Furuya Sensei posted this to his Daily Message on October 10, 2003.
The most profound teachings are the most simple
I think that people often look for the strange and the exotic in the teachings and love to conjecture about this and that in Aikido endlessly. But from my own experience, I have found that Aikido as well as many other disciplines only have very simple "mysteries" or "secrets."
Once, a student asked the master of tea, Sen no Rikyu, "What is the great secret of preparing tea?" The master said, "Simply make the best tea possible for your guest."
After many years of training under one Zen master, a student finally complained, "I cut the wood every day, prepare your meals and wash your clothes, but you have never once taught me anything about Buddhism, why don't you teach me something?” The Zen master replied, "When I see you in the morning, don't I say 'good morning?'" When I receive the meals, don't say, “'thank you?'" "That is all there is to Zen!"
When I first was studying Buddhism a long time ago, I read that the Buddha said, "Buddhism is only to think good thoughts, do good acts!” I thought to myself that that seems easy enough - oh how difficult it is and I struggled with this for many years and still have not mastered this today.
The late Kisaburo Osawa Sensei also would often say, "Do good Aikido!" How difficult this is! Especially when we try to apply this to our daily lives and to our practice.
Our intellect always wants to convince ourselves about how clever we are. Until we master the simple, there is no need to approach the difficult.
Aikido itself is very easy - simply don't fight the opponent - what we bring into Aikido ourselves, makes it so difficult to understand.