Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:38:28 -0800 (PST)
From: Nate Ledbetter <
ltdomer98@...>
Subject: RE: swords and spirits
--- Silk Road School <
silk.road.school@...>
wrote:
Are there any aspects of
> traditional bushi values that _are_ regarded as
> deserving of respect around here?
> Gereg
It depends on how you want to define "traditional
bushi values". Prior to the Tokugawa period, they
mostly consisted of survival and victory, at least at
the top. No one has said, ever, I think, that loyalty,
honor, etc. are BAD things. However, it gets pretty
tiresome explaining to nimrods (that's not a jab at
you, it's something we have to do often) that all
Samurai didn't have some "Bushido Handbook" and had to
follow the Code or they were deprived of their Samurai
membership cards.
Fair enough, understood, and agreed. Nicely put, in fact.
Now on the same thread, but in a different direction: Nate, you answered my last post off-list (at greater length than you might feel to be worthwhile here), and while it will doubtless come as no great surprise to anybody that I didn't agree with everything you said, I think you raised some good points, and I'd like to take this opportunity to allude to some of them.
First, I'd like to find a more civil way to continue this discussion. Because although I doubt we're ever going to agree on it, the idea of swords possessing souls is a legitimate aspect of the history of the class this list is here to examine. And quarrels only obscure the issue. However strongly I may feel you started it, there's no denying I joined in with gusto. Now I'm suggesting we all cool off and continue like the reasonable folks we can be.
Second, I'd like to thank you for calling me on excessive philosophical rhetoric. I did feel insulted, and that tends to set me off: but I'd be sorry to lose the thread of the discussion on that account, and I freely admit that my last was aimed more at the way you had expressed your points (and the barbs in them) than at the essential subject. So while I may feel you deserved the blast-back, I'm grateful to you for reminding me that the subject kind of got lost.
You've taken me to task for my inability to explain some of this, and that's a reasonable point. But please bear in mind that an inability to explain does not constitute an unwillingness to do so. I can't explain love, but that doesn't mean I don't keep trying - and it certainly doesn't mean that love isn't real. I said I'd need to think more about how do accomplish that explanation, and I've had some time to do so.
Let me back up a bit: I believe that many who cannot explain a thing take refuge or comfort in that fact: they _like_ it that something they care so much about can't be explained. That would not be me. One of the great lessons in esoteric studies lies in the three essentials that Madame Blavatsky offered for study of mysticism back in the 19th century (as I recall - might've been early 20th...). The first one was, "Common sense." I can't recall the second, but it's not relevant here. The third one was, "More common sense." And if more mystics would remember that, fewer of us would look like idiots in conversation. (And the really funny thing is, I've always regarded Madame B. as quite a fraud.) I regard it as a kind of moral or intellectual cowardice to actually _prefer_ things to stay in the 'can't-explain' category. But I also think it foolish to try and cram all the mysteries of the universe into the tiny category of things that humans _can_ explain.
I've said from the start that I could be misinterpreting my feeling of this matter And as I've considered further, I'm coming to think that's so. You may recall that early on I said that use and love seemed to have an awakening effect on the spirit of a sword. And while I mentioned having handled a few swords in my time that felt bloodthirsty to me, I did not mention that I'd also cleansed that 'feeling' out of swords from time to time. If there was ever an age for bloodthirsty swords, I don't think this is it.
If I assume, therefore, that I am not entirely deluded - and as appealing as some of you may find that prospect, I hope you will pardon me if I regard that as only so useful for my own development - then this suggests to me that the spirit in a sword may indeed be more the product of human spirit than I tend to think it. I'm not saying this is so - I don't know: but I am saying it's a reasonable description that fits the phenomenon fairly well. It does not explain to my entire satisfaction the reason that swords' characters seem to be so different from one another, as one would think that two swords belonging to the same person would then have the same sort of character, and they definitely do not. But it does make more sense of a person's ability to "clean out" some aspect of a sword's spirit.
One of the questions you raised, Nate, is, what constitutes a soul? Well, that's a damn good question. I don't know, so I sure can't explain. In purest Christian doctrine, only humans have souls - but as you pointed out, it's kind of hard to hold a puppy (or by my preference a kitten) and come away with much doubt that you've got a being with a soul there. So it is one's personal sense of the entity at hand that seems to tell us if it's got a soul. I'm not saying that's a good enough definition, but it's a sort of testing idea. Does it feel to you as though it has a spirit?
Well, my swords do. I will not deny that you might feel otherwise if you were to hold one of them, but then again you might be surprised. A couple of my blades even seemed to have spirits present when I was the first person to handle them since the factory, which came as a considerable surprise to me. My sense of the matter until then had been that swords acquired souls over time and use. This is supported (to some degree) by a reflection on my longbow: if there's a spirit in that lovely piece of hickory, I can't feel it. But then, it's pretty new yet. If you're interested, get back to me in a couple of years, and I'll tell you how it's feeling then.
I won't pretend that my inability to explain is any kind of proof: I never thought it was. My entire sense of the thing is no proof, indeed, to anyone but myself... and even I won't pretend I could tell you exactly what it was proof _of_. But my subtler senses have served me fairly well in my life, and they tell me that there are spirits in certain objects generally regarded as inanimate.
Your mileage may vary. Questions, comments, disagreements - whatever; I look forward to lively, reasonable, courteous discussion on this. In the mean time, I'm going to go dance with a couple of spirited swords.
Thanks for your attention.
Gereg Jones Muller, Master-at-Arms
The Silk Road School of Sword and Self-Defense