Welcome to the revised Shintaido of America (SoA) website! As part of this transition of the website to a new format, SoA’s Body Dialogue newsletter is becoming a blog. Anyone may post an entry at any time, by sending material to newsletter@shintaido.org. The Body Dialogue editor will review material and post all appropriate entries. Body Dialogue is now a real-time on-line publication with fresh articles and information on an ongoing basis. Please submit poems, pictures, articles, essays, anything we can post electronically, to newsletter@shintaido.org.
Jewish folklore of the Lamed Vov calls for thirty-six just souls, three-dozen anonymous individuals in every generation who keep the world from slipping into chaos. In 2009 Stephen Billias and filmmaker Dennis Lanson made a documentary entitled Seeking the 36, in which they sought the thirty-six just men and women who would save our generation.
A turn of events led them to Rabbi Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, and the film took on a deeper meaning. Billias mentioned to Rabbi Shachter-Shalomi that he practiced a less-known Japanese martial art called Shintaido that focuses on the spiritual, meditative, and transformational aspects of the martial arts rather than combat and self-defense. The rabbi was interested so Stephen showed him one of Shintaidos core movements. Instead of watching, Rabbi Shachter-Shalomi followed along. When Billias finished, Rabbi Shachter-Shalomi said: "Look, I want you to send me a DVD of this, so that I can get it into my body."
Soon the video will also be on YouTube and on Vimeo.com, and it will be possible to embed it on other websites. There will also be versions you can download to your iPhone or other mobile devices.
On behalf of the SOA Board of Directors, I would like to thank the SOA members who provided valuable feedback that was essential in making this final version. This truly was a community effort.
During the feedback sessions at the Pacific Shintaido Kangeiko and Shintaido Northeast Kangeiko, many of you offered excellent suggestions about how to share this video with the world. Now we can start putting those suggestions into action together. If you have specific ideas, we hope you’ll step forward and help make them happen.
We are in the process of registering this video with Wiki Commons as open source media, free for anyone to show, duplicate, share, embed on websites, etc. (as long as they aren’t making money from it).
If you have access to other websites where it would be appropriate to link to it or embed it, please feel free to do so.
Please contact me if you have ideas for where this video might be shown. Perhaps it could be entered in film festivals, or distributed to other communities you might be a part of. Any creative ideas for expanding the viewing of this video are welcome.
Many thanks to David Franklin, who edited the video. Also thanks to Rob Kedoin and Bill Burtis, who provided subcommittee guidance during and after the filming, and to videographer Carlyn Saltman, and to the many people who appeared in the film, including Shin Aoki, Joe Zawielski, Gianni Rossi, Bela Breslau, Anne-Marie Grandtner, Deb Zawielski, Margaret Guay, and others.
Best to all,
Stephen Billias
for Shintaido of America
sbillias@comcast.net
UPDATE 8/24/2009: The video is now available online at Vimeo!
In June, 2006, when Ito came to the Shintaido Farm to teach the Shintaido Sans Frontieres workshop, he gave the dojo a name: Tenshinkan, which means, “Heavenly Truth Building”. The farm as a whole is still called the Shintaido Farm, but the dojo now has its own name.
Ito contacted Aoki Sensei and asked if he would do a calligraphy of the new name. Aoki Sensei graciously agreed. On Tuesday, October 3rd, Ito visited the Shintaido Farm again, led class, and presented Stephen Billias and Bela Breslau with a beautiful calligraphy by Aoki Sensei of the new name.
The framed calligraphy now hangs between the picture windows in the Tenshinkan dojo on the Shintaido Farm.
There is a new Shintaido website which has been created for the Taimyo Network for World Peace. Below is Ito Sensei’s introduction to this new site:
December 7 and December 10 will be here soon. December 7, 1941, is when the Japanese navy attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and December 10, 1937, is when the Japanese army in China invaded Nanjing in China (the “Nanjing massacre”). The truth about Nanjing, especially about the number of people killed, is fiercely debated even within Japan. However, there is no question that more than 60 years ago, the leaders of Japan took the country in the wrong direction. The Imperial Army and Navy invaded China, Korea, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and Indonesia at the sacrifice of millions of lives.
Imperial Japan and the Japanese people before and during World War II were highly idealistic. The tragedy of that war shows that no matter how high their ideals, nations and people can cause terrible destruction to their neighbors and themselves if they think only about their own benefit.
I will be in meditation from December 7 to December 10 to reflect on my responsibility as a Japanese for the shameful behavior of my country in the past, to do everything that I can to prevent such terrible things from happening again, and to pray that leaders around the world will avoid such terrible mistakes in the future. I invite you to join me!
For further information about my action, please visit “the Taimyo Network for the World Peace at http://www.taimyo.net/!
H. F. Ito
