Re: Am I Really Practicing Budo?
As a point of clarification, I am not criticizing good or bad where our training puts us. The reality that I am not a professional baseball player does not affect my joy when I play baseball with my son.
I know many people who practice aikido, few of them are in any sense fighting machines. Fewer even who are out of control AND fighting machines. Fewer still who are "lethal." Most of us are hobbyists who want to train and work on something and aikido is that something. I far more familiar with people who practice aikido who are bullies and jerks than I am of aikido people who are capable of hurting me outside of the paradigm of giving my body to them to hurt.
Of course, YMMV.
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