The Journey Down the Path of Aikido is Difficult

Throwback Thursday

Furuya Sensei posted this to his Daily Message on October 9, 2002.

Every day, we must think about what is important in our lives! Every day we must check our course of action and the direction we are taking lives. Like a captain of a ship on the sea, who must constantly check everything because it is so easy to go off course and become lost. Aikido is like a great rudder! We understand how to master it, adjusting a little to the left or right and it keeps us steady and balanced. Aikido is the anchor too, which holds us steady even when we are not in motion. Indeed, Aikido is the great ship on the sea of life carrying us to the other shore.

I was looking at the scroll hanging in our tokonoma of a sunrise with the bright red sun rising above the blue sea. It is so beautiful to think about! Daily, the beautiful sun rises and this is how we start our lives each morning, but, in our real lives, we hardly notice the sun coming up because we are so busy while such a beautiful miracle of nature occurs.

From our own tiny scope of our lives, things can seem bad or good depending on our circumstances of life. We have no time to enjoy the beautiful sun rising nor the stars at night or beautiful afternoon sky. There is a bigger, better world out there if we can expand the vision of our lives from our own tiny self-centered selves.

The sun has no "will" to rise each day but it naturally appears to come up in the morning without fail. Many things in our lives happen naturally without will or intent. We are so concerned about imposing our will or power over everything! Same in Aikido against our partners and nature too.

As long as we think Aikido is about strength and bettering others, we will never know what Aikido is about. At the same time, if we think Aikido is simply to self-indulge ourselves and created to serve our own selfish whims, we will never know what it is all about either.

To journey down the path of Aikido is difficult and hard but everyone and anyone can do it - this is what the Spirit of Aikido is all about, I believe.