The Art of Sword

Series: Summer 2024

The Art of Sword

He is an opponent of the same level as me, so the outcome of our duel is uncertain. Suddenly, he splits and almost touches me with his foil – spotted, for sure – but which would certainly hurt my self-esteem. I managed to parry the blow and counterattack in the same gesture but he quickly knows how to wrap and then push my weapon away.

Win or lose. It seems that this assault is the image of the rest of my life and perhaps of life in general. The fear of losing and the hope of winning. Everyone of our movements is motivated by this alternative. It’s what gives us the energy to fight and the feeling of living stronger and… Ouch! I just got hit! Shit ! Practicing this gentleman’s sport requires me to take defeat with panache in the style of “all is lost, forsake honor” [1] but what a bastard all the same! He fooled me well! I feel my frustration rising and – with the increasing body heat – like a red veil rising over my eyes. Nothing is lost ! You’ll see ! Here we go again ! My honor is at stake! Until the 1960s, the Bois de Boulogne in Paris saw beautiful, cool mornings where honor was washed in blood. It seems that in 1967, Gaston Deferre and René Ribière were the last, following a lively exchange in the National Assembly, to resort to this ordeal, this barely tempered practice of the medieval judicial duel.

There is always something at stake. It’s never “just sport” or “just a game.”

“The action, the feeling of the body, the thoughts and the emotions are always present but they appear as the expression of a radiant luminosity and free from any fixation.”

Fencing is a reflection of this constant struggle. Symbolic life and death, but also physical. The duels of old could be fatal. You could escape with a nasty injury or first-hand information about the afterlife and… ouch again! This bastard seems to be taking advantage of my elevation of spirit to multiply his treacherous attacks! A move by Jarnac or I don’t know anything about it! This attack which struck me in the neck could – with a real blade and without protection – have severed my carotid artery. I’m as dead as a doornail… I feel like I have dull reflexes. A little heavy, a little clumsy, already too tired…. I’m starting to drift away… the next vacation… at the seaside… doing a plank… daydreaming lazily… a much more pleasant sport than playing the King’s musketeers in the twenty-first century…

Then… a sudden impulse…. A proud anger wakes me from this reverie. I’m boiling…. And jump! In a slightly crazy attack. And I touch it! Victory ! Bim! Take this ! And I am alive again! Everything seems possible again and I feel a new energy in my body. A lightness and strength that carry me to the horizon of victory. It seems as real to me as the heaviness of the moment before. And as I continue my attack all sorts of glorious images of myself come to mind, vague reminiscences of those swashbuckling movies where – mysteriously – we tend to identify more with the chivalrous victors than with the vile vanquished. And then…. Blink! The clear and vivid flash of the clash between the foils takes me out of this mental rumination as incessant as my gesticulations. I see the completely unreal nature of it. Which did not prevent me, at every moment, from believing that it was reality itself… Like a small world where everything confirms my preconceptions about myself, others and reality, where I am sure that everything will turn out well (and in a circle). A cocoon… that has just opened and revealed an immense space. There is an inner silence. Everything becomes so clear. It’s like a hood has been taken off my head and I suddenly see a vast landscape from the top a mountain during a sparkling sunrise.

This clarity immediately brings back the memory of my Fencing Master. The one who taught me everything about fencing. One instruction in particular comes to mind: “The hilt of your weapon you must barely hold…” (his curious syntax gave even more emphasis to his advice) “…relaxed, relaxed, but attentive, attentive, the target you must forget. “. By teaching this he was teaching us to release the naive belief we have in our mental constructs. He showed us that we could relax this intense tension over our victories and our defeats. He described the nature of the vast, free, luminous, and omnipresent reality…always within reach of a clear vision, no matter what the circumstances.

This whole duel thing seems to be like a dream to me. I am still involved in it. Present but without tension. Relaxed and attentive. The action, the feeling of the body, the thoughts and the emotions are always present but they appear as the expression of a radiant luminosity and free from any fixation. It’s like a lucid dream where I know I’m dreaming. Nothing that happens is ignored. Nothing that happens is taken as real. Until the moment when I am distracted from this realization and then everything becomes very tense again. How did this happen? Like what sometimes happens in a lucid dream: a detail of the dream is invested with a particular reality because it is fascinating or irritating. And the dreamer forgets that he is dreaming… and believes that he is experiencing reality even though he is only getting lost in his own projections… Here we go again ! There it was my opponent’s smile that seemed provocative, mocking, ironic, and anger filled me again and everything became very real again! Hence the importance of constantly returning to education. Our habits of distraction are so strong, that it is necessary – constantly – to remind ourselves to remember. This is at the very heart of the training of the Great Perfection swordsman. Everything that happens in our experience – whether good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant – is the empty and luminous expression of our primordial nature. Every moment is an opportunity to realize it. Every moment offers the opportunity to free ourselves from our wandering.

“Ho! Appearances in the making, cyclical wandering and beyond torments all have only one base but have two paths and two Fruits. This is the overriding evidence…or not! What a miracle in any case!” [2]

[1]  Francois the I after the defeat at Pavia in 1525.                   BACK

[2] Translation of kun bzang smon lam stobs po che (Samantabhadra’s Mighty Path of Wishes) by the Dzogchen Today! translation committee.     BACK

You can read the other articles in the series : Opening ceremony – Nenikekamen! –  Hammer throw – The deep end – High diving  – Great Perfection Rowing – Marksman