Tuesday 10 August 2010

Belajar 8 Hal

                                                                             Peringatan!!!
 8 hal penting dalam hidup


 Belajar memberi
 Belajar menghargai
 Belajar menerima kebahagiaan
 Belajar menerima kesedihan
 Belajar berbagi kebaikan
 Belajar memaafkan
 Belajar mempercayai
 Belajar mencintai

Lampu

  Apakah kita bisa jadi penerang bagi diri kita dan orang lain..?

  Jika ya...

  kenapa tidak..?

  Jikalau ya, kita bisa jadi terang...

  cobalah kita seperti lampu...

  Yang tidak pernah bersuara bila menerangi kegelapan...tapi biarlah orang yang bersuara bahwa kita menjadi penerang bagi mereka

Sesuatu Pada Diri Kita

   Setiap orang waras mengakui bahwa manusia adalah yang paling sempurna dari segala makhluk, jadi, gunakanlah kesempurnaan yang ada dengan sesuatu yang baik dan berguna untuk semua orang, orang lain, diri sendiri...

   Mata untuk melihat, jadilah lihatlah sesuatu yang baik, termasuk dalam dirimu...

   Telinga untuk mendengar, jadi dengarlah hal-hal yang positif...

   Mulut sangat banyak manfaatnya, jadi bersuaralah seperlunya dan  biasakanlah untuk besuara yang positif...

Sunday 8 August 2010

Start at "Empty"

Contributed by Chris Colón
 
It's been said that before you can fill your cup, you must empty it first. That, in certain respects, was a central theme of Hiroshi Ikeda Shihan during his visit to Columbus Aikikai from October 3-5, 2003.
Ikeda Sensei focused on a series of closely related themes in his classes, the spirit of which I have tried to encapsulate below. Sensei emphasized how much Aikido involves doing several things at once, and so talking about the individual pieces a practitioner of Aikido must do in discrete elements isn't easy. Nevertheless, here is my attempt to do them justice, presented under the overarching theme of Avoiding Struggles with your partner. 

Avoiding Struggles
To avoid struggling, there are five things you need to do:
  • Practice good timing. When you are on time, techniques are easy. When you're late, they're hard.
  • Find the easy place. Every individual has a place to move that makes the movement easy to do. This is hard to teach since everyone has to learn where to move where it works for their bodies. It requires patient study.
  • Relax. Relaxing improves speed, mobility, efficiency, and sensitivity. It also draws your partner into the technique.
  • Keep an open mind. Relaxing the mind also helps to relax the body. When the your mind is empty of preconceptions, you are much more likely to see what is happening and understand what response is needed.
  • Be a beginner then be an expert. Understand that everyone should approach each new movement as a beginner, and then experiment and have fun with it -- even fail with it to learn what does and doesn't work. Mastery will come with time and effort. Eventually, you must do all of these interrelated things at once. However, Sensei talked about each of these five related subjects in detail.
Practice good timing
  • Martial Arts are about fighting. Timing is about moving beginning exercises from being exercises into fighting.
  • The difference between getting your partner and your partner getting you is timing.
  • Don't wait for your partner to get you. Go out and get your partner at the point of contact, and find the easy place to break his or her balance.
Find the easy place
  • Finding the easy place to do a technique is one of the hardest things to teach in Aikido. Everyone's body is different, so you have to find where doing a technique is easy for your body. That means we have to take the initiative to seek those places out.
  • Finding the easy place at the point of contact is what breaks our partner's balance and dictates how the movement will go. The grab or strike dictates where your partner is going. If you do not find the easy place during the grab or strike, you will not break your partner's balance.
  • In the easy place, small changes in your posture keep your partner tightly wrapped in the moving place and prevent escape.
  • For beginners, the easy place to move is where they are told to move, in large movements. Over time, however, more advanced students should try to make smaller, efficient, relaxed movements to get to the easy place.
Relax
  • As stated earlier, relaxing improves speed, mobility, efficiency, and sensitivity. In short, relaxing helps us to establish and use the connection with our partners and become one body. Only through relaxing can your lead your partner.
  • We relax when comfortable. That means practicing enough to be comfortable with our movements, until our bodies are smart enough to know what they are doing. Smart brains are fine, but smart brains with smart bodies are much better.
  • Rigid movements cause your partner to fight. Relaxing lets your partner feel that he is in control. If he is uncomfortable or feels that he is not in control, he may release his contact with you before you have made your connection.
  • When you are relaxed, then you move yourself, and your connection brings your partner with you. This isn't about moving your partner; it's about moving you.
  • Your power doesn't come from straining; it comes from your turning and your weight.
Keep an open mind
  • Relaxing your mind helps relax your body. If you mind is preoccupied with its own ideas, it will interfere with your movement. For example, believing that you need to grab your partner once you've taken his balance only ties up your hand, which is fixated on the spot it grabbed. That hand is no longer helping.
  • Again, if your mind is empty of preconceptions, you are much more likely to see what is happening and understand what you need to do to respond to an attack. In this way, you approach your partner with a beginner's mind but your response (which should be deliberate) contains your experience and advanced understanding.
Be a beginner then be an expert.
  • Going gently at first is great practice for beginners because it teaches the form and trains in good posture. Once form and posture are coming along, students should train next on staying relaxed while their partners fight with them.
  • Beginning movements are all about establishing a connection and making the operation easier for the student. Later, the student should take the initiative to make the operation more realistic while still maintaining relaxation, flow, and control.
  • Beginners start with focusing out near their limbs in large, dynamic movements. That's fine for beginners and for learning new techniques, but more advanced students should find their movements becoming quieter and more focused from their centers.
  • Each new technique you learn requires you to be a beginner, no matter how good the rest of your Aikido is. Don't worry about it! A new technique is like a new musical instrument, and assuming that you can play the cello because you are a concert pianist is absurd. Start anew, learn the new movements, make mistakes, enjoy yourself, work hard, and the technique will come along.
  • Over time, initiate your response actively when you understand what your partner is doing. Don't wait to be grabbed -- start right away to meet him at a time and place of your choosing.
The students of Columbus Aikikai would like to thank Ikeda Shihan and all the guests who attended the seminar for a wonderful time and a terrific learning experience. Thanks especially go to those who came in from out-of-state for their visit, from Pennsylvania, Indiana, and even as far away as North Carolina. We appreciate everyone¹s time and support for making this event a success.

At One With Weapons

By Hiroshi Ikeda,
With translation assistance from Jun Akiyama
 
A myriad of martial arts has proliferated over the centuries and around the globe, leading countless individuals in pursuit and enjoyment of these various arts. Almost all of the martial arts employ weapons of one type or another.

An accomplished practitioner does not simply swing or brandish a weapon; instead, s/he "masters" the weapon and uses it as an extension of the body, much as a tiger uses its powerful forearms and claws.
In karatedo and aikido, among other arts, certain movements using the empty hand are identified: seiken (straight punch), nukite (spearhand thrust), shomenuchi (strike to the head) and yokomenuch (strike to the side of the head). By forming a "tegatana" (hand blade) or "ken" (fist), one can transform one's hand into a formidable weapon by learning to focus intent and concentrate power in the hand.

This same channeling of power must occur when wielding a weapon, regardless of its size, length, or weight. One must develop an intimate familiarity with the weapon, its physical properties and how one's body relates to it. Achieving a state of mastery, in which a foreign object becomes wholly integrated with one's being, obviously requires a great deal of sensitivity, awareness, and dedicated practice. ¹

Kyudo, the Japanese art of archery, beautifully illustrates the unification of the individual, the weapon, and the target. When all become connected, the arrow looses itself and flies into the center of the target. This is an example of progressing past the "moving" aspect to the "quiet" place. When one connects the weapon, the bow and arrow, to one's body and when one extends that spirit from one's body to the target itself, when everything becomes aligned and connected, the arrow will fly true.

All weapons, including the katana, jo, bo, yari, and naginata, must channel the strength which emanates from the practitioner's center. This will lead to the weapon's becoming "alive" and a part of one's being.
If this all sounds improbable, remember that we occasionally have the privilege of witnessing spine-tingling, breathtaking examples of mastery and perfection - sometimes on the mat, or perhaps at a musical performance, or on the playing field. When it happens, it is unforgettable.

We ourselves may experience fleeting moments of unity and harmony in our own weapons training. At that time of true connection, our weapon becomes a reflection of ourselves, a mirror for our feelings and emotions and strengths.


¹ Mastery is equated with facility. In Japanese, we use a word that translates poorly into "freedom." In this example, mastery might be defined rather ironically as freedom (dexterity and skill) through exquisite control.

Saturday 6 March 2010

ATHEIST

  There's no such thing such being an atheist. It is simply rejecting to take anything as divine but one own self, and so right or wrong is defined by one own self. Taking one own self as the divine one, as God, realize it or not. Since the right of defining right or wrong lays with God.

  So, there's no atheist. Won't it simply be the same...?

AGNOSTIC

  There's no such thing such as being an agnostic. You can't believe in God (His existence) while denying His rules, laws, firmaments. God is an entity in Itself. He comes with His attributes, such as The All Powerful, The Omnipotent, The One Who Is Always Right And True, etc. Denying His attributes would mean denying His existence at all.

  So there is no agnostic. Just a term self made by human to justify their reluctance in taking God as God, instead of their own selves.