Dragon Ball
I was talking to a new friend. Conversation drifted onto the subject of how to preserve and perpetuate the teachings of her Kendo teacher in Japan. "Not that my teacher has no good students, but nobody can do what our teacher did. How do we preserve his legacy?"
It made me chuckle because this is not a new problem. Just look at the Aikido world. Don't we have the same problem with O Sensei's legacy? O Sensei had numerous students and a good number of them became very well known, accomplished martial artists and good teachers. However, none of them are exactly like O Sensei.
Why? Because O Sensei is O Sensei, a unique person. He learnt what he learnt because of his life journey. He got those insights because of his personality and experience. It is not like you can pass along everything he had inside like you can duplicate a computer file and download it onto another person's hard drive. Instead, his students who have very different personalities and different life experiences grasp whatever they managed to perceive and turned that into their own aikido. Everybody caught some elements of what O Sensei did. However, they are all just fragments of the big picture. Nobody can encompass everything.
Ever heard the old story about a group of blind people trying to find out what the elephant is like by touching and feeling the elephant? One person felt the trunk and thought the elephant is like a hose; another person felt the leg and thought an elephant is like a pillar; and another person felt the tail and thought an elephant is like a brush . . . The only way to get the whole picture is to bring those people together and have them share the pieces that they have so as to put these pieces back together to form an elephant.
So, is it even possible for us to use the fragments to reconstruct the original big picture? It is possible. However, it would require that people drop their ego, truly see each other eye to eye and work together. For as long as one person thinks his piece is better than the other pieces, and thus feels superior to the others, this reassembly of the big picture may not happen. As such, the trunk dojo only practices the elephant trunk. The leg dojo forever thinks the pillar is the ultimate truth. And the tail dojo will never know the elephant actually has a body. These lost pieces will scatter forever as people fight and argue about whose aikido is more authentic and has more merits. Arguing about whose idea about the elephant is more correct will only take people further and further away from the truth.
This makes me think of the Japanese anime, Dragon Ball: the Dragon God has given nine dragon balls to this world. Anybody who can find and collect all nine dragon balls will get his wish granted. However, once the wish is granted, the nine balls will be scattered once again across the world for the next person to find and bring them together again.
O Sensei was like the last person who gathered all nine dragon balls. He founded Aikido. After his passing, the dragon balls are scattered all over the world. Generations may pass before the next genius emerge to gather all nine dragon balls once again to bring another major revolution to martial arts . . .
It made me chuckle because this is not a new problem. Just look at the Aikido world. Don't we have the same problem with O Sensei's legacy? O Sensei had numerous students and a good number of them became very well known, accomplished martial artists and good teachers. However, none of them are exactly like O Sensei.
Why? Because O Sensei is O Sensei, a unique person. He learnt what he learnt because of his life journey. He got those insights because of his personality and experience. It is not like you can pass along everything he had inside like you can duplicate a computer file and download it onto another person's hard drive. Instead, his students who have very different personalities and different life experiences grasp whatever they managed to perceive and turned that into their own aikido. Everybody caught some elements of what O Sensei did. However, they are all just fragments of the big picture. Nobody can encompass everything.
Ever heard the old story about a group of blind people trying to find out what the elephant is like by touching and feeling the elephant? One person felt the trunk and thought the elephant is like a hose; another person felt the leg and thought an elephant is like a pillar; and another person felt the tail and thought an elephant is like a brush . . . The only way to get the whole picture is to bring those people together and have them share the pieces that they have so as to put these pieces back together to form an elephant.
So, is it even possible for us to use the fragments to reconstruct the original big picture? It is possible. However, it would require that people drop their ego, truly see each other eye to eye and work together. For as long as one person thinks his piece is better than the other pieces, and thus feels superior to the others, this reassembly of the big picture may not happen. As such, the trunk dojo only practices the elephant trunk. The leg dojo forever thinks the pillar is the ultimate truth. And the tail dojo will never know the elephant actually has a body. These lost pieces will scatter forever as people fight and argue about whose aikido is more authentic and has more merits. Arguing about whose idea about the elephant is more correct will only take people further and further away from the truth.
This makes me think of the Japanese anime, Dragon Ball: the Dragon God has given nine dragon balls to this world. Anybody who can find and collect all nine dragon balls will get his wish granted. However, once the wish is granted, the nine balls will be scattered once again across the world for the next person to find and bring them together again.
O Sensei was like the last person who gathered all nine dragon balls. He founded Aikido. After his passing, the dragon balls are scattered all over the world. Generations may pass before the next genius emerge to gather all nine dragon balls once again to bring another major revolution to martial arts . . .
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