Travels in the coutryside: thoughts

She had always dreamed about it. Waking she always thought about it. Every waking moment, every person, object and thought that she encountered was all subjected through the filter of it. The sword. Holding it, caressing it, moving it through the air, all motions driving toward the fluency of use. Ever since high school she had made a pact with herself: to use the means of the sword to unlock a deeper understanding. During those first years she upheld and tried to emulate any who possessed a hint of skill. She had to begin by learning her body and how to move, as if she was a toddler learning how to balance on two legs. Slowly a five years progressed and she felt confident in the control of her muscles. She had also begun to notice a incredible lack of fluidity and grace in fellow practitioners of the sword and dance. Her inner eye was well trained by her own long honed movements. Others were simply stringing together separate moves that lacked connectivity or flow. She could not explain why, but she felt this "gracefulness" was a strong component to mastering swordsmanship. It was at this point she abandoned lessons from traditional teachers, stopped participating in sword style debates and even could not stand the philosophies and technique treaties written by masters of old. They all seemed to reach the final page with the unwritten message that ultimate answers could not be found within.

After college, during a period of travel and thinking she felt she had developed a source of truth inside her that she consulted often, a source that seemed to grow more knowledgeable every time she used it. It was this source that often directed her sword training. She would feel wrong if a particular move or exercise was executed poorly or let her know if she had inadvertently stumbled upon a cleaner cut or smoother way to move. This was less cerebral than the description here but no less effective. She often thought about the defining moment that she had become self-aware of such a source.

It had happened during her few years of wondering around Japan. During an especially long trip spent in the countryside, climbing many mountains and traveling through towns that belonged in a different era she stopped at a small inn to wash and do laundry. Her body was beat, drained of energy and muscle sore from her heavy backpack rubbing her shoulders. The inns matron offered her the use of the spa facilities, which she happily rushed into. Naked, sitting in the hot water, she felt the day`s worries soak from her mind. When at the point of fainting from the heat she jumped into the cold water tub. As the cold gradually spread throughout her body all thoughts slipped away. She felt herself exhaustively stare at the surface of the water. The calm surface broken occasionally by the drops of water from her hair. Each ripple spreading out, then subsiding back into the surface. Her gaze shifted to the other naked women moving around her. They left ripples in their wake, but again subsided into the stillness of the moment. And she saw that for that briefest time there had been no separation between her mind and the outside, that the ripples had spread through all space and the stillness that followed had reached deep into her. At that moment, before the feeling began to fade, she felt that source of stillness, of unchanging essence. And it was if she had a brief glimpse of the true potential that could be achieved and that she could forever lay all doubts aside.

But she knew now that it was only a glimpse. Even at this moment she would question herself if she ever touched the source. But she would stop and listen and a voice would say "yes its true." And she knew, no matter the bleak future, no matter the doubts and fears she herself could conjure, the knowledge of having seen the impossible was her greatest weapon, to be wielded in those times of her darkest need.