Heijoshin Kore Do

What is the ultimate goal of training in Aikido?  Calmness.  The ability to be calm is born out of Aikido's harmonizing nature.   Without harmony we cannot be calm.  Without calmness we cannot act appropriately.  When we are confronted, our training teaches us to be calm, centered and collected so that we may act mindfully in an appropriate manner.  If we are not in harmony then we run the risk of reacting or acting mindlessly.  How does this sense of calmness arise?  This scroll reads, "Heijoshin Kore Do" or the original mind is the way gives us a clue.  Many interpret this to mean that the original mind means calmness.  This is true but it doesn't leave us with much to go by when it comes to attaining this sense of calm.  I believe that the original mind that we are striving for is the mind that we had at the moment when we were born that was free from the bindings that society conditioned into us as we grew up.  When we are born there was no anger, jealousy, fear or hatred.  The only thing that existed was the love from our parents or caregivers.  From there we grew to know fear and that fear manifests in things like anger, hatred, jealousy and scarcity.  With that realization, we try to get back to the heijoshin or "original" mind and shed those negative traits.

We return back to the heijoshin only by training.  Training is the vehicle by which we develop ourselves so that we may meet any of life's obstacles with sense of harmony that is calm and centered.  That is why Furuya Sensei used to say, "The Way is in training."