Mr Boyd,
I have a few comments on your most recent post.
Originally Posted by
CEB
I wish that was in English or Greek. I'm Eastern Orthodox and pretty well versed on histories and historic traditions according to the Church. That would have been interesting to read.
Did you ever learn Latin? Since you are Eastern Orthodox, I suppose not. I was brought up as a Catholic and started Latin at the age of five, due to the encouragement of my father. (I suspect he was trying to reclaim one of his own lost opportunities through his son.) However, I kept it up and was able to grasp the elements of Italian and Spanish. The journal is published by a Spanish university and the website is multilingual. Members of the editorial board include our own Joe Svinth and also Thomas Green (of martial arts encyclopedia fame). To judge from his name, the author is probably English spoken and I suspect there is an English version somewhere.
Originally Posted by
CEB
But when coming back to the Church I was very close to walking away from Budo due to Chan/Zen content but decided it was OK to maintain my practice. As a general rule the Church believes East mediations are in principle contrary to the notion of Christian prayer. In meditation it is thought the practice is most centered on emptying oneself which is considered opposite of Christian prayer which is not to empty oneself but to fill oneself.
Since I was brought up as a Catholic, I spent some interesting years as a member of the Jesuit order. At the time (early 1960s), it was fashionable to try to combine Christian mental prayer with Buddhist meditation and there were one or two Christian monks who did this. The name Déchanet rings a bell here. I did not think it worked very well, but when I started studying the culture of Japanese martial arts in some depth, I came across the concepts of chinkon [鎮魂] and kisshin [帰神]. The usual literal translation is 'calming the soul' and 'returning to the divine' and the practice is one of spirit possession via a medium (called the saniwa). Onisaburo Deguchi, who was Morihei Ueshiba's spiritual mentor, combined the two into one practice and the present-day remnants are the funakogi exercises practiced in aikido before starting the waza. The Jesuits rigidly followed Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises and he combined breathing exercises with mental prayer strictly so called. This was something of a revelation to me at the time. I think Ignatius was following a tradition of Spanish mystics like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.
Originally Posted by
CEB
But in the end the little bit of zazen we do before class is just to leave your non practice related distractions outside the dojo and take a minute to get focused on practicing correctly and safely hope no one gets their nose broke tonight. My Sensei is a Buddhist and was married in a Shinto temple because his parents were and their parents before him. He was born in Kyoto. Here at our dojo most of us come from Christian or agnostic or atheistic backgrounds. At the end of the day we just like to stand in line and punch.
Well, exactly. One of my own aikido teachers, K Chiba, told me once that he practiced Zen because he could not stomach the Shinto spirituality of Morihei Ueshiba. Chiba was brought up in Japan immediately after the World War II, when McArthur's views on refashioning Japanese politics and culture on the American democratic model were widely accepted in schools. Here in Hiroshima, there is the usual blend of Buddhism and Shinto, coupled with a heavy dose of world peace, which is treated in a similar way, like a kind of Japanese religion.
Best wishes,
PAG
Peter Goldsbury,
Forum Administrator,
Hiroshima, Japan