Morihei Ueshiba

But there's like one person.

Ueshiba, one person.

One person.

Even Lee, you had one person.

Mm-hmm.

I like, uh- Morihei Ueshiba, who's the, uh, founder of aikido, he said something that the quote always stuck with me, and it's- his book is really interesting, too.

It's just a small one.

It's called The, uh, The Art of Peace, right? 'Cause there's the- The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and The Art of the Deal by Trumpski, and, uh, The Art of Peace by Morihei, I hope I'm pronouncing it, Ueshiba or Ueshiba.

During World War II, um, Durant, uh, served in the US Army, and some versions portray [clears throat] Durant as an assassin, intelligence oper-operative, or clandestine warrior.

After the war, he returned to Japan to study under his maternal uncle and notables such as Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido.

Durant also claimed initiation into the Yamabushi mountain ascetic tradition, from whom he learned hidden martial arts, uh, disciplines.

Like Kashubi, Durant was later con-rec- uh, connected by followers to the Kung Fu television series.

And, like, people today are, are making videos which they probably shouldn't make videos.

Like, they're-- I now seen people have AI'd, um, Osensei.

Somebody made an AI video of Yamada Sensei doing aikido.

And you think, gosh, like, that's so dangerous, and they're making these AI videos about how aikido doesn't work and it's fake.

So I've been really driving that home at the dojo recently after reading it in the newsletter.

I was like, "That really makes sense to me."

But is, is aikido the art of peace? Well, the reason why I say that, this well-known, famous author who has translated a lot of books by Osensei told me that he took a lot of liberties with the translations.

Hmm.

He's, he's amazing, and there's lots of really wonderful, uh, martial artists out there.

And now that we have all these streaming, um, sites, we've got all kinds of things on YouTube, so we've got the great one, O-Sensei, uh, Ueshiba from Japan.

Um, y- martial arts, we could go on and on and on and on.

And n- there's so much material on the internet about martial arts.

I think that's very true of the transformative effect of Aikido, especially.

I know, you know, Monomichi Anosensei talked all the time about self-reflection and that O-Sensei also, you know, continually exhorted his students to engage in self-reflection.

And that's crucial.

That self-reflection of how do I apply Aikido here? It requires a conscious effort.