Dear KT, in relation to our previous discussions on Aikido, I have something to add:

I have been pondering on 2 different questions:

1. I've read somewhere, perhaps apocyphally, that when O-Sensei was still alive and teaching, he never told his students how he did something. When someone asked, he would demonstrate again, but he never told them how he did it. Why?

2. Why is it that it doesn't seem common for students to surpass their teachers. Taking Aikido for an example, why is it that no one ever surpassed, or even came close to O-Sensei in terms of realizations or technique?

Its gradually dawned on me that these 2 questions could very well be related.

Perhaps another question that may prove instructive, is, why one teaches, and why one starts a system/path/way, like Aikido, or Tai-Chi for instance. My hypothesis is that the person, in the search for something, has presumably attained or found it, and hence expresses his findings/realizations via a system through the introduction and codification of methods which, when applied, should lead the practitioner to the same or similar realizations. These methods, may be ones in which he himself used and applied, but they may also have been invented by himself. The purpose of the system is presumably to make it easier/quicker for subsequent seekers to attain the same realizations or abilities he has.

In the absence of an existing system, one attains a goal or acquires an ability in a more-or-less haphazard fashion, that is, by using whatever means or existing methods which seem to point in the general direction of where one wants to go, then adapting along the way.

Now, here's the problem: the founder of the system, by definition, has not undergone the system, and hence cannot really know if the system can indeed successfully and efficiently lead a student to the same realizations he has. I define an efficient system as one that has a higher probability of success in a shorter period of time than no system at all. Initially, in providing some structure, it may lead the student faster and further than no system at all, but ultimately it may be that the very structure the system provides is the ultimate undoing of the student.

In that line, my Aikido sensei often told us to throw away the system (the rules) when one has mastered the rules. And perhaps that's the answer.

Looking back, my greatest failing as a student was failing to keep in sight of what I really wanted, that is, applying the methods of the system without knowing what I wanted to learn. Or perhaps I needed to go through that, to reach the realization I have now!

Perplexed,
YT

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