On Becoming a Blade
An essay on the human mind and its potential
These days, I’m paying more attention to what matters in life. As a result, I’m paying attention to what doesn’t matter.
Across time and culture, there’s a common idea that the material world is an illusion1. It’s thought that people, places and perceptions are effectively the hallucinations of our mischievous hearts.
But if everything outside us is fickle, what’s real?
The answer must be our mind. Even as a proud scientist, I concede that objective reality is misleading.
No measurement or impression of ours can be objective so long as it filters through the gates of perception.
History shows that the mind can warp reality to its will. Centuries ago, the so-called “objective” truths of vitalism and geocentricity proved this effect. To say that we’re overcome these biases even today would be foolish. We can not strip our minds from how we see life. Nothing escapes its grasp.
What am I trying to say here?
If the mind is crucial to our worldview, it must also be true that controlling your mind is the ultimate art.
Reality is outside the question. But your mind can certainly make heaven and hell from the same situation.
It’s a trivial thought, yes, but trivial thoughts are often timeless thoughts. It helps to recall that nothing you experience is real outside of yourself.
The universe you experience is merely a reflection of your mind.
This is worth reading twice. The universe you experience is merely a reflection of your mind.
Your reality, then, is negotiable. All of your pleasure and pain can be traced back to you, and you alone.
As a martial artist, I’m fortunate that we trained our minds as intensely as we did our limbs. Learning to fight was really just a front for learning to perfect your character—to feel tired to your bones and persist anyway. There’s a lesson here that transcends fighting — it is the lesson of self-mastery2.
Everything is mental. Your fate itself hinges on the way you see yourself and the world. No skill could be so crucial to your life as mental prowess.
So I ask you to expand your goals. Most people live and die with a handful of goals for their world. Most people solve for a life of full of beautiful things and memories. They try to restructure the world, to influence things, to etch their presence into the memory of future generations. Few people have goals for themselves. I say we should ask more of life.
To latch onto physical goals alone is to grasp life with half your hand. We are capable of far more marvelous things!
If we set goals, they should encompass our whole selves. To borrow from the martial arts, we should train our mind, body, and spirit equally. It is only by rising as a person that you can claim the life you want.
Every facet of your experience, good or bad, is mental. In other words, your experience emerges from you.
It follows that all change must begin with mental change. You can’t strong-arm a difference into your life without first changing your mind.
Do external circumstances matter? Of course. But no circumstance can rob you of the person you are.
We only achieve what we believe is achievable. So I ask you to set higher sights for yourself. Do not aim for what you want. Aim to become the kind of person who gets what they want.
You must train your mind like your life depends on it. Because it does.
The Hindus called this māyā (lit. appearance, illusion). Similar concepts emerge in Buddhism, Christianity, and even early Hermetic philosophy.
In karate, the mind is often likened to a weapon. Its latent potential must be sharpened, and one must train consistently to make the most of it.