Thread: Peace
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Old 09-08-2010, 02:08 PM   #3
mathewjgano
 
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Dojo: Tsubaki Kannagara Jinja Aikidojo; Himeji Shodokan Dojo
Location: Renton
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Re: Peace

Quote:
Bjorn Saw wrote: View Post
...The practice of Aikido is made for this purpose; to understand Peace! Once you understand it, you can live by it. That is not an easy matter but without understanding you would not even know where to start. So look at the heart of Peace and solve it to what it means, right now, together with another or by your self. Then and only then will you bring peace to this world. What does it mean? Pursue it with your life and with a passion that the world depends on it.
Nicely put! I believe we generally get out what we put in...of course this gets complicated when we get a group of autonomous individuals, but if we're not trying our very best for peaceful situations I would argue we're demonstrating either apathy or cynicism; neither of which are genuinely peaceful pursuits. Some people say you have to work hard to keep others from stomping you down in life and I think this kind of attitude channels incoming events into positions of conflict. I would rather say you have to work hard to appreciate/understand where another person is coming from in order to find paths that lead to mutually benificial situations. Rather than spend energy trying to shut down the other guy, I would rather spend it on non-oppositional (e.g. mutually propelling) behavior. It just seems more efficient to me.
It's all too easy to write off the other person as somehow lacking and use that as an excuse for non-peaceful responses. Peace in the absolute (or near enough) sense is all too often a peripheral thought, an abstract notion of some far-off ideal that probably isn't very practical...a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Gambarimashyo!
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