Step Forward and Unite with the Sword? Stepping forward I can do; uniting with the sword is not so easy. I mean, how do you unite with a sword? I can't truly merge with it, and I'm not a sword swallower. The best I can hope to do is to make it a useful part of me as I make this journey toward . . . if not complete enlightenment, a least diminished dimness.
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of uniting with a sword is the old notion of falling upon one's sword: opting for an honorable suicide rather than facing a worse fate. I don't think I need to die literally before I set out; to do so would prevent me from progressing further. But I do think a part of me needs to be skewered: my ego, the part that thinks I know things.
So I must step forward deliberately, fall upon my sword, and pierce my ego. A difficult enough thing to do knowingly, it's made more difficult by the fact that I'm holding the sword in my left, less coordinated, hand as I start. So even if I commit to performing this maneuver, my natural clumsiness will make it awkward. I will fail many times—maybe every time, as the ego is a slippery thing that does not want to be run through. Yet I
step
and
begin.
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