The First Truth Is In the Body
Yukio Mishima and limits of language
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The First Truth Is In the Body
Without a dedication to understanding and overcoming the challenges of the physical body, the mind will begin to lie to you.
Attempt to explain the world, rather than to embody the truth of nature physically, and you’ll live the lie.
Most of us live this lie.
There is a human impulse to intellectualize, to assume the mind is what is capable of finding truth. But it has a defined limit. One that modern life hides from us.
A child exploring the outdoors understands it. A dog scratching at the door for a walk in the sunshine understands it. But our modern world has alienated us from this truth. Out of hubris, we think that we’re beyond the physical.
However, there is a limit in each form of human expression to grasp the reality of the space around us, and in which we ourselves inhabit. Words, brushstrokes, philosophies, and music do reveal aspects of nature that the physical world hides, but the same is true in opposition.
We’ve hunted for our meals, grown our crops outdoors, and spent most of our history engaged in daily physical tasks.
Still, we tend to disregard physical training as a “hobby”, rather than as a vehicle for understanding. For most of us, this excuse exists so we can sit comfortably on our ass and think ourselves into oblivion.
We’re convinced that one more book will help us to see the world from a new fresh angle and that we’ll better understand ourselves in the process. We don’t spend our reading time combing through fairytales our parents whispered to us as children. We seek complexity. To see and understand an aspect of human nature that has alluded us.
We want to become wise.
We assume that challenging the mind is the correct path toward this goal and we forget to acknowledge our own physical body. We think that by only “nurturing” the one small organ between our ears, we can gain a comprehensive understanding of the world.
This is false.
Truth Embodied
Truth starts in the body.
If we are divorced from our physical potential; if we cannot remember the last time we lay in a pool of our own sweat; If we’ve never seen our muscles grow through intense training, how can we ever attempt to understand the complexities of the world?
Not only would we be speaking out of ignorance, but we’d be speaking from a dull mind. A mind that lacks the physiological adaptations that training provides.
When you’re eight miles on a run and the pain and friction start to give way to intense euphoria. When you’re able to consciously engage, control, and overcome the two hundred pounds of steel on your chest rep after rep.
You’ve found the first truth. The truth that existed before written language, before music, before art.
And it exists, primal, dormant in all of us.
Yukio Mishima, one of the most important authors of the 20th century, spent his early life mistaking language as the primary route to understanding. He describes the futility of this endeavor in “Sun & Steel”.
He writes:
Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstraction for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably lurks the danger that the words themselves will be corroded too.
Part of Mishima’s realization is that endless intellectual examination — attempting to always “go deeper” on an idea — leads to a shallow and rootless foundation. Rather than attempt to explain the unknown, Mishima began to seek the edge of human experience.
This involved a strict regiment of weightlifting, martial arts, endurance training, and meditation.
In his eyes, what is revealed to us when we’re at our physical breaking point; when we’re engaging with the self-mastery of the space around us, reveals more to us about the truth of nature than any detailed philosophy. This is the unknown that exists towards the end of a hard workout or a long run. A truth we can only understand through physical action.
I am one who has always been interested only in the edges, the outlying regions of the body and the outlying regions of the spirit. The depths hold no interest for me; I leave them to others for they are shallow, commonplace.
-Yukio Mishima
The heroic qualities of virtue, courage, and honor, as examined by Mishima in “Sun & Steel”, do not spring forth from the mind. They are the result of physical training and the process of learning to control and master the world through an outward expression of individual force.
For Mishima, those who scoff or rebuke the qualities of a heroic archetype, are themselves shadowed by a physical inferiority. They ignore their own capacity to push through physical discomfort, to stand at the foot of a mountain, and commit to the first step, so they attempt — as a defense mechanism — to philosophize their way to truth.
The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority. Invariably, it is the man who believes himself to be physically lacking in heroic attributes who speaks mockingly of the hero.
-Yukio Mishima
The Choice You Have To Make
Who you are.
Who you actually are.
Will only become clear when you engage in a physical act.
This is not a call to sign up for a marathon. This is a call to explore your own physical limits and discover the ancient truth of nature inside of you.
That might be jogging a mile, or picking up the rusted weights in your garage. It might mean choosing to give your all in the gym instead of doing just the bare minimum. I will not tell you what you need to do. The truth is for you to discover on your own.
You may not be able to walk around your block.
But a step farther than the day before, proves that someone inside of you can.
This is the first truth.
As always, thanks for reading.
-Joe