Posted by jonvon on August 04, 2001 at 12:05:38:
In Reply to: Re: on stick beatings and instinct posted by John on August 02, 2001 at 14:26:38:
: But John I have a question for you. Can nonviolence be taught? If so I would love to learn it. Not the sappy hippy pacifist stuff but true flowing like water around and over obstacles conforming completely and adapting instantly? I have heard that Aikido teaches this because it was developed for this specific purpose and not as a combative art, but what do you know about this?
yeah i think aikido would probably be your best bet, as you probably know already its all about energy, flowing with energy, moving your attacker's energy away from you/around you and so forth. we studied kung fu for a while in boulder until paula got sick with her heart problems. she had an operation which cured her. then she got pregnant a month after the operation. :-) we need to get back to it someday. i'm extremely interested in aikido. the other really good one is of course tai chi, which is actually really a martial art, not just meditation in motion. you probably know about push hands, the idea being that with just a very light touch you learn to direct someone's energy or driving force away from you, or in some manner that allows you to perhaps attack or something. then there are two arts that are usually taught together, sometimes along with tai chi as well. i'm trying to remember the names of them, one of them is real heavy with the animal forms, very similar to kung fu. the other is this crazy art that is based on the i ching where you dance around or move around through these eight positions in a circle, constantly moving around your opponent. it is all based heavily in the philosophy contained in the i ching, moving from one state to another. tai chi is taught last (at least in one tradition i read about) and is considered the supreme art. in fact the symbol we all probably refer to as the yin and yang symbol or the symbol of the tao is also referred to as the symbol of tai chi, or (i'm probably getting this wrong) the "ultimate fist" or the "perfect fist" or something.
i found that the more i studied even the "hard" stuff, the motions like kicks and shuto strikes and so forth, the more i got in touch with my body in that sense, the more nonviolence began to take shape in my mind as a real Thing. i don't think you can really get to what nonviolence is unless you learn how to be violent. but violence in martial arts isn't like nasty bar fighting, its not emotional violence like beating up your kids or taking it out on your coworkers. in fact it isn't really violence at all, which is i think part of what you are getting at. it is entirely something else. you can become dangerous without becoming violent. in fact the meditation that might come along with it (depending on what you take and where you take it) can have a calming centering effect that is hard to describe unless you have done it. i've done a little here and there, i'm no expert. anyway somewhere in all of that there is a real knowledge, a body/mind knowledge that does indeed teach non-violence. i certainly have much more to learn and lately despair of ever getting back to it. i was really just geting started. i had a few more years to go before black belt, and you know getting your black belt, you are essentially a white belt at that point. that is where your training begins.