i’m taking a blade which was little more than a rod of rust and restoring it at the moment. it has taken about 10 hours to get to the point where it is 80% silver with 20% rust remaining, but this is a real beauty of a sword.
it is delicate; maybe 50 centimetres long and weighing no more than 350g at most. it’s about 3mm thick, 1.5-2cm wide and perfectly, utterly straight. the kissaki (tip) had been damaged at some point so i just shaped a new one. it has the swordsmith’s initials in there, buried under centuries worth of patina.
and some people attack these with belt sanders and polishing compound. i can understand, if you’re just after a quick buck, but that seems to defeat the point of it.
some people threw black sand and wood into a tatara for 3 days, chanting to the gods, and cracked it out to get the tamahagane. this was then divided up and a certain swordsmith ended up with a certain fragment and spent many hours folding and beating and folding and beating it to remove impurities.
he then jacketed it in softer steel, also folded, and selectively wrapped it in clay before quenching it and hoping it wasn’t one of the 30% which shatter. after that it was a case of rough shaping, gradual polishing, all by hand, attaching a handle and providing a sheath, and giving it to whoever would eventually carry it.
this person had likely trained all their lives in the martial arts, judging from the quality of the blade, and would have entrusted their lives to this hunk of steel. they may have put tens of thousands of hours into rehearsal for an encounter which could be over in half a second, and if this blade were to be untrue in that half-second, it would mean the end of their life.
this blade may have ended someone’s life. it may not. but it was created with that weight of purpose: to preserve one life over another. it was created with heart, even if it is a mortal weapon, and it was all done by hand, by people who lived many centuries ago and had perfected their own craft through transmission from their elders.
how often do we do things like this now?
how often do we sit down and spend tens of hours; hundreds even; on a project which may never be used. or a project which could have the impact of saving or ending a life. one where we have no certainty of return on investment or it even seeing the light of day?
what is the purpose of such a thing? why do practitioners in japan copy out the suttas instead of using a printing press? why do i enjoy washing the pots now, but hate the dishwasher? why is a book all of a sudden so much more rewarding than a computer game? why do my children spend 5 hours a day drawing pokemon after 1 hour of playing it?
i think we forget this. we forget to output. we input, input, input and then wonder why we are full. we feel pain because of this fullness, like a stomach that is ready to rupture, yet we try to solve it by cramming more in.
empty empty happy happy, as the saying goes. there’s nothing like a good shit. ha. eat your fibre. nutriments, physical and mental.
and we need to export. but it doesn’t always need to be emotional export; writing and art and something for someone else to see. sometimes it needs to be simple physical export. movement. motion. working with our hands. just… taking time to make something nice, even if there’s no end to it outside of the making.
like the chinese guys writing calligraphy in water on the floor. those guys were some of the best calligraphers i’ve seen. and the thing they write? it’s vapour by the time they finish. they are exporting, they are creating, and they are watching it evaporate like the blossoms on the tree or the life in their lungs.
yet this steel… this has lasted centuries and found its way to my hand. and i feel incredibly lucky about that. i am part of its story, just like i am part of the story of every other thing i’ve encountered in this life, good or bad.
and this steel might have made someone else’s life fall like the blossoms on those trees, evaporate like the water from that calligraphy.
but that water goes back to the clouds and becomes rain. those blossoms go back to the earth and become mulch. the cycle continues and there is some new imprint on the world; a new ripple in the stream that continues in the emotional landscape too. a person saw the writing or witnessed the blossom, and it impacted them in some intangible way.
i don’t know where i am going with this, but i guess that is the nature of craftsmanship too. you just… make things. you output. you export. you act without acting. kamma without kamma.
and that’ll probably do for the day. i do feel really good after i spend an hour or so with these blades. sure beats linkedin.
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