I have been deeply concerned with bodily honesty over the past few months. In the practice of Aikido, a martial art from Japan developed by Morihei Ueshiba, the attacker's attack is the cause for the defender's response. While a broadly painted (and largely debatable) description, it should suffice for now. For those unfamiliar with it, think of it as being kind of like Judo.
Honesty, in this context, is the genuineness of the attack. It need not be angry, nor even fast, but it must be committed. It must be fearless, it must be forgetful of the future. It must be the surrendering of one's personal concerns to the art of Aikido. Perhaps the level of yielding to the art must be higher in the attack than it is in the technique.
And yet, as I practiced with a fellow sensei on new years eve, I felt how uniform his response was to my attacks whether they were honest, absent minded, or downright dishonest. The attack did not matter. So fixed I had become on trying to get decent attacks from others I had forgotten to work with what I had been given. My friend had reminded me through his movement.
It's always tempting to immediately draw parallels with conflicts in daily life and conflicts in Aikido, and to be sure these parallels are instructive, but at times they mask the fact that you do not really grasp the concept in Aikido well enough.
It is also tempting to draw out gnostic teaching and philosophy to daily life before you really get the experience of realization, of Awakening. It is tempting to profess the teachings. The words of sages in the mouths of those who do not yet 'get it' are still wise, still valuable, but they are, strangely, counterfeit . The resonance of the sages words are at odds with that of the unrealized speaker, and in some strange alchemy, they lose their sweetness.
It matters what grapes you use to make wine. It matters the vats and barrels and storage and temperature and yeast and manner of creation. How should we view the recitation of the divine when it is so difficult to craft a fine bottle of wine? Yet, it does not suit us to not explore, espouse, experiment nor explore the divine.
So, a hundred times a hundred, the attack is not pure, not true. A hundred times a hundred the words of the divine are decanted into vessels unable to retain the glory. Yet the hundred times a hundred are the necessary preconditions to the manifestation of honesty.
