Me Towards Places.

I’m not really sure if I’ve gone insane about aikido lately, my mind became full of it, I can’t really focus on driving anymore, I was about to hit a curve while I was driving into a gas station without paying attention that my fuel tank way far from the “E” position. I’m not sure yet if the passion really drives a person to insanity, but if aikido was a fine lady, then I’d certainly make a move. Now that I regret every single class that I couldn’t attend back when I was in japan, I could have done much harder…..thirty classes in 29 days were really not satisfying at all, while I could have done at least a double of that in the same domain. When it comes to aikido, my hunger to know more about it through philosophy, technique, and especially manners have driven me into day dreaming, no matter how much you step into the dojo or how many years you have held the bokken swinging hard like catching a fly. It was never meant to be over, it was never meant to be enough.

I believe the way the etiquette followed in the dojo opened my eyes into many mistakes that I’ve done towards my life style and religion. I was really against the act of bowing to each other in the dojo as a term of respect. I was looking for reasons of that and found out that these were Japanese traditions thanking your partner for giving his body for to practice on. I never jumped through people opinions into the Islamic judgment on such matter, because these days everyone started mixing up between traditions and religion. I went straight to a legal trusted source and turned out that this act is not forbidden, but hated (makroh), for the reason that it could lead to diversion into a different path away from Islam. However, it is not forbidden.

I tried to look at the matter from such a different view and make it to my advantage to become a better person towards respecting “Others”, “Things”, and “Places”. I was really wondering that such a dojo has such its own respect, by such following such an etiquette, then what about the mosques that represent that houses of allah. There was always a bow of respect whenever I entered the dojo, which really made me rethink the way I entered the mosque itself. The mosque should be even more respectable by praying sunnah (tahiyyah) when I go in. Adding to that, the entrance (doa’a) when entering with the right foot, Along with the proper attire of the Muslim entering such place. Aren’t mosques worthy of having such ettiquete even though they are sunnah or a matter of choice? Most of us muslims took these teachings from school, but rarely I see that happening in reality, I can’t blame them because I was one of those. However, the way I saw the Japanese deal with such “place” I started to wake myself up to the way I deal with the most holy places on earth, which unfortunately if it lacks something, then it lacks the people’s discipline, attitude, and behavior towards “places”.