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　　　　 How are we to understand philosophically Zeami's notion of "training" which our investigation has revealed to be an appropriation of one's bodily modalities qua "imitation"? Zeami, as we have seen, recognizes "training" as the fashioning of one's body into a certain form (kata). If the meaning of "training" is to put one's body into a series of regulated forms, the body exists as something "heavy," resisting a complete command of the mind. Does this "training" not mean that one's body is taken to have a practical precedence over one's mind in defining what a person is? If this is the case. then one's fashioning of one's body into a certain "form" amounts to the rejection of the working of his consciousness. As we recall, one's subjectivity is put into a practical "bracket," as it were, in the process of appropriating various modalities of performing techniques. At this point, Zeami seems to be posing a serious question concerning the nature of a person, especially the nature of human consciousness.

　　 Although it is true in our everyday experience that our mind, in the broadest sense of the term, gives various commands to our body (for example to stop a car, my mind or my "will" commands my foot, a part of my body, to press down on the brake), this predominance or practical precedence of our mind over our body gives us a sense of "free will." In this sense, our body is considered to be a servant or slave of our mind. But it does not immediately follow from this that the being of a person must be defined solely in terms of his mind. This assumption has been a dominant presupposition in the long tradition of Western philosophy. We are all familiar with Parmenides' 'being' in terms of its "thinkability," or with Descartes' cogito ergo sum as the ground of indubitable certainty of truth. Zeami's contention concerning the meaning of "training" seems to be diametrically opposed to this predominant presupposition. Suppose a person loses his consciousness in a traffic accident. If we identify a person as a person only by reference to his conscious state of mind, he does not qualify as a person under the Cartesian premise: he would be "no longer human." But, what identifies a person as a person in such a circumstance is his unconscious body, although this presupposes a presence of another conscious mind. However, even apart from this consideration, it is an obvious, perhaps too obvious, fact that were one to perform a bodily action, free or otherwise, it inevitably involves a certain modality or movement of one's body. Without a body, no action, much less free action, is conceivable.

　　 To understand our "free will" in terms of our mind commanding our body is, then, to accept the fact ―that the mind and body exist in our everyday experience as being ambiguous, or dichotomous 31Our body, according to this assumption, exists for our mind as an object to be perceived by the mind or to be "moved around" by the mind only to the extent that it follows the dictates of the mind. This is possible only within a "natural" framework of our sensory―motor circuit.

　　 It has been pointed out by Yuasa Yasuo that in recognition of this disparity
　

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between our mind and body, Zeami conceives of "training" in a spirit similar to Zen cultivation.32 Here, we witness a similar attitude of Zeami toward his understanding of "training," that is, to fashion one's body into a certain bodily "form." The essential meaning of Zen cultivation consists of the conformation of an individual to a particular bodily "form," whether it pertains to seated meditation or to daily activities prescribed by monastic rules. The underlying assumption is that one learns to correct one's mode of consciousness first by assuming a certain bodily "form-" This assumption is. accepted by Zen in view of the earlier mentioned ambiguity of a person in his everyday mode of experience. Otherwise, Zen will have to accept a most disagreeable consequence, namely, that an essential characterization of a person is a "divided self." This consequence, however, cannot be tolerated in view of Zen's contention that a person is originally or primodially an identity of both his mind and body. This means that the respective status of our mind and body is equal, existentially as well as axiologically. Appropriation of various modalities of one's body in the Noh training, consequently, means to destroy the imbalance between the mind and the body, or rather to "dissolve" the ambiguous character of our mind and body so as to restore a primordial identity.

　　   If we view the "training" in the art of Noh in this manner, its lifelong cultivation comes to mean the completion of appropriating various modalities of one's body such that the movements of the body and those of the mind come to agree with each other completely; or, as Zeami says: "For a true flower, the principle of both blossoming and withering away should be in accord with a person."33 In this sense, the process of appropriation is characterized, according to Yuasa, as the process of "subjectivization" [shutaika o] of the body.34 We have seen this to be the case when we dealt with the notion of "imitation" in its transformation from "the style without mastery" to "the style with mastery." This characterization captures well one aspect of the training process, such that an inordinate body becomes gradually absorbed in the modality of the mind as an actor progresses along the ascending scale of attaining artistic ranks.