Furuya Sensei posted this to his Daily Message on June 14, 2003.
In martial arts techniques, there is not much difference between throwing someone to the ground, striking them or kicking them in order to severely injure them.
In fact, in any kind of fighting, it is very simple to injure the other person and it doesn't take much practice at all. If we are mentally violent, hateful and aggressive enough, we can harm others quite easily even if it is a good friend or member of our own family.
We think that violence is a part of our Nature but peacefulness and wisdom is also a part of our essence as well.
It is our choice to choose how we live. We can live by violence or by peace. Aikido shows us the way of peace - a way much more difficult to master and understand in such a violent world that we have created for ourselves today.
What is mastery of the art? Simply to be strong? Or have a higher rank? To beat others down? To merely “think” that we know something doesn't mean that we know it at all. Mastery is an on-going process of training each day with the proper energy, effort and spirit - it is not a goal.