Snatching the pebble in itself represents a continuation of Analects. Include another part to complete the tryptych that features trial by fire or tattooing via scarification. Then the tao of things learned from cultural tourism, gentrified as David Carradine softshoeing combat choreography, completes the tautology.
Thus achieving masterhood, the new series and the next logical step, reenacts manufactured rites of passage as peripatetic spiritualism. The male ideal orientalized as philosopher, glorified as warrior and hybridized as hapa takes literal form as performance through sculptural object. Out of action as it were that plainly caricatures tests of physical prowess and endurance, mental toughness and ingenuity from ancient pedagogical models. The mandarin tradition, though Aristotlean, repeats the same lesson now as the priest leaves no visible traces on the delicate rice paper.
Or has this sacred ritual now become Westernized? Does one accustomed to American excess fall victim to popular culture and devise other modernized, if not mechanized means to circumvent what used to measure strength and character?
Why not construct perhaps convoluted monkey bars that hover above the aformentioned site? Is it enough to contrast the rote educative process typical of the martial arts requiring the student to actually undergo this test discipline of skill?