Dear Taimyo Practitioners:

Happy New Year to you!

At the end of the last year, I had a chance to read "The Vision" written by Tom Brown, Jr......
I would like to share a part of this book with you and ask you to think about it when you practice Taimyo next time!!

Looking forward to our next encounter!!!

-Fugaku Ito

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from: Chapter III Trail p-65~66
The Vision, by Tom Brown, Jr. ISBN: 0-425-10703-5

Not many days after the deer hunt I was sitting quietly in the bushes watching some men in a pickup truck dumping garbage along one of the larger sand trails. Tears filled my eyes, and I found I hated them to the core, wishing that I were bigger so I could beat them senseless. Grandfather’s silent approach went unnoticed until he sat down beside me and gazed toward the two men and the truck. Without looking at me he said, “Thinking and emotions take pathways too and can become ruts just as deadly as physical ruts.” Just as silently as he had come, he slipped away, leaving me with my thoughts, my anger, and my mental ruts. As I watched the men unloading the truck, I thought for a long time, desperately trying to work throught the anger and find a different way of seeing and understanding things.

The anger was so entrenched that it was hard to let it go, but slowly the anger faded. I was no longer angry to these men but rather pitied them for their ignorance. So many times I heard Grandfather say, “There is always some other answer rather than anger,” and for the first time I knew what he meant. The pity led to an action that I had never thought I would make. I walked silently up to the truck and begged the men to stop throwing their garbage in one of my favorite areas. Money was hard to come by in those days, but I had a quarter and I offered it to them for gas to drive to the dump, which was free, and asked if they would want me to unload the truck for them there. They were so surprised by my offer and intensity that they stood as if shocked. I guess that they were not only shocked by my silent appearance but also by they pleading of a small boy.

They began to apologize profusely and sincerely as they packed up the truck. They promised to take the load the few extra miles to the dump. I helped them pack the truck and explained to them that there had been a lot of the same type of dumping farther up the sand road. Without hesitation they asked me where and I let them to a pile of rubble larger than the one they had intended to leave. As I left them, I glanced back and watched them loading the other pile of garbage on their truck, collecting even the scraps of paper that had blown into the trees.

Grandfather had been watching me all the time, and as I got back to my sitting area, he sat beside me. “Anger would not have solved this problem,” said. “Pity and teaching were the only answers. These men would have learned nothing if you had approached them with anger in your heart. Instead you thought of a different way and found the answers. Now your thinking and emotions of sorrow are transformed into growth, all because you strayed from the trail and thought and felt in a new way.” I carry the lesssons of the men in the truck to this day. I now know, because of what happened so many years ago, that ignorance is one of the primary causes of the destruction of the earth. Re-education and getting man’s feet back in the soil are some of the answers to the saving of the earth.

E-mail from Ito to Shigeru Watanabe, 2008-04-02

Here are some ideas I have been thinking about recently:
Tai Chi contains wisdom passed down through 5000 years of Chinese culture.
Tai Chi itself has a history going back at least 400 years.
Shintaido is the fruit of 400 years of Japanese fighting techniques and martial arts.
I was VERY fortunate to be able to play a central role in the very early development of Shintaido. [Full text]

Messages from Ito before and after the conference

-Taimyo insight
For a long time, in doing Part I of Taimyo, I have held the image of myself as a commander.....Click here

-Nanjing report
In May of 2002, I began studying Wu style Tai Chi under the direction of.... Click here

The following is a "Cry" of Belinda French who is a Taimyo member in Bristol, England.
-Ito

I have woken early in this morning crying for those people from near Mosul in Iraq who have just experienced a massive bombing...
Click here to continue.

Dear Taimyo Practitioners:
The time has come for August meditation!
I would like to propose that we focus our attention on the "Ocean" !!
The following is a site I would like you to visit, then reflect upon how we need to change our behavior.

Click here
(If you are not able to open this page, google- Our oceans are turning into plastic. It should be the first article that pops up.)

This coming weekend, I will be in Whidbey Island (near Seattle), WA to lead a Taimyo meditation workshop with Paula Kerby, Lee Seaman, and Nicole Beauvois.
Please join me in person or via email correspondence by practicing wherever you are!
-Ito

To see the interview to Ito Sensei and Dick Olton by Elli Nagai-Rothe.
click here

Click below to see Messages from Omaha Beach!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Click here too see event information

On the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Tragedy
November 22 - 25, 2007
This conference is for people from China, Japan, and other parts of the world, who have had different war experience and education in war. Its purpose is to open their hearts and listen deeply to one another.

Report by K. Tanahashi
Click here

Comments on this event:
from Peter
from Roshi Joan
from Heinz-Jürgen Metzger - Looking back to Nanjing

Detail of the event is here.

Tanahashi

Greetings from Japan!
Akemashite Omedeto~! Happy New Year!! Bonne Année!!!

The following is a poem I came across recently. It is really encouraging because it very much describes what I have been studying through Taimyo Kata:
Full text of the greeting

The Taimyo Network for World Peace uses the meditation form Taimyo Kata as a form of prayer. Taimyo means "Great Mystery" and kata means "form." Taimyo is a distillation of the creative experience of Shintaido founder Hiroyuki Aoki. We use the kata to practice and pray together, and to express our caring for the Earth and for one another... Full text