Now and again, it is necessary to seclude yourself among deep mountains and hidden valleys to restore your link to the source of life. Breathe in and let yourself soar to the ends of the universe; breathe out and bring the cosmos back inside. Next, breathe up all the vibrancy and fecundity of the earth. Finally, blend the breathe of heaven and that of your earth with your own, becoming the breath of Life itself.
Morihei Ueshiba, The Art of Peace
By Hera, a fair resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents. Here is this lofty and spreading plane-tree, and the willow high and clustering, in the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance; and the stream which flows beneath the plane-tree is deliciously cold to the feet…My dear Phaedrus…I hope that you will excuse me when you hear that I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the country. Though I do indeed believe that you have found a spell with which to draw me out of the city into the country, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is waved. For only hold up before me in like manner a book, and you may lead me all round Attica, and over the wide world….Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as a temperate man and he only can bear and carry.
Plato, Phaedrus
Both aikido and rhetoric are practiced with others, on the mat, in the agora, in the grind of daily life: there is a hard limit to how much you can progress in each art on your own. But even an inveterate lover of city life like Socrates could see the benefits to his practice of leaving the hustle and bustle behind for a retreat to the sacred space of nature. Both Socrates and O-sensei–consummate masters of their arts–needed to move outside the normal space of their practice at certain seasons in order to restore balance among the cosmic energies in their lives, balance in their sense of self.
The lesson they teach here is a subtle one that usually takes us a long time to learn: just because something is good for us or is going well doesn’t mean we should keep at it without a break. Too much of any good thing becomes bad for us. Just as it’s important to find a rhythm to our lives, it’s important to find balance by continually seeking to weight the parts of our lives that are light, and vice versa. Only by being alone in nature can we really enjoy being in the crush of our common life together; only by resting can we really enjoy being busy; only by stepping aside can we really move ahead.
The Rookery 