COMMONALITIES

 by Phillip Starr

“The stroke is executed by cutting back and then down”, is the teaching given in an ancient scroll, “followed by a swift, slight rise to the right like the movement of striking with a whip.”

Another scroll, almost equally antique, contains poetic (as well as enigmatic) about the practitioner's state of mind, likening it to a “flower scattering, falling without a sound upon moss, a flower scattering to be heard through the depths of the mountains.”

Only those unaquainted with the paradoxes of art and the cultures of China, Japan, and Korea would be surprised to learn that the first commentary is concerned with the gentle skills of calligraphy and the second to the art of swordsmanship. At the core, the particulars of instruction, the matters of effectuation contained in these two old scrolls are secondary to learning either art. It's the underlying principles, in a broad range of different arts of the culture – fine, folk, performing, and martial – are fundamentally synonymous. And these principles are vital to the mastery of any and all of them.

The actor in the Japanese Noh drama or Beijing Opera strives to make his way across the stage without a gap in his concentration and without a single superfluous movement. There is a sense of self and place surrounding the actor that is perfectly understood by the warrior in the perilous arena in which he performs.

The musician playing the shakuhachi (Japanese flute) or the Chinese pipa plays from his or her body's center and perfects his/her breathing; the Japanese swordsman strikes from his center and perfects his breathing because the efficacy of his blow is assured by proper attention being given to his respiration. The goals differ but the attitude is the same.

But it's not only in some technical details that the varied endeavors of these arts converge. From flower arranging to tea ceremony to archery, the aesthetics, the spirituality, and the motivations of these seemingly disparate arts have a wonderful commonality. The unity of these artistic forces is exemplified in two disciplines, seemingly discreet but at the very heart of Japan and China; the Way of the sword and the Way of the brush.