Serenity is the path.

The author, Haruki Murakami said, "When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about." As Furuya Sensei used to say, "The Way is in training." The goal of training is serenity. The path to serenity is training. Training itself is serenity.

What we are trying to achieve by training in the martial arts is not the ability to destroy others but rather the ability to control ourselves so that we don't have to. We seek to be the calm in the eye of the storm.

When confronted, it is easy to lash out and use our darker more negative self to win, but after a while one realizes that the true opponent lies within. It takes a more evolved and more sophisticated person to realize where the real battle lies.

Yoda once said, "That which you seek, inside you will find." Serenity is that thing we all seek. Training is serenity. Serenity is the path. The path is serenity. "The Way is in training." Keep on training because training is the Way.