Only one team member? Pray tell, which one?

And how do you tell the things that do not matter? Why, when you discover you are free after stopping caring about them, you've hit the right ones! But the trial-and-error required to get there is pretty hairy. It's easiest, therefore, to just take the Big Bang route, and stop caring about everything. Right? ;)

That would be the Buddhist answer, Brian - "lose all attachments and simply BE".

But even that doesn't come all at once, so it isn't a "Big Bang" option unless you're someone like Wonhyo who experiences instant enlightenment.

Check out http://www.aikiweb.com if you are interested in Aikido in its many forms.

"When you lose your desire for things that do not matter, you will be free."

This would be a big and perhaps dubious message by itself. Who knows what is really important? "Even the very wise cannot see all ends."

But I think it should be understood firmly in its immediate context, which is an appeal to respect others who ought to be seen as brothers, and to abstain from petty quarrels, or at least not make too much of them.

That speaks very much to my heart at the moment. (...)

Anyway, I'll pick just on thread, a political and thus publishable one.

I was just mulling over the propaganda line that all solidarity with the Americans is servility, and disgraceful. Surely you must get this too in Canada, Joe? And other people in other countries too? It's a staple of cartoonists, an assumed truth. I've seen lots of cartoons slamming Tony Blair - not a man who would leap to my mind as having a slavish personality - in this way.

How can envy, pettiness, resentment of one's friends and disloyalty be considered either self-respect or the inner freedom that is true self-respect's twin?

Surely lack of pettiness, lack of envy, a large-visioned concern for the greater cause, and an unwillingness to be shamed into backing away from your real friends and the causes and values you really do approve of - these things represent inner freedom, and are thus a proper basis for self-respect, no matter who is stronger.

We do things one way, the Americans another, the British are different again - so what? We can all continue confidently down our own paths, and gradually reach freer and better societies regardless of petty differences.

I remember having arguments long ago with Americans, that quickly and surprisingly became bitter, over things like the label "citizen soldiers." (The Americans' contention was that this was a concept that could not be applied to those who lived under monarchies, and who were therefore subjects, not citizens etc..) If determination not to concede the point in a case like this is not a desire for things that don't matter, what would be?

I think of some people online who've made a really bad impression on me in the past few years, mostly French, but in one case German.

The Frenchmen seemed to have a bitter obsession with the idea that the Americans were bullying them into compliance with every jot and tittle of an extensive agenda. Revengeful malice - under some nobler-sounding label or another - consumed them, it was the only response they understood, and they had a very active disrespect for anyone who didn't share it. This is freedom? They were like prisoners obsessed with assassinating the overbearing guard of a prison that existed in their own minds.

The German attitude, while less actively obnoxious, was just as repulsive. Today one cleverly liberates oneself from the entangling needs of the Americans, and tomorrow, sophisticated fellows that we are, we may decide to liberate ourselves from (that is, shamelessly let down) the French! I didn't think: "How sophisticated these cool Europeans are! How admirable!" I thought: "You slave! 'Liberate' yourself as often as you like, you'll never be free in your heart with an attitude like that!"

For the opposite, I think of the futility of Stalin's efforts to bait Churchill with envy for the strength of the Americans' position late in World War Two. (Hoping to get the Western allies quarrelling - divide and conquer.) Not only did Churchill not go for the bait, he didn't sense it. He had his weaknesses, but envy was never one of them. He was a bigger man than that. He had his eyes on higher things.

I can see a similar lesson, about the incompatibility between an inadequately motivated quarrelsomeness on one hand and inner freedom on the other, transposed to martial arts culture.

Everything is not about whose sword is bigger. And if it seems to you that everything is indeed about whose sword is bigger (or worse yet, if your actions reveal that is where you're coming from but you claim to be struggling for some phoney sacred principle that has no real importance) then you are no longer looking up and ascending Mount Fuji.

So props to Ueshiba, who said so elegantly and neatly and with broad applicability what I had to struggle to work out and say at length, even in the limited context of ego duels having to do with nationality and the current role of the Americans.

"When you lose your desire for things that do not matter, you will be free."

The freedom of Ann Althouse: (link)

Remaining ahead of this kind of rival definitely does not matter.

For more of O Sensei's teachings from Hombu Dojo and elsewhere, check out The Art of Peace

Good stuff. And if anyone is in or near Valencia CA, there's an excellent Aikido Dojo on Lyons Ave worth looking into.

"He who climbs Fuji-san once gains wisdom. He who climbs twice didn't learn anything the first time."

tonecluster, is that the one started by George Leonard back in the 80s? I forget exactly where that one was located.

Leonard was an interesting guy. Spent a little time in a seminar he gave at Esalen on the Way of the Warrior. Still remember some of my experiences there.

Oops, I take it back - Leonard and his wife's dojo is in Mill Valley.