"Create each day anew by clothing yourself with heaven and Earth, bathing yourself with wisdom and love, and placing yourself in the heart of Mother Nature" - Morihei Ueshiba, The Art of Peace
At its core, the philosophy of Earth Day is the same as the way of Aikido. The philosophy of Earth Day is simply to protect and conserve the Earth. The philosophy of Aikido is also to protect and to save mankind.
Simply put, the philosophy of Earth Day and Aikido is one of love. Aikido believes that all things have life and that all life is precious and thus must be protected and conserved.
Aikido believes that everything is connected or inter-related and that all things in nature have this circling back effect. To attack or hurt others only brings harm to ourselves. Therefore, to destroy, abuse or neglect the Earth is against the philosophy of Aikido because harming the Earth only brings harm back to us.
When a person confronts us, we understand that this person is suffering and thus we are not truly the focus of their aggression despite what they might think. We also understand that this person is really only going to hurt themselves in the long run - the police will come, they will go to jail, they might lose their job, or their spouse might leave them as a result of their actions. Understanding all the unintended circumstances we don't want to add to this person's misery and so we try and "save" them.
We save them with Aikido. The Aikido techniques are designed in a way to minimize the damage to the attacker and to diffuse the person's anger, aggression or more importantly their suffering. To do Aikido is help this person because they are blinded by their emotions or their suffering and are in need of kindness or compassion not aggression. It would be the same for an upset child who tries to strike us. We know they don't know any better so treat them with kindness and compassion and we don't destroy them.
The Earth is our home and just like our attacker, we need to treat it with kindness and compassion. After all it provides us with so much. Please do something today to show your appreciation to the Earth for all it does for us.