Martial Arts and Atheism

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Yeah. A good article other than that, though.

I've trained in an 'atemi' aikido dojo for about 12 years now (ie, an aikido dojo where we actually try to hit each other, and expect our partners to move appropriately), and we sometimes have issues when we go traveling and train at other dojos, and accidentally hit a lot of people. Including senseis. Likewise, people come train with us from out of the area and think that we're really violent.

There was a notable exception - a guy who showed up once when it was just me and another shodan, who trained and taught in both New York and Japan; I basically turned the class over to him for a mini-seminar and we had a fantastic time. Both me and the other shodan got walloped, and learned a lot.

Being an interest of mine I had heard of this years ago.

Personally anyone who make any extraordinary claims, isn't a good teacher, they are just exploiting their students.

I've been lucky to have couple great teachers, who haven't been egos, and just passed on knowledge. I had one teacher who was, a massive ego, and he ended up having his comeuppance, and is now a lonely old fool. Actually my current teachers, who are were student of him, with me, actually dumped him, as he abandoned us an moved back to Hong Kong, because his wife left him for being such an intolerable oaf, and frequenting prostitutes, and he acted like it was the end of the world. So after months of no contact, we let him know we wanted to move on, at the very least for the senior students to have some source of coaching.

Absurdly he was more upset that we wanted to learn from his teacher. Yet he never took it out on his teacher, dispute this guy being happy to offer coaching. Wouldn't anyone be happy that we want to learn from their teacher? Not him. He constantly sucks up, apparently, but never listened. That is what this guy says, and and is well respected.

It also turn out he was pocketing our insurance and membership, despite carrying association status.

He basically never wanted us to train with other people, so we wouldn't be able to compare. I don't mean in a disrespectful way, simply that he wanted to be our only source of knowledge, so we would know no better.

Best advice in MA. Stay out of politics. It is mostly BS, and attempting to promote some commercial interest.

Honestly my teachers are not total atheist, I am. I do understand how on a personal level some belief can help them, but it is not like vid. If it was, I would just leave. It is a personal belief, not forced down our throats.

any time someone says, 'don't listen to anyone else,' or 'don't train with anyone else,' it's a red flag. If your ideas and training really hold water, they should survive the exposure to other ideas and training.

That principle extends way beyond martial arts. You certainly see that in here, when people come in and have their basic assumptions challenged, and it becomes increasingly obvious that they've never actually put too much thought into them.

When I studied Jujutsu, the instructor would sometimes show us "Stoogitsu"--how to misdirect and confuse people with "3-Stooges" like moves. He warned us that they were just tricks, but they could work from time to time.

yes
Certain topics seem to completely close off certain people to outside concepts, however.

I'm not so much talking about people being closed off to new things as much as I am people who've come here from some ideological bubble where their "foundational truths" have never been challenged, and their outrage at being forced to examine a belief they hold as self evident. I think of all the times I've cruised the Haven and seen threads like "everyone says I'm a jerk" and how my automatic reply is "well are you a jerk?", which would offend most people because in their mind, of course they're not a jerk, and the mere thought of questioning that assumption is outrageous to them. This can get into some truly weird territory because of cognitive dissonance, where someone's idea of themselves clashes so radically with reality that they put forward the most convoluted statements you've ever heard to justify that self image. It's fascinating, if you go for that sort of thing.

I remember a thing called self image psychology, and how dreaming a new you, or a thing called a negative hallucination. The mind and heart is a powerful thing, much like its not always the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Everyone loves to see an underdog team beat the championship side, seeing a gutsy performance and individuals digging deep.

For some the rise to performance can be brought on by a team belief in god, and a prayer, in others, a logical and rational set move.... either way, centering of the concentration is vital to emerge victorious

I remember watching a young player emerge into the limelight during a big game. Everyone was tense and uptight, but this young guy moved freely and easily, was so relaxed next to the rest of the team, he won the game for them.

We all have moments of brilliance, staying in that zone a long time is harder to achieve

another good article that touches tangentially on this topic:
http://www.guillaumeerard.com/aikido/in ... o-to-koryu