Comments from participants
Note
*This section includes Japanese contents and they might invisible depending on your system.
*Date is expressed as year/month/day.
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from Nicole about 5th August Taimyo
6th August, 2005
Dear Friends,
I know that we were practising together TAIMYO KATA last night for the memorial of Hiroshima and Nagasaki events, I am sure some other people who knew about it did not answer to our proposal but were still doing it.
The keiko with Ito took place at a newly made wooden floor room (dojo) in their garage. Connie Borden, Mike Sheet, Jack Russel, Robby Newman, and myself were in the dojo.
Ito has explained us about the dramatic events of Hiroshima first, and then Nagasaki.
He also spoke about the dark side of each nation in the world, and how each nations try to hide its own dark side.
He finally made the remark that any human being has also a dark side and no one want to speak about it, see it, or face it, we all prefer to see the bright side of ourself.
So through the meditation, Ito proposed us to send light to this dark side of ourself, and to send light to our family, communitee, people who are suffering around us, to our work, to our country, and nations.
So we did kenko taiso, then Taimyo kata part 1 – standing position, then he taught us to move with the Hangetsu (half moon) step in order to grounded ourself, then we did again The part 1 with this stepping.
We kept going on Taimyo Kata part 2, 3.
As he proposed to us before, we did then 30 mn of meditation, in a circle with our own images.
Before all that Ito had asked about our feelings at that moment before the meditation.
After the meditation we shared our feedbacks.
As Ito have asked if we had any request for Monday meditation, Robby proposed that we could may be do Tenshingoso kumite, because it is a way to share our light and energy to other people.
It has been accepted by all of those to do so on Monday.
Then a discussion arised about the political situation in USA and in the world.
Ito shared his experienced he had to step for the first time on a wooden floor in a Mosquee in Karachi while he was travelling with Aoki Sensei a long time ago.
Personnaly, all the people who Ito announced as they said that they will do the keiko tonight (on the list here above) came at the end of my meditation, I could see you clearly, and I hoped that we could all find more people to practice with next week.
I personnaly wish to organise a bigger group of practitionner in Paris, in the Loire Valley and any other place in France for the 11 of September symbolic practice.
I hope my English was not too difficult to understand, and I apology in advance for my mistakes.
I wish you a very nice week-end,
With Love and Peace,
Nicole
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from Ula Chambers
9th August, 2005 UK
Hello Taimyo friends.
Here in the Brighton, UK our Taimyo memorial has been as follows. Jeff and Ula Chambers have been doing Taimyo 1-3 every evening since Friday 5th August. This evening we went to meditate by the Peace Statue in Hove, by the sea and were joined by duaghter Liz, Terry Bickers and Mandy Powell.
This evening we particulary felt conected to the part 3 – starting with wakame to the sound of waves crashing. We searched for our own light in these troubled times and sent it out to all souls affected by war or terror, in particular those who fell at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Most strongly I remembered the image of the little girl who made all one thousand paper cranes, in the hope that this would heal her suffering. Even though she died her hope is a light for us. I believe that our Taimyo is like a continuation of those cranes bringing hope for peace and healing, even in adversity.
Love and peace to you all and the whole world.
Ula Chambers
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from Masashi Minagawa
11th August, 2005 Ireland
Dear friends
I would like to report my Taimyo performance at the basket-ball arena in Dublin, Ireland.
60 years of Hiroshima bombing I was in Ireland to perform Taymyo for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
During I was doing Taimyo, Chloe Goodchild(the Naked Voice) sang a song for peace and love, and audience followed us. Spreading our small candle light from our heart.
And last of concert we did Tenshingoso together for pray the 60 years cycle of life, imagine a new positive cycle will be open.
It was very peaceful moment. deep silence.
Masashi Minagawa
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2005/8/9
Jack Russell
Dear Ito,
Thank you for the meditation session, and for the help of Nicole with the movements. I was not able to focus well on Hiroshima as I intended, but I did so all weekend afterward. I have also heard much discussion on the radio about it. Progressives tend to stress the point that the violence was reprehensible because directed against a civilian population. I agree. Others still feel it was justifiable because of a perception that the Japanese population was entirely in the myth of the Samurai and were completely in support of the emperor, so it was okay to bomb a city full of civilians. I don’t buy this argument, but it makes sense of the situation for many who are old enough to have observed it. They then go on to recount all of the many stories of atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers, and even go back to the occupation of China for their examples. This kind of thinking is repeated today to justify the destruction of Iraq because of 9/11 and the brutality of Saddam’s regime. Unfortunately, we don’t have leaders in power to stop this type of insanity — in fact, they are the ones who promote it in defense of their own psychotic behavior. I understand that there is even a movement in the US government to rearm Japan so that we can stand up to China as it emerges as a world power (and sell more arms, our only remaining homegrown industry.)
Since WWII, Europe has moved away from conflict to cooperation – a major disappointment for Americans with a thirst for war, except that England’s government hasn’t had enough yet, as they have such a long history of domination of other peoples — probably the source of the determination of some Americans to emulate it. Maybe there is something about being an island nation that causes countries like England, Japan, Indonesia to reach out for more land and domination of the people who already live there. But then what is the motive for Spain to takeover the entire western hemisphere while the English and French focused on the northeast part of the continent? And for other Europeans to takeover Africa and many parts of southern Asia.
My point in writing this is to emphasize what you said about the dark side and that we tend to repress it, and therefore to project it onto others. This is the thought of Carl Jung, and he goes further to state that anything repressed (not acknowledged) is bound to come out in some destructive way — the unconscious has great power and will be heard, like it or not. This concept is not acceptable to Christian doctrine that places the blame on a separate god-being called Satan, who is the source of all evil. Jung (and Jesus, too, if scripture is read critically) would say that evil arises within the human being. And it is precisely the denial of this reality that is the problem of our own culture today, and may be a problem for others as well – certainly it is prevalent in all people of the Abrahamic faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. But logic asks the question: if the Devil is responsible for my evil, how is it that I can blame the other guy for producing evil on his own, and therefore justify bombing him, his wife, and children to smithereens? After 9/11, Bush announced immediately that it was Ousama bin Laden’s plot, not the Devil. Maybe Bush has changed his mind since he has decided it is necessary to eradicate (“bring democracy to”) the entire Muslim world instead of finding the one who he first named.
The proper name for the Hiroshima/Nagasaki disaster is massacre. Other Japanese cities had already been bombed relentlessly, except for these two. Technology that had made it possible for Germany and Japan to accomplish what they had so far, was now in the hands of the USA, and it was much quicker and easier to use the atom bomb carried by one bomber than to waste resources on many bombing raids. We now know that Japan was ready to surrender anyway, except on the condition that the emperor would remain on the throne. Truman thought he could get unconditional surrender by using the Big Bomb to show we could not be bargained with. Well, Japan wouldn’t have it, so they got the Bomb. But Truman lost, because it didn’t work — Japan signed, and kept Hirohito. Americans find this reality hard to accept. They also tend to set aside that the only reason we exist today is by massacring our native population, shoving Spain out of the Southwest, and importing Africans as slaves to create the wealth necessary for a huge nation of landowners. Latin America is still dominated primarily by European descendant elites in power. In my own lifetime, I have seen European nations withdraw from Africa, India, and southeast Asia, having wasted their resources on the war in Europe. The US has tried to replace Europe as the dominator of small poor nations, and it will cost us dearly.
The Church has given us this little book of stories that tell us we are the children of a good god, that we shall inherit the earth, and the rest of the world be damned; because God or Christ will destroy them all who don’t believe as we do. Therefore, we have the right and the duty to subjugate others for their own good! So we have an ignorant Texas drunk as president who believes all this; and even worse, that He is the messiah to bring it about! In the beginning of the book it was God who destroyed nations and whole peoples if they made him mad; but He is now irrelevant, as we humans have all the toys, and we can destroy all life in minutes whenever we want to. The world is a much more dangerous place than it was when He was in chargre, but 60 years ago the balance of power changed forever, and that is the significance of Hiroshima. Some people still waste their time praying to God for salvation, but He doesn’t hold the trigger anymore. Those who are waiting for the Rapture just need to phone their president to go ahead with it.
So, all the Saddams, Sharons, Pol Pots, Stalins, Hirohitos, Hitlers, Bushes, and their gangster pals have had their fun during my lifetime, and millions of innocents have died an ugly death for it. But a few of us squeak by unnoticed and go to meditations, hoping to make it better. That’s what the Dalai Lama would have us do. Works for him.
Shalom
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2005/8/10 Furukawa Japan
報告が遅れました参加させて頂きました。
ちょっと用事が出来て12時半頃から30分ぐらいしか時間が取れませんでしたが、
第１部を３回やってその後瞑想をしました。
同じ１人で稽古するにしても、普段１人でやる時よりは気の入った稽古ができた
様な気がします。良い機会を下さってありがとうございました！
古川 大輔
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2005/8/10 Matsuyama Japan
松山です。
大妙イベント参加しました。
八月九日の十一時から十二時くらいの間に大妙＆瞑想しました。気持ちの良い三昧に入ることが出来ました。三昧が世界をつつみますように。
MATSUYAMA Shin-Ichi
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2005/8/16 Françoise
Dear Nicole and Ito,
I was meditating during thes hours on the 6 th of august and I forgot one of my grand-daughter ‘s birthday : 6-years old this date, I never realized she was born that date, and however I ‘ve never forgotten that I was born just a month before: the third of july 1945. My daughter said to me that it was the first time too that she thought of Hiroshima that date, and I had not spoken of that to her.
I read an article in “Science and life” about this event from Dr Mishihiko Hachiya and I was very surprised to learn that there had been survivals. For me everybody had died in this disaster, and I saw that you, Ito, was born in Hiroshima in 1942… This article has stroken me by the capacity of human kind to recover the course of their lives as if nothing had really happened, and even what was really important for him and some persons aroud him was the defeat of Japon, and he told how he was comforted to learn that “the same thing had been done to America : the Japon had its revenge!”
I think that so far as human beings will be brought up as separate in territory, in different customs, manners, habits, conditions…that have to be looked as enemies instead of richness of humanity, they will act in an agressive manner to protect what they think their own property. Generally speaking even people who protest against a bad politic made by politician forget to look at their own attitude with others, their colleagues, their wifes and children, and at each time we feel angry against something we must know that we are bthe same as these politicians at a higher level perhaps, but if we don’t begin inside ourselves we can’t judge anyone to be the same as we are… So to avoid wars I think we must make peace and love with ourselves first, I mean each individual person inside himself and outside and if I can’t so I can’t judge anyone his unability to do it. So that’s why I think that all the sessions of meditation that Ito, the lamas with whom I was, and many others who do the same in each religion or spiritual group, are very important because they permit to touch the core of our humanity that is ourself first instead of nourrishing hate and bad feelings against bad politicians… Only a mass awareness will be profitable for human kind , only personal love will help to increase world love, only personal listening to personal feelings (bad or good, it doesn’t matter, the only fact is to accept what we are, and it’s not so easy because of the big fear to be excluded from others’love, or others’ community, to make short) will help others to look inside themselves… a long way to do that? perhaps if we don’t begin, perhaps not if we really want peace and love, if it is not only an empty vow . So thank you to all masters, and all of us to have begun under and with their guidance… just we must go on and on and on….
I kiss you friendly. Françoise
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2005/8/16 Ula Chambers
*in response to the mail below.
Dear Francoise,
Thank you so much for your words, I am very moved by them.
I remember after 9/11, I was shocked and distraught and wondered how we could recover. I had a very small sense of maybe what my parents had gone through in world war 2 – the fragility of life, the sense of being attacked and hunted, raw survival. I also felt very powerless at that time. Then a friend reminded me of, actually what you say, that my power lay in finding peace and understanding inside me, but even more – to spread that peace and understanding to my family, to my collegues, my neighbours and beyond them. One way to promote peace is to welcome peace into your own being, despite adversity and danger. Doing Taimyo kata daily is for me like drinking from the well of peace. I don’t know how to be a politician or a peace activist in the wider sense – but I can hope to foster peace and understanding in my small circle. That is the small thing I CAN do – and if we all join together, enough people, then we will make a difference in the end. I hope I am not naive.
And I recall Ito’s words about being aware of our own dark side, of our prejudices and small thinking. These things are part of us all and if we shine a light on them and be more self aware, then we can move forward.
Thank you all. I hope you enjoy Taimyo today.
[Ula Chambers]