“The nature of this steel is odd. I found that as I increased its weight little by little, the effect was like a pair of scales: the bulk of muscles placed, as it were, on the other pan increased proportionately, as though the steel had a duty to maintain a strict balance between the two. Little by little, moreover, the properties of my muscles came increasingly to resemble those of the steel. This slow development, I found, was remarkably similar to the process of education, which remodels the brain intellectually by feeding it with progressively more difficult matter. And since there was always the vision of a classical ideal of the body to serve as a model and an ultimate goal, the process closely resembled the classical ideal of education.”
Yukio Mishima – Sun & Steel
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Raw iron that is beaten and battered and forged in the fire becomes more useful as it transforms into steel.
We must beat and shape our body and mind to make each domain more useful as they transform into unknown entities known to be better than what they were before. We must steel our bodies, minds, and spirits throughout our mortal life, throughout the next life, as this is a journey that does not end similar to the illusion of mastery, which is a journey that never ends; you do not arrive–you continue wandering.
Miyamoto Musashi
The path is the same across all domains of Body, Mind, and Spirit(BMS). You break down your weapons and repair them with controlled pleasure and rest. Weightlifting, math, running, and writing a report, it is all the same.
The wanderer is constantly breaking his domains down to rebuild them to be stronger, finding fulfillment through attainment on the path, understanding that the path is where fulfillment is found through attainment.
The pursuit of mastery provides fulfillment.
Mastery Ideals Span Time And Space
The classical ideals of body and mind mastery are shared over all human civilizations over all of time because mastery is a shared understanding of greatness predicated on the attainment of mastery on the path.
The Greeks created statues of ripped bodies that demonstrate physical mastery and the pursuit of it. We know this because we can still see these statues today. One of the most famous is Doryphoros(Spear Bearer) created by Polykleitos, one of the most important sculptures of this era, around 440 BC.
The Greeks also venerated the pursuit of mastery over the mind.
Great Greek thinkers and philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, all venerated the cultivation of the mind with the same fervor that holds the worship of aesthetics to this day.
The Greeks used the word ‘paideia’ to denote the mental training required to turn a raw mind into something powerful.
The individual mastery of body and mind was combined into the word, ‘areté’, which means a person of highest quality who has extensive and remarkable development of body and mind.
Yukio Mishima knew the way.
Miyamoto Musashi knew the way.
The Greeks knew the way.
You know the way.
The Way is the pursuit of mastery across Body, Mind, and Spirit(BMS).
