As soon as you concern yourself with the 'good' and 'bad' of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you.
Interpretation
Focusing on judgments of others can lead to negativity in your own heart and weaken your spirit.
This quote by Morihei Ueshiba emphasizes the importance of avoiding judgment and criticism of others, as such thoughts can invite negativity into one's own heart. It suggests that constantly testing and competing against others not only detracts from personal growth but also leads to one's own defeat, advocating for a mindset of kindness and understanding instead of rivalry and malice.
In practice
In a discussion about personal growth in a workshop, you might use this quote to emphasize the importance of focusing on self-improvement rather than comparing oneself to others.
PRACTICE OF THE Art of Peace is an act of faith, a belief in the ultimate power of nonviolence. It is faith in the power of purification and faith in the power of life itself. It is not a type of rigid discipline or empty asceticism. It is a path that follows natural principles, principles, that must be applied to daily living. The Art of Peace should be practiced from the time you rise to greet the morning to the time you retire at night.
Study the teachings of the pine tree, the bamboo, and the plum blossom. The pine is evergreen, firmly rooted, and venerable. The bamboo is strong, resilient, unbreakable. The plum blossom is hardy, fragrant, and elegant.
EACH DAY OF HUMAN life contains joy and anger, pain and pleasure, darkness and light, growth and decay. Each moment is etched with nature’s grand design-do not try to deny or oppose the cosmic order of things.
Foster and polish the warrior spirit while serving in the world; illuminate the path according to your inner light.
THE BODY SHOULD be triangular, the mind circular. The triangle represents the generation of energy and is the most stable physical posture. The circle symbolizes serenity and perfection, the source of unlimited techniques. The square stands for solidity, the basis of applied control.
Aikido is the spirit of loving protection for all beings.
The cruel ambush of 9/11 supposedly 'changed everything,' slapping us back to reality. Yet we are constantly shocked, shocked by the foreseeable.
The lamb misused breeds public strife And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
Cannot the nation that has absorbed ten million foreigners into its political life without catastrophe absorb ten million Negro Americans into that same political life at less cost than their unjust and illegal exclusion will involve?
Can you dissolve your ego? Can you abandon the idea of self and other? Can you relinquish the notions of male and female, short and long, life and death? Can you let go of all these dualities and embrace the Tao without skepticism or panic? If so, you can reach the heart of the Integral Oneness.
All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.
It seems to me that man is made to act rather than to know: the principles of things escape our most persevering researches.
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