Quote:
Graham Christian wrote:
Until a person has experienced this then of course they can't see it. As for the martial intent, well I can only tell you this: Once O'Sensei said true budo is love and then formed Aikido I believe at that point the whole purpose of this martial discipline changed. No longer was it to defeat the enemy or to dominate or to win etc. It was now to harmonise and thus the spiritual side of the techniques and motions needed to be fully understood and experienced which takes far more discipline than mere physical.
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Not just picking on you, because I see this spiritual vs. physical dichotomy in a lot of discussion of aikido.
The challenge is that you need both. If physical rigor is absent, if your practice falls apart in the presence of sincere attacks, you're no longer practicing a martial art. Which is fine, but you should no longer call it aikido.
In your terminology, it's not samurai OR Buddha, but samurai AND Buddha. Choosing the Buddha side alone is not the "more difficult" path, it's just as much a way of avoiding the main challenge as the samurai side alone is.
Katherine