Moving Toward Stillness by Dave Lowry

Author:Dave Lowry
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8048-3160-4
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Chapter Twenty-three: Beauty and the Martial Way

Chapter Twenty-three

Beauty and the Martial Way

Beauty in odd places, found in the most unexpected of realms...

When I was much younger, I began my practice of a form of classical Japanese martial art that involves training with at least a couple of weapons, including a long and a short sword. As with all of these classical arts, the bulk of my instruction and practice took place outside, in open fields and other such natural areas. While practicing the kata of the long sword, my teacher and I would place the short sword or kodachi, on the ground nearby. I noticed, after a while, that my sensei would spend a few moments looking around, searching for a special spot to put down his kodachi. Since we usually trained in a wide open field, there seemed to be little need to worry about exactly where to lay down the short sword, except to be sure it was far enough away to avoid our stepping on it during practice. So I was curious as to what it was Sensei was searching for as he looked around for the right spot. Finally, I began to watch more closely to see exactly what he was doing. Sensei did not do anything without reason, but if I came right out and asked him, he was unlikely to tell me what his reasons were. He preferred, I had learned by then, to teach by example, and it was part of my job as his student to figure out what was going on.

After watching him for a while, I realized that he always placed his weapon near something of beauty. Maybe it was a spray of little purple violets that bloomed early in the spring every year. It might be a bloom of dandelion in midsummer. In the fall, he would put the sword next to a colorful sycamore or oak leaf that had fallen and drifted. In the winter, it would be next to a tuft of hardy weeds that were brown and somberly elegant against the snow.

Many kyudoka, as practitioners of the Way of Japanese archery are called, will fix a blossom to the surface of the target just before they shoot at it.

Inserted under the braiding along the handle of the Japanese sword are small fixtures called menuki. Menuki serve, among other functions, as a form of friction to keep the silk braiding of the handle in place. The braiding, in turn, provides a good, nonslip purchase for gripping the handle. Any patterned piece of metal would suffice for this purpose, but menuki are miniature works of art. They are intricately designed, sometimes in abstract geometric forms; other times menuki depict animals or shapes found in nature such as seashells, flowers, or branches of foliage. I have one menuki in my modest collection that depicts a trio of fat and happy field mice scampering over a bale of straw. Another is a pair of rabbits playing beneath a crescent moon.

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