you are, also, in assuming that mistake to be inherent to the medium of communicating the aiki through technique. Technique is one medium, as compared with, say kokyu undo, which are complementary practices toward the same end.

The involvement of a partner with independent will in connection with us in technique is the physical equivalent of a koan. That requires us to resolve what we learn on our own in kokyu undo and the movement of our own centered bodies, but in a way that does not provoke the 1-2-3 of attack-response-reply in our partnered interaction.

To the extent that technique practice results in that cookbook causal progression -- it is ineffective training in my view. To the extent that it allows us to break that paradigm, it is achieving its purpose -- so that chi no kokyu and/or ten no kokyu (the composite elements of TWO in the Taoist epistemology I suggested) are expressed in the partner in the same way that they are expressed in ourselves.

As I have said before, I have not read anything described physically or performance-wise by you or anyone taking your point of view that does not answer to one or another of kokyu undo practices I have seen or done. Your criticism of what "ai-ki-do" is in the sense of how we "ought" to arrive at that knowledge (beyond admittedly sloppy practice in some quarters) seems on closer examination, in the context of proper kokyu undo practice, to largely be a distinction without a difference. If it is anything else, that can only be seen in a broader framework of training, absent the self-selection problem, as I suggested.

Last edited by Erick Mead : 06-05-2007 at 08:33 AM.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 06-05-2007, 03:49 PM   #107
DH
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Re: Parsing ai ki do

Hi Erick
I just re-read the last two posts and I think I failed to respond to your points. I think I was more or less stuck on a few points of my own. I have to train tonight but i wanted to address a few points when I can.
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Old 07-05-2007, 09:40 AM   #108
Mike Haftel
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Re: Parsing ai ki do

One thing that I find interesting is that the translation of Aikido is generally said to be "The Art of Peace," or "The Way of Peace and Harmony."

However, Wado is an art which has a more fitting translation of "The Art of Peace," or "The Way of Peace and Harmony."

As far as I knew, "Wa" was the Japanese term for "harmony" or "peace;" especially in a social, group, or even a physical context.

"Aiki" is something else entirely.

I like the analogy that someone else brought up about the lid fitting the pot, especially since that is what the kanji for Ai is. And, that could bring to mind the aspect of "blending" which is present in arts such as Aikido and Daito Ryu -- something which fits, just so. Something that blends.

I can see where Aiki and Wa could be used in the same context.

But, most importantly, who cares? Does it really matter what Aiki means? You could call it "young duck squats on log." It wouldn't change anything really.

I could be wrong, though.
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Old 07-05-2007, 10:00 AM   #109
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Re: Parsing ai ki do

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Mike Haftel wrote: View Post
Does it really matter what Aiki means? You could call it "young duck squats on log." It wouldn't change anything really.
Shame on you. Such deep secrets of the art should not be bandied about among the uninitiated like that.

Next thing you know, you'll be telling them about "old turtle lies in wait" and then its all over but the shouting.

And by no means tell anyone about the penguins. Shhh!

http://home.earthlink.net/~jimbaker6/aa/history.htm


Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 07-05-2007, 10:07 AM   #110
Mike Haftel
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Re: Parsing ai ki do

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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
Shame on you. Such deep secrets of the art should not be bandied about among the uninitiated like that.

Next thing you know, you'll be telling them about "old turtle lies in wait" and then its all over but the shouting.

And by no means tell anyone about the penguins. Shhh!

http://home.earthlink.net/~jimbaker6/aa/history.htm

hahah. Nice.
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