Philosophy and history, are they necessary for the understanding of Aikido?
knoops
As a child of his own time and culture O'Sensei naturly had a different
understanding of culture, philosophy and religion as we in our time and
place have. Yet what O'Sensei did and studied was of course influenced
by his own culture, philosophy and religion. Again what we do and study
in Aikido is influenced by our own culture, philosophy and religion.
A lot of students, teachers and schools claim to train the original
Aikido that O'Sensei was practising. Naively one would expect them to
include a study of those elements that were natural to O'Sensei, but
might be different in their context, to create a broader view and
facilitate understanding. Surprisingly this is often not the case.
Things like the Omoto-kyo, the Kojiki or even a basic understanding of
In Yo ho not only are completely foreign to them but are also dismissed
as irrelevant and Japanese mambo jambo.
How can this reflect what we are trying to do. Even within western
culture the process of Imitatio -studying an art (painting, sculpture
etc.) consist of studying every aspect of the original not only to gain
a natural understanding of the original but also to have such a
connection with it that own can actually expand beyond the original- was
quite normal and accepted.
So why not incorporate cultural, philosophic and religious knowledge in
training?
Sofar arguments I encountered where:
1. dont want to.
2. dont understand what good it will do so must dismiss it on
beforehand.
3. Aikido is a physical sport, al this talking and thinking crap wasts
training time.
4. dont want to have a philosophy, a religion or an opinion forced on
me.
5. It is not necessary because understand all of Aikido without it.
Of course it would be very easy to say that these are just my silly
ideas (Oops, Flamebate), however almost all of the shihan I have had the
pleasure to train (Tada, Sugano, Chiba, Tamura, Suganuma, Kitaura,
Hokosawa, Fujimoto, Asai, Kono, Ruddock, Tissier, Kanetsuka, Miyazawa
and some others) with/under tell things and use explanations in wordings
and metaphores reflecting just those things people are reluctant to
incorporate in their training. (Funny enough exactly during those
explanations a lot of students seem to be bored or lose interest).
So why dont read people the Kojiki. Why dont they study Ying and Yang?
Why....
People insist they study Aikido also because of its philosophy, yet so
many are unwilling to study this philosophy and its implications, this
seems kind of funny.
Of course I understand that physical training is very important, I also
understand that thinking about what we are doing is maybe something that
starts to pop up after years and years of continuous and scincere
training and is therefor not to be expected from people that train less
than 10 years. However, could it not be usefull to confront people with
these options and ideas earlier so they have the time to slowly grow
both physically but also with their cultural understanding of aikido?
Greetings Erik
--
E.J. Knoops MSc. M.T.D.
department of Public Health
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Shaelek t'Karakesh
of a MA, especially internal ones like Aikido is every bit as important as
the MA technique itself and is probably unforgivably neglected in many
schools. Without the philosophy behind the MA, you end up with people like
my friend (who was trained in Shukokai Karate, not especially well, IMO) who
just seem to punch anyone who gets on their nerves and are likely to get
themselves seriously hurt and/or sued in due course.
Sorry about that mini-rant.
Short response: I agree entirely with you.
All the best
Me
"knoops" <kno...@mgz.fgg.eur.nl> wrote in message
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