Speaker 1: Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning.
Speaker 2: Well, we're into a little bit of a late delivery
Speaker 2: this week. We had this Mars program, the Face on
Speaker 2: Mars program that we launched yesterday, and it ate up
Speaker 2: our time for releasing this week's Destiny and it's a
Speaker 2: special program. I got to tell you the material this
Speaker 2: week is zen Buddhism, but not just the religion, it's
Speaker 2: what came out of it in Japan in the fifteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: This is the Japanese medieval period, and it's all about
Speaker 2: samurai and the agility, clarity, and the calm and the
Speaker 2: whole mental state that these men and women, because there
Speaker 2: were women that not necessarily were samurai, but there were
Speaker 2: the wives of the samurai. There were the various rulers,
Speaker 2: consort consorts, and it's a whole society based on a
Speaker 2: level of consciousness that we'll be discussing today. And my
Speaker 2: guest Anthony Cummins has written just he's written ten books
Speaker 2: on the samurai and when we are asking him questions
Speaker 2: regarding the mindset, it's fascinating. He's a historian of ancient
Speaker 2: Japanese culture and I would think the most well versed Caucasian,
Speaker 2: non Japanese historian that I've ever run into. So that's
Speaker 2: our program today, and I also want to mention that
Speaker 2: I am going to be posting a couple of videos
Speaker 2: that he has recommended that you can see on the
Speaker 2: Facebook page. Go to Facebook, go to Earth Ancients and
Speaker 2: they'll be there. And the other thing I want to
Speaker 2: mention is that we launched a Destiny website about six
Speaker 2: months ago now, and along with that, when you go
Speaker 2: to YouTube, you can actually type in Destiny. Actually, here's
Speaker 2: what you type in the Destiny podcast and you can
Speaker 2: see the guests we have every Wednesday, and I hope
Speaker 2: you do that because a lot of these people are
Speaker 2: showing documents or showing images, in some cases photographs illustrations
Speaker 2: that are in the books that there are high So
Speaker 2: that's very very important. So today's program is Zen and
Speaker 2: the Samurai Sword, and my guest is Anthony Cummins. Hey,
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Speaker 2: Earth Ancients. That's I n coeo g NI dot com
Speaker 2: Forward slash Earth Ancients. There's a fascination here in the
Speaker 2: United States with the samurai and I'm a big fan
Speaker 2: of it. I've been a fan of it since I
Speaker 2: was a kid, and I studied judo when I was
Speaker 2: in high school. Not so much because of the I
Speaker 2: think I did it because of the exercise, but also
Speaker 2: because of this tradition. But as my guests we'll talk
Speaker 2: about today, samurai are a fascinating subject. We had this
Speaker 2: series on TV, the Samurai Series, that was hugely responded
Speaker 2: to in the tens of millions of people. And it's
Speaker 2: not just the fact that they're cutting up each other
Speaker 2: with swords. It's also the meditative quality. Here. We are
Speaker 2: looking at warriors who are doing calligraphy. They're doing these
Speaker 2: very subtle Zen like meditations and lifestyles and would you
Speaker 2: believe samurai are It's all based on Zen Buddhism, which
Speaker 2: is fascinating. My guest today is Anthony Cummins. He is
Speaker 2: the founder of Historical Ninjustu research Team. He's a prolific writer.
Speaker 2: He's written a fascinating new book called Zen and the
Speaker 2: Samurai Sword. But he's also written the Book of Ninja,
Speaker 2: the Book of Samurai, Zen and Samurai Sword. That's what
Speaker 2: we're that's another Oh, that's the book we're talking about now.
Speaker 2: He is a prolific writer, he's a prolific historian, and
Speaker 2: we're gonna talk to him today about his research which
Speaker 2: is just phenomenal. So Anthony, welcome to Destiny Great to
Speaker 2: have you on the program.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2: I got to ask you, with such a h a
Speaker 2: library of work, what got you into samurai work? Was
Speaker 2: it your own personal journey or is it something that
Speaker 2: triggered your need to know?
Speaker 1: It depends who you asked this one. I was born
Speaker 1: loving the Ninja. That's it. I was born with it.
Speaker 1: The Japanese think I'm a reincarnation of some samurai. They
Speaker 1: felt like you're a reincarnation, Anthony, There's no way. So
Speaker 1: when you were saying you were introducing that, it's actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the Book of Samurai, which I did, which is
Speaker 1: a collection of ancient scrolls that we had translating, and
Speaker 1: the new book is zen and the Samurai saw. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they are to you will write, You're correct the first
Speaker 1: time round. They are two separate books. And basically I've
Speaker 1: always I've always loved them. I remember my granddad showing me,
Speaker 1: said what toys do you want cowboys and everything? Or
Speaker 1: do you want ninjas? And I was like, Ninja's without
Speaker 1: a doubt. And I was tiny. So from there I
Speaker 1: studied that I went into the depths that I broke
Speaker 1: that open, which led leads you to samurai, which then
Speaker 1: leads you to like Chinese philosophy. It leads you to Zen, Taoism,
Speaker 1: and Buddhism, all of those things.
Speaker 2: Gotcha? How did the Japanese react to a Caucasian Englishman
Speaker 2: as a interpreter of the sacred Samurai?
Speaker 1: I like all things the Japanese very polite on the surface.
Speaker 1: But I've lived there for like five years in my life.
Speaker 1: I've lived there for a long time. I've been there
Speaker 1: or going there nearly twenty years now, and I've learned
Speaker 1: to realize which one is that's amazing versus oh, I see,
Speaker 1: very well done, that very polite, But no, we don't
Speaker 1: like it. We don't like it. So some of them
Speaker 1: love it, and some of them really don't like it.
Speaker 1: It depends some of them. If they're a bit proud
Speaker 1: of their own stuff and I've found something that maybe
Speaker 1: is a little bit wrong in what they've done, they
Speaker 1: get quite angry. Were some of them are really okay
Speaker 1: about and say, yeah, yeah, this is great, Anthony, tell
Speaker 1: us what you've found? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Interesting. Talk a bit about the history. Now we know
Speaker 2: the samurai come out of the medieval period. Why is
Speaker 2: there such a fascination for people cutting each other up
Speaker 2: ceremoniously in this period of time, you know, I mean
Speaker 2: they're just and it's all based on zen Buddhism. How
Speaker 2: does that work? I mean, you would think zen Buddhism
Speaker 2: would be quiet, more severe, more meditative, more contemplative is
Speaker 2: the word I'm thinking of. And yet here are these
Speaker 2: men dueling and fighting and hacking each other up right.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of things on this. First of all,
Speaker 1: it's the reason we love them is it's the same
Speaker 1: as why we love the nights Templar. We all love
Speaker 1: Night's Templar. Everyone loves Samurai, a warrior who's disciplined, hard focused,
Speaker 1: but he will be a killer as well as speak
Speaker 1: to God, you know, I mean that type of thing.
Speaker 1: And then with Samurai, what you've got to remember is, yes,
Speaker 1: they were Buddhists and they were into all that, but
Speaker 1: they're also there's no real name for it, but there's
Speaker 1: a ten year gap difference. They were adults by the
Speaker 1: time they were thirteen and fourteen, and they were given
Speaker 1: a sword, and then after five years of being fighting killers,
Speaker 1: they're only twenty and they're all drinking alcohol and they're
Speaker 1: allowed to do whatever they want. And you're asking a
Speaker 1: bunch of twenty old lads with weapons to be nice.
Speaker 1: Not going to happen. It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So it's only you know, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: follow this spiritual way. But as I've found in my research,
Speaker 1: our image of the samurai is quite wrong. Yes they
Speaker 1: are disciplined, Yes they are loyal. Yes there are some
Speaker 1: really enlightened people, but they're also they're actually a head
Speaker 1: hunting culture. Their culture is based on taking the heads
Speaker 1: of their enemies.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, there's something holistic anenteronyed about this that
Speaker 2: is very interesting. And when I say holistic, they were
Speaker 2: a true samurai samurai, said Graphy. They studied how to
Speaker 2: be one with nature. They were into meditation. For me,
Speaker 2: who's meditated for thirty years, immediately to take a samurai
Speaker 2: sword and go in the war, it's kind of like
Speaker 2: dual opposites.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's not actively if, because the number one
Speaker 1: thing a samurai has to do is serve his master.
Speaker 1: And they are knights, they are warriors. So what they
Speaker 1: do is they use them Buddhism to achieve that warfare.
Speaker 1: It's not that they're all studying Buddhism and then they
Speaker 1: try and find a reason to fight. There are power grabs,
Speaker 1: land grabs, big, you know, almost nations going together. So
Speaker 1: the Samurai have to face that. They have to go
Speaker 1: how do we face that. First of all, Buddhism gives
Speaker 1: you reincarnation, so straight away you're reincarnated and you can
Speaker 1: come back. And someone famous samurai where they him and
Speaker 1: his brother killed themselves and said they wanted to be
Speaker 1: reincarnated seven times to the same plan so they could
Speaker 1: serve again. But actually Samurai afterlife is a bit confusing,
Speaker 1: it does. Nobody asked this question, right. They believe in Shinto,
Speaker 1: they believe in Buddhism, and they believe in Taoism, and
Speaker 1: also they follow Confucianism, but that's not that's not a
Speaker 1: religion per se. So according to Buddhism they're gonna be reincounterated.
Speaker 1: According to Daoism, they're going to break into cheat and
Speaker 1: move into the universe, and according and Shinto, they're going
Speaker 1: to become a goddess from the ancient times. But nobody
Speaker 1: ever points out that you can't do all three. But
Speaker 1: they do know. You obviously find a very positive tonality
Speaker 1: to this, and I say tone because there's this book
Speaker 1: with one hundred different lessons. Is the highlights the good parts?
Speaker 1: But I mean, did you write this book because you
Speaker 1: feel that the Samurai way of life has positive aspects
Speaker 1: that we need to keep an eye on. Or is
Speaker 1: it more that you're looking at our current way of
Speaker 1: living in and seeing the problems of our society and saying, look,
Speaker 1: you should trick this out as a way to improve yourself,
Speaker 1: or what's what's the motivation behind the book? Right? So,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of layers here. One of them
Speaker 1: is to give everybody, because I'm I consider myself a historian,
Speaker 1: historical researcher, I want to give everyone a real picture
Speaker 1: of what the Samurai were like. We no longer believe
Speaker 1: that Night's war shining armor and they rescue dambles in
Speaker 1: distress and they fought dragons. We know how realistic it was,
Speaker 1: and I need to do the same for the Samurai.
Speaker 1: But inside of all that, inside of that pressure pot
Speaker 1: of like warfare, there are some really really good lessons.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can pull them out. We don't want
Speaker 1: to take the warfare with us, but we can take
Speaker 1: what that forged into the into our lives. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the Japanese today, their society is amazing. Aans run perfectly.
Speaker 1: They they're they're one of the most populated place on
Speaker 1: the planet, yet the lowest crime rate. Yeah. They I
Speaker 1: dropped my phone in on the train and I had
Speaker 1: no worries. It was never stolen. I just got on
Speaker 1: the train back, went to the the lost and found
Speaker 1: somebody give it in. And I've got one story I
Speaker 1: always tell. Some Japanese thieves stole a friend of mine's
Speaker 1: wallet and it had concert tickets in. So even the
Speaker 1: thief in Japan, the lowest of the low, went back
Speaker 1: and gave them their concert tickets back, so they didn't
Speaker 1: miss their concert. They post because they had their addrestin it.
Speaker 1: They said, we're very sorry, please go to your concert.
Speaker 1: We've kept the wallet it because we're thieves. But here
Speaker 1: you go. So you know, but where did that come from?
Speaker 1: Because if you go to Japanese history, it's full of warfare.
Speaker 1: After that forging and then bringing this together, they they
Speaker 1: created a society that is based on these fundamentals. So
Speaker 1: why can't we why can't we do that? Why can't
Speaker 1: the West do that? So you admire that I do.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's perfect by any means. They have
Speaker 1: one of the highest suicide rates or did do. And
Speaker 1: they had really a really strong culture of overworking people
Speaker 1: too much. Yeah, they had really bad but beyond that,
Speaker 1: beyond those problems, Oh my, you can't believe how easy
Speaker 1: Japan is to live in. I mean, safe, clean, happy,
Speaker 1: and they really do pursue doing something beautiful. Like you
Speaker 1: would walk through the streets and people were just there
Speaker 1: was somebody playing violin in there, somebody else was breakdancing,
Speaker 1: somebody else was doing painting, somebody was drumming. Nobody bothered them.
Speaker 1: Everybody paid attention, people clapped, chatted to them about it,
Speaker 1: and they took the time out of the day to
Speaker 1: enjoy the arts. That is why the Japanese do well.
Speaker 2: So talking a little bit about the swordsmanship, which is
Speaker 2: huge obviously, because you're training at a young age as
Speaker 2: a samurai. You don't become a samurai, you're training in
Speaker 2: at some point you're anointed as samurai is and how
Speaker 2: it works, no.
Speaker 1: It's the opposite. So that's the way nights work. You're
Speaker 1: anointed as a night, later on are born samurai. In
Speaker 1: the class system, However, you can achieve samurai status by
Speaker 1: being a good warrior on the battlefield, so it's actually twofold.
Speaker 1: You can be brought into that society, but you're also
Speaker 1: born into that society.
Speaker 2: Talk about the rise of samurai.
Speaker 1: How does this?
Speaker 2: I mean, was it zen Buddhism before samurai and then
Speaker 2: somebody developed a sense of the feudal warlord and then
Speaker 2: his minions who are the samurai? Talk about the fundamentals
Speaker 2: of it? How does it work?
Speaker 1: You've actually hit on a really good point here, right, Cliff.
Speaker 1: Loads of people missed this point. Is so originally Japan
Speaker 1: before the samurai. Looking about the year five hundred AD,
Speaker 1: when the Romans are just collapsing. Yeah, they're just collapsing,
Speaker 1: and they have some service. The court is run by
Speaker 1: the nobles, and the nobles run their armies and they
Speaker 1: have like a Chinese standing army system. And then there's
Speaker 1: no Buddhism, no Buddhism, just shinto the land of the gods.
Speaker 1: So years ago, no one, five hundred roughly, yeah, right, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and then then what happens is now you've got to
Speaker 1: remember this. Another thing people don't remember is it's Indian
Speaker 1: Japanese culture is based on Indian tradition, right, Buddhism comes
Speaker 1: from India. Yeah, it is absolutely Indian, and it goes
Speaker 1: through China. It picks up Daoism along the way, and
Speaker 1: then it drops into Japan about the year five hundred
Speaker 1: just after, and they start debating which is best Shinto Buddhism.
Speaker 1: And those people who are serving in the imperial court
Speaker 1: are called servants samurai. They're actually mean servant, and the
Speaker 1: warriors are called bushi, which is warrior, fighting man, which
Speaker 1: means military gentlemen. But over five hundred years them servants
Speaker 1: suddenly take on more and more aggressive roles and start
Speaker 1: helping with fighting and things like that, and eventually servants
Speaker 1: the samurai become the warriors, and bushi and samurai mix together,
Speaker 1: and over that five hundred years they start to develop Zen. Well,
Speaker 1: they actually develop Buddhism mainly. Now you've got to remember
Speaker 1: Zen is part of Buddhism. But Buddhism is about the
Speaker 1: four basically the four noble truths. But you know, we're
Speaker 1: all going to we're all insuffering. We have to leave
Speaker 1: the Samsara, which is the cycle of life and death,
Speaker 1: and we should follow perfect lives to get there and
Speaker 1: like the Buddha will become enlightened. And the one way
Speaker 1: we do this is Buddha was sat under the tree
Speaker 1: and he enlightened himself by through meditation. That's how it is.
Speaker 1: And he had a great realization. And that is what
Speaker 1: the Samurai did. And they, you know, they didn't invent
Speaker 1: zen because it was clearly the budder who invented zen.
Speaker 1: And he knocks it down the patriarchal line or the patriarchs,
Speaker 1: and they just try to replicate that. And they have
Speaker 1: something called satory, which is you know, revelation. They have revelation,
Speaker 1: and the idea is that hopefully you can mix it
Speaker 1: with your swordmanship and in the middle of a battle
Speaker 1: you can. Actually I'm going to spin off it. Have
Speaker 1: you seen the new film F one with Brad Pitt
Speaker 1: F one?
Speaker 2: Oh it's the racer Car. Yeah, yeah, I heard. It's
Speaker 2: pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's the best example of zen. I've ever seen, the
Speaker 1: best example of zen. And in high combat or high danger,
Speaker 1: he says, you know, he's chasing this one lap that
Speaker 1: he can do. He says, it's loud, it's noisy, racing
Speaker 1: casa good. But he said, if I can hit that
Speaker 1: perfect lap. Everything goes quiet and I float. Even though
Speaker 1: he's going two hundred and fifty miles an hour, he's
Speaker 1: turning corners one hundred miles an hour and he's crashed.
Speaker 1: You know, they might be crashing, he said. He just
Speaker 1: floats and it's silent and I can do everything. That
Speaker 1: is where you need to be with zen, which is
Speaker 1: called mushin, which is no mind, and it's always translated
Speaker 1: incorrectly means no and mind is your mind. And he
Speaker 1: doesn't mean to have no mind to be mindless, or
Speaker 1: is that it means to be absent of what trying
Speaker 1: thinking what to do. It's pure subconscious at the forefront
Speaker 1: of your mind. And that's what meditators try to achieve,
Speaker 1: is getting rid of that talking monkey mind and just
Speaker 1: your flatline into perfect stillness.
Speaker 2: Who are some of the contributors early on to the
Speaker 2: whole samurai movement. Is there philosophers that are writing in
Speaker 2: Japan at the time that are building this consciousness of
Speaker 2: that becomes the.
Speaker 1: Samurai Basically, No, Mainly it's the religion is coming from
Speaker 1: the monks, so the monks are doing it, and the
Speaker 1: Samurai are considered lesser at this than the monks. So
Speaker 1: the warriors realize, oh, you know, we can't just be
Speaker 1: brutal thugs all the time. We've got to try and
Speaker 1: you know, enter and try to you know, make ourselves
Speaker 1: a bit more sophisticated. So they and of course there's
Speaker 1: that element of so monks in Japan were the most
Speaker 1: literate people. They wrote the most, they knew the most
Speaker 1: Chinese characters, so samurai would really try to emulate that
Speaker 1: because it was a really like speaking, you know, posh levels.
Speaker 1: And then of course they wanted to. Some people genuinely
Speaker 1: want to search for their soul and what they're trying
Speaker 1: to achieve, so they go in to find that. And yes,
Speaker 1: at the beginning that you do find selection of individuals
Speaker 1: who really push Zen forward. Some people go against it
Speaker 1: and say, no, I'm gonna stick with Dowism, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stick with Shinto or I don't believe that version. But
Speaker 1: for some reason, around the year thirteen hundred, in a
Speaker 1: place called Kamakura, which was the military government, Zen just
Speaker 1: takes over and the samurai love it. The samurai love it,
Speaker 1: whereas the monks, a lot of the monks tended to
Speaker 1: go with all of the esoteric magic, breathing, yoga, you know,
Speaker 1: really trying to push their mental states. Zen just fitted
Speaker 1: the samurai perfectly because they it was about stillness and
Speaker 1: staying still inside of.
Speaker 2: Fascinating that that Zen would be the fundamentals of the
Speaker 2: samurai culture because it seems opposite to me, but maybe
Speaker 2: you're saying that they're grasping onto it because they want
Speaker 2: to be these pure warriors.
Speaker 1: You know, they need to find stillness. Yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 1: need to find stillness. They need to find that because
Speaker 1: this is the problem with zen. People who try zen
Speaker 1: really try to find that stillness in meditation, but Zen
Speaker 1: is actually not for that. That is a byproduct. The
Speaker 1: point of Zen is to leave samsara, the cycle of
Speaker 1: life and death. You're meant to stop reincarnation and go
Speaker 1: to nirvana. That's the point of Zen, and that's what
Speaker 1: the monks are trying to do. But the samurai like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave Samsara. I don't want to
Speaker 1: leave the cycle of life and death and existence. I
Speaker 1: want to stay with my Lord. Now, if I may
Speaker 1: let me explain it, you know, to your audience, can
Speaker 1: I do that? Yeah? So, sam Sarah is an Indian
Speaker 1: word Basically, it's a Buddhist term and it means no
Speaker 1: matter what you do. You can shoot yourself, you can
Speaker 1: do it, hang yourself, you can dine in a car crash.
Speaker 1: You'll be back tomorrow born as a baby. That's it.
Speaker 1: You'll be back, and you've got some lessons to learn.
Speaker 1: And the Buddha is one of many who have come
Speaker 1: before him, but he's the last one to do it,
Speaker 1: who saw the great realization. And that means that a
Speaker 1: lot of people speak about this, but what it means
Speaker 1: is he genuinely had a supernatural experience. He saw through reality.
Speaker 1: He saw that it was just the atoms and it
Speaker 1: was just however you want to call it, string theory
Speaker 1: or whatever we want, we would use. He saw it,
Speaker 1: and he said, I've seen all my past lives. I
Speaker 1: know the lives of the future of everyone. We are
Speaker 1: not always going to be here. You will end up
Speaker 1: going to a place called nirvana. It's not a place,
Speaker 1: but it means extinguishing. It means you will never come
Speaker 1: back again. And once he died, he never came back again.
Speaker 1: That was it. He has gone to somewhere else. Now
Speaker 1: we have to use three dimensional terms like somewhere else
Speaker 1: sometime else. We don't know that. That's because we're inside
Speaker 1: the universe. We cannot get outside of three dimensions in
Speaker 1: our vocabulary. So as far as we're concerned, it's something
Speaker 1: else that is not this. And it might take you
Speaker 1: a million times. You could be you know, nobody knows
Speaker 1: how many times it'll take you. But you'll be an ant,
Speaker 1: You'll be a fly, a mosquito, you'll burn, you'll be
Speaker 1: a son in the worm, a worm in the sun,
Speaker 1: and sickly. You'll play out karma until you get it correct.
Speaker 1: And then eventually you will become so enlightened within yourself
Speaker 1: that you won't want to fight, you won't want anything.
Speaker 1: You won't mind if somebody kills you, because you know
Speaker 1: you'll be back again tomorrow to start all over again.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. And eventually you'll sit under that tree
Speaker 1: or sit in a chair and have that realization of
Speaker 1: be the Buddha and you'll never come back again.
Speaker 2: That's so amazing. I can see the the Harry Carey
Speaker 2: kind of mentality. If you commit suicide, it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: because you'll reincarnate in another So so is that why
Speaker 2: they were I mean, I don't know if the portrayal
Speaker 2: we see on TV and in the movies is the right
Speaker 2: one where we're so willing to die, you know. So yeah,
Speaker 2: well this is the yes and no.
Speaker 1: So right. It's called seppuku. But it's had a kiddy,
Speaker 1: but everyone in the West has haddie carry my grand carry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it had a kitty, but it's because you know, my
Speaker 1: granddad's and everyone was in the wall with ah. You know.
Speaker 1: So it's professional name is separaku. It's lower class name
Speaker 1: is harak kitty, which means harah belly kitty, cut, cut
Speaker 1: your belly. And there's two basic divisions of it. One
Speaker 1: of them is you decide to do it yourself because
Speaker 1: that's your mentality, or the other one is you're forced
Speaker 1: to do it to save your family because you've done
Speaker 1: something wrong. And the Lord can say, right, everyone in
Speaker 1: your family is killed and I will take your land,
Speaker 1: or you can commit harak kiddy. Now you know, by
Speaker 1: the morrow, you've got that choice. So everyone dies or
Speaker 1: you die. So a lot of samurai will sit there,
Speaker 1: and this is where the zen comes in. They have
Speaker 1: to sit there and face it without flickering and without
Speaker 1: showing pain, and they have to be you know, and
Speaker 1: cut up in their belly. And the more cut you do,
Speaker 1: and the more dramatic is the better it is. There
Speaker 1: is examples of samurai in the early days who were
Speaker 1: charging on horse and who were running away from the
Speaker 1: enemies or whatever, and they just got their swords, jumped
Speaker 1: off their horse and landed head first to kill themselves.
Speaker 1: That was the origins of haak. What's the origins of it?
Speaker 1: But in the end you've got to do it. And
Speaker 1: there are Western accounts, There are plenty of accounts of
Speaker 1: samurai who absolutely did it with a stoic, stoic face.
Speaker 1: They were like, you know. There's even one account of
Speaker 1: some French soldiers in the eighteen hundreds watching one and
Speaker 1: this Japanese person hated the foreigners coming in. They said,
Speaker 1: this is bad, We've got too many immigrants. And they
Speaker 1: basically said, so he was singing war songs and then
Speaker 1: cut his own throat out as he did it. You know,
Speaker 1: you're like, they've put it, but you know, so then
Speaker 1: becomes the question, Cliff, is that indoctrination or is that
Speaker 1: self realization? That's the question. Have you got to a
Speaker 1: point where you're so zen that it doesn't matter you
Speaker 1: were like yes, I believe it, or like say a
Speaker 1: suicidal terrorist, you're indoctrinated to a point where you will
Speaker 1: kill yourself. Nobody, you know, only God knows that answer
Speaker 1: in your mind, only you know, only the universe knows.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a short break to allow our
Speaker 2: sponsors to identify themselves and will and we will return
Speaker 2: shortly with my guest today, Anthony Cummins, discussing his latest release,
Speaker 2: Zin and the Samurai Sword. We'll be right back with you.
Speaker 2: My guest today is Antony and he comes. He has
Speaker 2: written a new book called Zin in the Samurai Sword.
Speaker 2: This is a look at samurai consciousness, what Japan was
Speaker 2: like during the medieval periods of the fifteen hundreds, and
Speaker 2: why there's such an interest in samurai philosophy. But it
Speaker 2: comes back to the reincarnation question. It's like they know
Speaker 2: they come back at some point, so you're willing to
Speaker 2: take their life. Isn't that really the foundation?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, that's that's one hundred percent there and a
Speaker 1: lot of monks. You must have seen the famous Rage
Speaker 1: against the Machine album cover where the monk's covered in
Speaker 1: petrol and he's burning, and then he did that in
Speaker 1: the fifties, I think during.
Speaker 2: The Vietnam War. It's a very famous scene.
Speaker 1: Yet that scene, and that's exactly it, because he's coming back.
Speaker 1: He's a puttish monk. He knows he's coming back. He's like,
Speaker 1: I am going to tell the world. I'm going to
Speaker 1: create this picture and I'm going to tell the world
Speaker 1: he's wrong, and I will do it. I'll just come
Speaker 1: back to again and do it again.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So aly problem is not His problem is pain. So
Speaker 1: then anybody really really believes in reincarnation has the problem
Speaker 1: of loss and pain. Do I know I'm going to
Speaker 1: be reincarnated, but I lose all my friends, I lose
Speaker 1: my family, I will never see these people again, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go through some serious pain. So that's your
Speaker 1: that's your barrier. But if you believe you're coming back,
Speaker 1: if you can get past them barriers, you're okay.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. Yeah, I mean the mind over the body
Speaker 2: and the pain that that you're suffering. I want to
Speaker 2: talk about martial arts because I mentioned Judo in the
Speaker 2: very beginning. Is the Samurai lifestyle considered a martial art.
Speaker 1: And they stood they have to study the martial arts
Speaker 1: to prepare for war. That is what they do. The
Speaker 1: lord at the top of the klan has his retainers.
Speaker 1: It's a medieval system he has he owns the land
Speaker 1: and they take the rise from the land and they
Speaker 1: that provides them with weapons when they sell it. And
Speaker 1: that's how it works. And yes they have to and
Speaker 1: they what they did is integrate their Buddhist zen with
Speaker 1: their martial arts. That's what happened as time went on.
Speaker 1: They did that and it is one percent their lifestyle.
Speaker 1: They get up, they train. The best way you could
Speaker 1: understand it is if the American military, instead of going
Speaker 1: to a base, you woke up and all your family
Speaker 1: were in the military and you trained every day and
Speaker 1: then a war comes.
Speaker 2: So the family was an integral part of their samurais yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: you training.
Speaker 1: One yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, one hundred ten.
Speaker 1: So this is there's a dividing line in the Samurai.
Speaker 1: There's a divide in line. There's before the year sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred and there's after the year sixteen hundred. That's a
Speaker 1: broad divide, but it's true. Before that year, most people
Speaker 1: lived in the mountains, they lived in the fields, and
Speaker 1: they owned a village. You must have seen shogun. Remember
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties shogun.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, with Richard Chamberlain.
Speaker 1: Chamberlain, Yeah, you died recently, didn't Yes. So in that
Speaker 1: when he arrives, he arrives in a village, and the
Speaker 1: head samurai of the village, who who owns the village,
Speaker 1: him and his families, his local family. They then send
Speaker 1: wessage to the lords say should we bring him. That's
Speaker 1: exactly how they used to live. Every village had their
Speaker 1: samurai family looking after it. They were like their agricultural warriors. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they would have their fortified manor house up in
Speaker 1: somewhere defendable, and that they have they maybe their extended
Speaker 1: family of twenty thirty people training in the martial arts,
Speaker 1: and that's what they did, and they did their zen.
Speaker 1: They did their training. Granddad would teach me, uncles would
Speaker 1: teach me. But what happened is one family, one single family,
Speaker 1: took over all Japan, the Tokokawa family, the shogun, the
Speaker 1: shogan took over old Japan, and he said, right, stop
Speaker 1: living in the countryside because we can't tax you. So
Speaker 1: everyone's moved to the city. So they all moved to
Speaker 1: the city and they taxed the samurai properly. They and
Speaker 1: that's what happened is they made martial arts dojos, and
Speaker 1: that's where dojos were really invented, when you just had
Speaker 1: loads of samurai in urban settings and they were gambling, drinking, praying,
Speaker 1: going to the temple, doing some meditation. And then he
Speaker 1: was like, we better to go to the dojo and train.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I've never and you must know this.
Speaker 2: There must be a martial art for swordsmanship because the
Speaker 2: way and of course I don't know, and we're gonna
Speaker 2: talk about this in a minute. If these movies portray
Speaker 2: the lifestyle correctly. But if you look at some of
Speaker 2: the earlier ones, like The Seventh Samurai, who is a
Speaker 2: very famous movie that was made, they hold the sword
Speaker 2: in such a way just before they begin the attack,
Speaker 2: and these positions are all practice and and it's like
Speaker 2: one hit and the guy's dead. So that alone, the
Speaker 2: samurai technique must be a martial art. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: Oh? Absolutely, you have one hundred percent. Yeah, There's there's
Speaker 1: a deeper question within that, which is what did they
Speaker 1: actually practice? Because what we do know is that what
Speaker 1: we don't know, I say, is how they actually fought
Speaker 1: before the year sixteen hundred, in the most important time
Speaker 1: in the wartime. There is no description of it anywhere.
Speaker 1: It doesn't exist. And the earliest description of how samurai
Speaker 1: used to fight, and what I mean by that is
Speaker 1: left foot forward. Do you know hold your sword like this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he comes from a Chinese text. It's in a Chinese text.
Speaker 1: The earliest samurai want is from a Chinese text Bazale,
Speaker 1: and then a Korean text after that, and then it's
Speaker 1: Miamoto Musashi in sixteen forty and a man called Yagua
Speaker 1: because everybody knows Miamoto Musashi, the jew wilding guy, you
Speaker 1: know with two swords. Do you know him?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Right, So basically he's one of the most famous if
Speaker 1: you sort of do martialists, he's the famous one. But
Speaker 1: very few people realize that that's at the end of
Speaker 1: the war. In periods he wrote at the very end,
Speaker 1: and what he said was what everybody does today has changed.
Speaker 1: It's not how it used to fight. So we know
Speaker 1: exactly how they fought from the year sixteen hundred to
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred, and we know exactly, but that was duels
Speaker 1: in the street, street combat, not war. What we don't
Speaker 1: know is really how they fought in war. Our archaeology
Speaker 1: tells us that mostly they got shot by arrows. Swords
Speaker 1: were very low on the killer list. Mostly you would
Speaker 1: be shot by arrows or killed by a spear. Talk
Speaker 1: about even that. There there's the martial arts for spears,
Speaker 1: martial arts for arrows, martial arts. They have a martial
Speaker 1: art for everything.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've seen these amazingly large bon and arrows.
Speaker 2: The bow itself is as tall as a man, and
Speaker 2: they were able to shoot from a horse and then
Speaker 2: from various positions, and that that looks like a martial
Speaker 2: art by itself, But is that considered a Samurai warriors technique?
Speaker 1: Is one un a Samurai thing. And not only that,
Speaker 1: the bow was more important than the sword. So it
Speaker 1: goes in Samurai culture the bow is the most important,
Speaker 1: spear is the second most important. Sword is your last backup.
Speaker 1: It's one so originally when the Samuri first started, and
Speaker 1: all the great samurai and the great walls, that they
Speaker 1: were charging up and down like the Mongols, turning backwards
Speaker 1: on their bows, holding their reins between of their arm pits,
Speaker 1: and shooting. And that's the reason they believe that bowie
Speaker 1: is like that where it shot the bottom but really
Speaker 1: tall at the top is because they've got to transfer
Speaker 1: it across a horse, and they've got to move across
Speaker 1: the horse, but they just never change the design of
Speaker 1: the boat. I think it's one of the only places
Speaker 1: that exists in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you made an interesting statement just now. You said
Speaker 2: that archaeologists have not discovered how they fought. In a
Speaker 2: war situation where there's hundreds or perhaps thousands of warriors
Speaker 2: going up against each other. It seems kind of rudimentary
Speaker 2: for sword wilding people soldiers to be running after each other.
Speaker 2: So it would probably be I would think, just as
Speaker 2: a logic, it would be a halo of arrows would start,
Speaker 2: then the long blades, because we see this ad media Europe,
Speaker 2: then the long swords, and then perhaps the very end,
Speaker 2: whoever's left is going sword to sword. Does that the
Speaker 2: guests work for that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, say, that's about as best as we can get.
Speaker 1: What we don't know is just exactly how they moved
Speaker 1: their swords and what positions. But you are one hundredercent right.
Speaker 1: It was spears first and then guns. Of course, Samurai
Speaker 1: loved the gun. After a certain year, they loved the
Speaker 1: guns and they so the archaeology tells us we've got
Speaker 1: so many bullet shots, so many stones, sling shots, you know,
Speaker 1: and sword deaths are much much lower. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it would be absolutely like that. But in the beginning,
Speaker 1: say it, between the year one thousand to like one
Speaker 1: thy three hundred, Samurai were running up and down on horses.
Speaker 1: Then three hundred to six hundred, you start getting more compact.
Speaker 1: They're on the battlefield. They now got pikes. So we
Speaker 1: always imagine the Greeks with the long pikes and the phalanxes,
Speaker 1: but I actually Samurai did it as well. And then
Speaker 1: they had musket shots. And then what happened is when
Speaker 1: the wars finished, they got rid of all of that
Speaker 1: and the sword became the number one weapon. That's when
Speaker 1: the sword, and that's why we all see in the
Speaker 1: movies a cirricua sour and all this type of stuff.
Speaker 1: Seven Samurai. That's why we all imagine the sword as
Speaker 1: the greatest thing since slice bread story.
Speaker 2: And when you see these movies, do you think that
Speaker 2: they are interpreting the samuraised life correctly or is it
Speaker 2: enhanced and embellished like Hollywood tends to do.
Speaker 1: First of all, I don't mind the embellishment. I don't
Speaker 1: mind stereotypes. I like that. But I my friends know
Speaker 1: they if they my friends want to annoy me, they
Speaker 1: always come up to me and whisper in my ear
Speaker 1: and say, I think Last Summurai is a perfect Samurai film.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful. Yeah, it really annoys me, that film. It's
Speaker 1: the least perfect film. So I wish they would do
Speaker 1: a perfect film for Samurai. I really want to be
Speaker 1: I've been around now for about twenty years, and the
Speaker 1: two things I've never been able to broach is computer
Speaker 1: games and a film. I've been on TV. I've done
Speaker 1: TV dramas, I've done all this, I've supported, I've never
Speaker 1: I would love to get my hands on being the
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Year year perfect candidate for a for a docu drama
Speaker 2: or a documentary. You know.
Speaker 1: No, No, I have done some documentaries I've done I
Speaker 1: recently I have done with Smiths. But what the problem
Speaker 1: with that is, And if you don't know, guys, once
Speaker 1: you get picked up by television, they've already written the script,
Speaker 1: they've already got the action read it. So when I
Speaker 1: come along, they go, no, we can't do that today. No,
Speaker 1: that's not changing, that's not happening, and they cut what
Speaker 1: I say to fit what they want. Basically hmm. Interesting,
Speaker 1: And of course I can say things that you know,
Speaker 1: that are close to what they want, because but like
Speaker 1: you say, sometimes, like Last Samurai, it's not incorrect, it's
Speaker 1: just the very disney polished version.
Speaker 2: So just give us two examples. I mean, because I
Speaker 2: just saw that. I love that movie that they just
Speaker 2: came out with, because I like the samurai who's the warlord.
Speaker 2: I can't think of his name. He's been in a
Speaker 2: lot of movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know who
Speaker 2: I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the tall gentleman and he's like yeah, he's quite tall,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and he's the main guy.
Speaker 2: And it isn't next to Tom Cruise, yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah no. But I'm just wondering, give us one or
Speaker 2: two examples of something that just grates you when you
Speaker 2: see the modern version of Sugun. I mean, is it
Speaker 2: the samurai itself or is it how they carry themselves
Speaker 2: that is upsetting for you.
Speaker 1: They tend to be almost like a caricature, like almost
Speaker 1: zen all the time, and they stand around and they'd
Speaker 1: say perfect statements, and you're like when you read Samurai
Speaker 1: documentary Samurai things like there was one samurai who reckoned
Speaker 1: it could out eat all samurai of eggs, is said, Ali,
Speaker 1: the most eggs out of all of you, let's go.
Speaker 1: And they had a competition who could stomach the most
Speaker 1: eggs and alcohol and they're all drunk. They're running around,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're far more complicated than Hollywood has it.
Speaker 1: Yes they have Buddhism, but they've got so many layers, Like,
Speaker 1: for example, they have to study military strategies. So first
Speaker 1: of all, they're reading ancient classics of sun soup two
Speaker 1: thousand year old at the time. Already you're Confucius and
Speaker 1: they're talking about they're debating, and they're debating politics. Some
Speaker 1: of them try to overthrow the government, like guy folks.
Speaker 1: And then in you know, Buddhism, they're talking about how
Speaker 1: but you know, the mind can reach another dimension? Or
Speaker 1: do monsters exist? And there's all this wonderful stuff to
Speaker 1: talk about, and they always just go, cherry blossoms are
Speaker 1: beautiful in spring.
Speaker 2: It's like that, you know, you want to see more
Speaker 2: of the philosophical aspects, is what you're saying.
Speaker 1: So I'll give you an example. I'll give you one example.
Speaker 1: So there's a well, there's a warlord called Oda Nobunaga. Right,
Speaker 1: he's one of the most ruthless men they reckon, you know,
Speaker 1: and he has with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is like like the tyrant. That's his reputation anyway,
Speaker 1: it's debatable, but yes, he is the tyrant. And he
Speaker 1: has a Buddhist monk with him. Right. They listen to
Speaker 1: this a Buddhist monk, and the Christian jesuit joins them
Speaker 1: in the fifteen hundreds, and the jesuit is trying to
Speaker 1: explain the soul, and the monk is like, there is
Speaker 1: no soul. You go on your reincarnated back, but it's
Speaker 1: not a soul. It's not it doesn't go to happen
Speaker 1: and all that. So the monk says, I'll tell you what,
Speaker 1: why don't you show me this soul? And the Christians like, well,
Speaker 1: we can't show. It's invisible, and he tries to chop
Speaker 1: his head off. He gets a blade and tries to
Speaker 1: chop that. Obviously, I'm gonna look inside you for this
Speaker 1: imaginary soul. And in the end they are to separate
Speaker 1: the monk and the Christian friar from the monk. The
Speaker 1: Japanese are trying to murder him. You know what a
Speaker 1: great scene in like a film, you know, two religious
Speaker 1: people being separated by the warriors because they were being
Speaker 1: too violent.
Speaker 2: Wow, I want to ask you about the ninja here
Speaker 2: in a minute, because you've written a whole book on it,
Speaker 2: and there's a tremendous amount of misunderstanding about that whole sect.
Speaker 2: Who are some of the well known warlords that go
Speaker 2: up against rulers and what is their philosophy that makes
Speaker 2: them a warlord?
Speaker 1: So right, the way this works is it's hard to
Speaker 1: say it land based. So imagine it's like Scotland. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I even know anything people more at Scotland.
Speaker 1: We always have this image of the scott So what's
Speaker 1: the famous blood feuds in America? There's some like really
Speaker 1: famous blood feuds of it? Well, well, yeah, well the
Speaker 1: Civil War is one, but there was these like plans
Speaker 1: that used to go against each other. You know, if
Speaker 1: you've got the Okay Corral and stuff like you know families,
Speaker 1: you mean they have two families and there's like some
Speaker 1: famous ones in America. That's how it starts with samurai.
Speaker 1: The Samurai were originally run by the emperor. So what
Speaker 1: you have to understand, the emperor has been in existence
Speaker 1: for two thousand years and he's still there today. The
Speaker 1: same family is still there today, and the Samurai were
Speaker 1: only there for a thousand years, so for fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the time there was no samurai. They would run
Speaker 1: with other you know people. And then what you find is,
Speaker 1: bit by bit the aristocracy gets they do too many
Speaker 1: tea parties and make up parties. It gets really soft,
Speaker 1: and the samurai come along and they're really brutal and hard.
Speaker 1: And what happens then is they try to emulate the
Speaker 1: nobles by doing tea parties and put makeup and you know,
Speaker 1: and then theahbor comes to yourself. So the next set
Speaker 1: of samurai family throw them out, and it just keeps
Speaker 1: going on this conveyor belt. But what happens is by
Speaker 1: the year fifteen fifty to fifteen eighty, you get three
Speaker 1: people and these are very famous three people, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomihideyoshi,
Speaker 1: and Tokogawa Iyasu, known as very famously as the Three Unifiers.
Speaker 1: And what happens is bit by bit their clans get
Speaker 1: bigger and they just absorb all the clans until they
Speaker 1: take over all of Japan. And that's and they then
Speaker 1: make and I'm gonna say this, and people don't like
Speaker 1: it when I say this. What people call it the
Speaker 1: period of peace when the shogun owns everything. Actually, it's
Speaker 1: very much a dictatorship, and it's like North Korea. It's
Speaker 1: like living in North Korea. They can kill you for
Speaker 1: no reason. If you steal anything in your the penalty's death.
Speaker 1: You can only have a certain haircut, your house has
Speaker 1: to be a certain shape, you can't travel without papers.
Speaker 1: It's a very very like strict structured society. And it
Speaker 1: was only that only collapsed that the end. So do
Speaker 1: you remember Last Samurai when they cut the top knots
Speaker 1: off the Samurai and it's a very sad scene. Do
Speaker 1: you remember It's like they're cutting the hair off them,
Speaker 1: and you know the samurai they'd banned the top knots,
Speaker 1: And that's put across as really emotional by the director.
Speaker 1: Actually it's the other way around. The samurai were the
Speaker 1: oppressors and the underclasses were so glad that the Samurai collapsed,
Speaker 1: they still cut their top knots off, so that was
Speaker 1: their symbol of Samurai yeah, so you know, but they
Speaker 1: never show that on samurai films and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh no, it was the horrible peasants who did it.
Speaker 2: Is there a one warlord that's most noted for taking
Speaker 2: down an emperor and becoming like the dominant ruler of
Speaker 2: the entire country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically that is definitely older Nobernaga. So what we
Speaker 1: have to understand here is there's three positions. This gets
Speaker 1: a bit historical. But the emperor can't you can't get
Speaker 1: rid of him. You can kill him, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter because whoever's next in line is that you can't
Speaker 1: take his blood. He is the emperor by divine right.
Speaker 1: Nobody can take that. So what they tended to do
Speaker 1: was marry their children into the bloodline. Then you get
Speaker 1: the shogun. Yeah, so the shogun is actually a general.
Speaker 1: It's just so for example, who is you know, like
Speaker 1: McCarthy from World War Two. Yeah, so you've got my
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, let's do it in English because he's in English.
Speaker 1: You've got the queen. Yeah, who's the emperor, and you've
Speaker 1: got Churchill, who's the shogun? The general and if he
Speaker 1: takes over the whole country, the Queen's got no power, right,
Speaker 1: But then if he loses power, someone like olda Noberenaga
Speaker 1: comes in and Kate's control of him, who controls them?
Speaker 1: So the actual power is older.
Speaker 2: You're thinking like lord man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ban comes in and he's like, well, actually I'm
Speaker 1: more powerful. So you could go with the Hitler thing,
Speaker 1: which is Rommel. Hitler had Rommel killed because he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got the German emperors, we got rid of.
Speaker 1: Hitler comes in, but then Rommel is doing better than him,
Speaker 1: so Hitler's like, let's kill Rommel before he becomes too powerful.
Speaker 1: The same happened to older Nobiga. They his own men
Speaker 1: killed him because he was just too powerful.
Speaker 2: His own miller forced Raml to drink poison.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I can't remember. He shot himself in
Speaker 1: the car, had to take poison poison, right, Okay, I think,
Speaker 1: And then I can't remember. But yes, he was like,
Speaker 1: you're too good. I'm getting rid of you before you
Speaker 1: get rid of me. I'm just going to Africa. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Stupid, because Rama was one of his best generals and
Speaker 2: he took him out. Yeah, it was too bad. We're
Speaker 2: going to take a short commercial break to allow our
Speaker 2: sponsors to identify themselves, and will return shortly with my
Speaker 2: guest today, Anthony Cummins discussing his new book, Zin and
Speaker 2: the Samurai Sword. Will be right back with you shortly.
Speaker 2: I guess today is Anthony Cummins. He has written a
Speaker 2: wonderful book called Zen and the Samurai Sword. This is
Speaker 2: a book on one hundred lessons on the mindset, the
Speaker 2: physical set, and the spiritual accutum of a Zen warrior
Speaker 2: known as a samurai. All right, well, let's get to
Speaker 2: the ninja. There's a tremendous amount of misunderstanding about the ninja.
Speaker 2: It's like it's its own, it's its own group. Give
Speaker 2: us the definition and then how they worked within the samurai.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no problem. Are you all right, Christmas? Oh sorry,
Speaker 1: Cliff you Paule's there, Yeah, we're good.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So basically, this is what it is. Everyone believes at
Speaker 1: the minute, or most people believe that the Ninja were
Speaker 1: their own little sect inside of some mountains. They dressed
Speaker 1: in black, and they had little throwing stars and they
Speaker 1: fought the samurai that you know, that was the trope. Actually,
Speaker 1: what the Ninja are is just the same as the
Speaker 1: CIA or the It's like the Seals and the CIA
Speaker 1: mixed together inside your army. So imagine you've got all
Speaker 1: your army there, all your Samurai stood together, and there's
Speaker 1: a group of rough looking lads with knives in their mouths, tattoos,
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, skinheads and all that. You know,
Speaker 1: we're going to fight to the death, and they creep
Speaker 1: behind enemy and they do all that. So that's who
Speaker 1: they are. They're especially trained soldiers who do a specific job.
Speaker 1: But they are divided into two just like CIA. They
Speaker 1: go behind enemy lines and they address as shopkeepers. They
Speaker 1: have language specialist, code breakers, code makers, and they also
Speaker 1: have those who stay with the army, and they will literally,
Speaker 1: like you know, patrol the army and kill people in
Speaker 1: the night. That's the main two sets of ninja. And
Speaker 1: they're always inside the Samurai army.
Speaker 2: So they're not mercenaries. They're not You can't buy them
Speaker 2: if you want to protect your village.
Speaker 1: No, but this is another fundamental problem with samurai is this. Honestly,
Speaker 1: you can keep digging here, Cley, We'll keep going down
Speaker 1: into the dam. Basically, samurai will divide into two basic people,
Speaker 1: those who will be generationally serve their lord. So imagine
Speaker 1: the Churchills have served the queen for twelve generations and
Speaker 1: they've never turned their backs on them. But some of
Speaker 1: the you know, but other clans will serve other people
Speaker 1: and do other things. So the term mercenary in Japan
Speaker 1: doesn't quite work because that's how their war. You would
Speaker 1: rent yourself out for war. A samurai would go and
Speaker 1: become loyal to their lord for a period of time,
Speaker 1: but they can equally change to another lord later. That's
Speaker 1: one of the things what was praised is if your
Speaker 1: family served a certain lord for generations, and then you
Speaker 1: could say, yes, you know, we have served for seven generations.
Speaker 1: We're never gonna change sides. So you can hire people.
Speaker 1: But no, you couldn't just go and get a ninja
Speaker 1: from the mountains and say can you come and protect
Speaker 1: my village?
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: No, No, what they normally did is they went up
Speaker 1: to a lord and said, listen, I am such and
Speaker 1: such a samurai from such and such a place. I'm
Speaker 1: an expert in ninjitsu and the art of the ninja,
Speaker 1: and I will work for you. And then what they
Speaker 1: have to do is exchange hostages that his wife will
Speaker 1: go in as exchange for hostage. Children will go in
Speaker 1: and they they're kept in luxury, you know, they're kept
Speaker 1: in their little pallis aias, and if that guy turns
Speaker 1: spy or traitor, they will kill them. So to counter this,
Speaker 1: the ninja would get a fake wife. He'd go and
Speaker 1: marry someone without telling us she was a ninja, just
Speaker 1: telling Mama samurai and I love you, darling. They'd have
Speaker 1: children and he'd put them in and then he'd go
Speaker 1: and cheat on them. They die, and he'd go off
Speaker 1: and win the war. Let's talk about women.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's hilarious. Let's talk about women in the samurais society.
Speaker 2: In these in these funeral periods of medieval periods, there's
Speaker 2: they seem to be subservent unless you're in the government,
Speaker 2: which is uh, the sugun's wife or the emperor's wife.
Speaker 2: Is that just by design?
Speaker 1: Well, actually, this this gets a bit complicated because it's
Speaker 1: like most medieval things, it's been too simplified.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 1: Yes, women are one hundred percent subservient to men, not
Speaker 1: all men, only their own equal standing men. So a
Speaker 1: woman of the household whose wife to a samurai is
Speaker 1: one hundred percent higher ranking than all the other men
Speaker 1: in the house. She is or higher than the servants,
Speaker 1: the slaves, the messengers, the postman, and everybody bows to her.
Speaker 1: She is in command, but she bows to her husband.
Speaker 1: So you've got to remember that. And so the higher
Speaker 1: the ranking samurai, the hire his wife is, which means
Speaker 1: the men underneath that have to bow to her. And
Speaker 1: earlier in samurai times the women had more rights. What
Speaker 1: happened was this once the un once they got everybody together,
Speaker 1: this older nober Niagara and the three warlords, they changed
Speaker 1: from zen Buddhism being the greatest thing and all that,
Speaker 1: and said, let's study Confucianism. Confucianism is the best thing.
Speaker 1: Everyone study it because Confucianism says you have a place
Speaker 1: in society. Men are highest, and you don't move from
Speaker 1: that position, don't ever move, and spe subservient. So then
Speaker 1: you get women a really mistreated then in that period,
Speaker 1: because Confucianism like places this massive patriarchal structure over them.
Speaker 1: So actually it changes a bit. Well even then higher
Speaker 1: ranking women are higher than lower ranking men.
Speaker 2: Is this where the geisha comes out? Is this feudal period,
Speaker 2: this medieval period, or is it later?
Speaker 1: Note the geisha are there for years, and that's down
Speaker 1: to we can now swing back to the aristocratic type
Speaker 1: parties if you wanted, you know what, to emulate the emperor.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the same in our cultures. It's like,
Speaker 1: what's the president doing, what's he wearing, what's his wife wearing?
Speaker 1: What music is he listening to? Yeah, so it's the
Speaker 1: same what's the emperor doing? What are they doing? So
Speaker 1: geishas are going out and saying, oh, this is the
Speaker 1: newest music everybody's listening to. And they cost a lot
Speaker 1: of money. So the higher ranking geisher you get, the
Speaker 1: more you can entertain. You imagine now it would be
Speaker 1: like throwing a party with just magnums of champagne everywhere.
Speaker 1: They're like, you could have what is it like Tony
Speaker 1: Blair or someone come and speak at your you know
Speaker 1: finger and jk Row Yeah, k Kate that no, you
Speaker 1: are you are completely right. I trying to find an example.
Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian turns up and she says, here's the newest
Speaker 1: booty dance and she's twerking, you know, but it just
Speaker 1: happens to be medieval lovely dancing. But it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: This is us, This is prestige.
Speaker 2: Wow, let's talk about this book title Zin in the
Speaker 2: Samurai Sword, subtitle Japanese Warrior Techniques for Agility, Clarity and Calm. Okay,
Speaker 2: one hundred lessons. What is the purpose of the one
Speaker 2: hundred lessons? And we're going to talk about some lessons
Speaker 2: here in a minute.
Speaker 1: So basically, I did a book originally called one called
Speaker 1: How to Be a Modern Samurai, and this is actually
Speaker 1: a sister book to that. You don't have to read
Speaker 1: them both, you can read them independently. But what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do is build up from the foundations through this.
Speaker 1: So what I did is I should to it to
Speaker 1: a one hundred lessons before in the other book. I'm
Speaker 1: structuring it to one hundred lessons in this book, and
Speaker 1: I'm hoping to do a third one with one hundred lessons.
Speaker 1: And the idea is it's just that decimal, lovely thing.
Speaker 1: So it took me a long time to divide everything
Speaker 1: between the one hundred actually, so it's not there's no
Speaker 1: like spiritual reason for it. Okay. The idea is what
Speaker 1: I like to do. I do two types of books.
Speaker 1: One is really complicated academic translation of things, but the
Speaker 1: other one is I love the idea of ancient philosophy
Speaker 1: told simply with an easy I call it my three
Speaker 1: rhythm beat. So I'll have the title which tells you
Speaker 1: what it is, I have the information about where you
Speaker 1: learn it, and then have a little bold thing at
Speaker 1: the bottom which reiterates something about it so you can
Speaker 1: read it. And it's usually within a page. And I
Speaker 1: call this my taxi driver theory. Is your taxi driver.
Speaker 1: He's bored, he's been on a job, he's got to
Speaker 1: wait in the car parking lot for the next person.
Speaker 1: He's only got minutes, so he can read three beats
Speaker 1: learn something. It goes in instead of having to say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, not this what page amount or what we're
Speaker 1: we talking about. It's that I've made them easy to understand.
Speaker 2: Okay, And so like, let's look at the first one.
Speaker 2: Less than one become a Zen warrior. When you're saying that,
Speaker 2: you're asking them to take on the characteristics of that individual,
Speaker 2: the Zen philosophy, the meditative quality and the ability to
Speaker 2: strike quickly, you know, mentally, physically, spiritually. So define that.
Speaker 2: Define that in the modern world, Anthony find it as
Speaker 2: we live today, in the complexities of our world.
Speaker 1: So basically, the war inside your mind is the number
Speaker 1: one war. So obviously we like the Sammarai. We won't
Speaker 1: We know they went to war, but Buddha, we let's
Speaker 1: take this back to what Buddhist said, which is, there
Speaker 1: is no one else but you. That's the problem. There's
Speaker 1: no one else a pressing here, there's nothing else. You
Speaker 1: have to learn to cut through your own delusion. So
Speaker 1: when you look at Buddhist statues, a lot of them
Speaker 1: carry swords. Why would a Buddhist statue have a sword.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous, you know why. And usually it's to cut
Speaker 1: through your own problem. So the sword is a symbol
Speaker 1: for destroying your own negativity. That's the point of it.
Speaker 1: So you've got one more one place to fight, and
Speaker 1: that's in your mind, and it's to carve through that
Speaker 1: until you get to the great realization. So we're busy,
Speaker 1: we're struggling. She said this, They said that, am I
Speaker 1: gonna watch Kim kardash Year? And am I gonna do this?
Speaker 1: You know that's where we're You know, I've got a
Speaker 1: Netflix to watch. Nope, stop, Go and take some time
Speaker 1: for yourself, Buy a cushion, sit down, relax, and analyze
Speaker 1: in your own mind what are your own negativity points
Speaker 1: and then cut them down.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you're instilling the samurai philosophy to a modern society.
Speaker 2: This is what I'm getting from what you're saying to me.
Speaker 1: Very much.
Speaker 2: And we haven't even talked about swordian. You must have
Speaker 2: a killer selection of samurai swords, is that true.
Speaker 1: I've got a good selection. Yes, she has a good selection.
Speaker 1: Now I've only got one original, unfortunately, because they can
Speaker 1: go for quite a lot of money. Original. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: from five hundred years ago. It's five hundred year old.
Speaker 1: You can't pick them up, not too much. But yes,
Speaker 1: you're in the thousands, and then you go into the
Speaker 1: tens of thousands, and then there's swords for millions. There's
Speaker 1: samurai sords out for millions, you know, depending on who
Speaker 1: owned it and where it was made or who made it.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, yeah totally who made it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, real quickly. So it's kind of scary because these
Speaker 2: things are lethal, these swords, you know, I mean you
Speaker 2: could not just cut your finger, you cut your arm
Speaker 2: off totally.
Speaker 1: They will go through your body, no problem.
Speaker 2: I didn't look into the book about swordsmanship. I kind
Speaker 2: of aised over. It glanced over. Excuse me, how do
Speaker 2: we go about working with swords? Do you work with
Speaker 2: the wooden version of a sword? Talk about that because
Speaker 2: they're beautiful. It's like me, I love guns, but I
Speaker 2: would never have one. I just I'm afraid there's too
Speaker 2: many problems associated with them.
Speaker 1: How do you go.
Speaker 2: About living in the modern world with these lethal weapons?
Speaker 1: So that obviously down to your So for example, it's
Speaker 1: down to your society. In England, we cannot own a gun.
Speaker 1: You just can't own the gun unless you are a
Speaker 1: farmer shooting. It's only a shotgun. But having a gun
Speaker 1: in England is almost impossible, you know, it's a very
Speaker 1: very rare thing. So we can have swords that they're
Speaker 1: trying to ban them at the minute. So I tend
Speaker 1: to have some blunt ones, but at ninety nine point
Speaker 1: nine percent at the time, I work with a wood
Speaker 1: one one. You know, I pretty much I'll get my
Speaker 1: shout ones out occasionally, but I work with a wood one. Okay,
Speaker 1: I do have them. You know, they've become symbolic, and
Speaker 1: they are symbolic. So this is where it goes back
Speaker 1: to the last samurai without trying to make it cheesy
Speaker 1: like the last samurai. We have to go that direction.
Speaker 1: We have to say this is actually a symbol, and
Speaker 1: they samurai did believe it was a symbol, and the
Speaker 1: Buddhist statues, the bud believed it was a symbol to
Speaker 1: cut through our own problems. And the swordsman ship gives
Speaker 1: you a focus for that. It gives you a focus,
Speaker 1: you know, because meditating on its own is really difficult.
Speaker 1: It's hard, and most people just stop doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So is the interpretation of the samurai walking around with
Speaker 2: the sword and then the little tiny sword in his belt?
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's correct, that's what we'd say. Correct. And they
Speaker 1: would never be seen without those swords, and there's very
Speaker 1: strict places where they take them off and keep them on.
Speaker 2: So the wearing of the swords is not necessarily I
Speaker 2: guess it is ceremonial, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's traditional, but definitely traditional, and you would, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would go through ceremonies with the sword. But mainly
Speaker 1: that's this is weird. It is a practical implement at
Speaker 1: your side. It's also your status symbol as a samurai,
Speaker 1: but of course that's no longer there. But there is
Speaker 1: the myth that it represents your soul, but that's not true.
Speaker 1: That you know the samurai is you know, he's represented
Speaker 1: by sword. That's not true. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: a samurai would never ever be without his sword. It
Speaker 1: would be like the worst faux pat to ever do.
Speaker 1: Like walking round at the operas with you know, the
Speaker 1: oscars without any clothes on. People would literally look at
Speaker 1: you like you are crazy. If a samurai want down
Speaker 1: the street without swords on, they would just be like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Funny.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about another lesson, Lesson twenty one, which is,
Speaker 2: and you can correct my pronunciation, practice the zay and
Speaker 2: other forms of meditation. Now that's I like that because
Speaker 2: I think more people need to learn meditation to quiet
Speaker 2: the mind. But specifically, what are you recommending by that practice?
Speaker 1: So that is called it's actually called zazen and it
Speaker 1: means seated meditation and zen. So the word zen is
Speaker 1: actually a Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word chian chat.
Speaker 1: It's really difficult to do the Chinese. I'm not even
Speaker 1: gonna try in the Indian one. And the Chinese name
Speaker 1: Chan is actually a pronunciation of an Indian word which
Speaker 1: was around at the time of the Buddha, and we
Speaker 1: go back to the budder all the time. Most people
Speaker 1: forget to go back to the budder when they do zen.
Speaker 1: But it's about meditation, and you must sit down and
Speaker 1: you must meditate personally. I prefer there's two ways I
Speaker 1: prefer meditate. That is one chopping wood. You never ever,
Speaker 1: your mind never strays. I normally chop wood in flip flops.
Speaker 1: Have you ever tried to chop the wood at your
Speaker 1: feet in flip flops? You will never think of anything
Speaker 1: else you think of chopping wood. So it's very focused.
Speaker 1: And of course when you and I, when I walk,
Speaker 1: I love walking. And but then that asked the question,
Speaker 1: and I know you do me, so I ask the questions,
Speaker 1: should meditation be formal or should it be more informal
Speaker 1: because the Japanese have it down very very formally. But
Speaker 1: is that then no longer meditation? I don't know.
Speaker 2: You go to a quiet room, you sit on a
Speaker 2: special pillow, you you have no interruptions for thirty minutes,
Speaker 2: and then you close your eyes and you meditate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they've got to have the posture in a
Speaker 1: certain way. They've got to so For example, there's walking meditation,
Speaker 1: which is what I like. And they don't just walk,
Speaker 1: they do a specific step in a rhythm to a
Speaker 1: time and they go round in a circle. And then
Speaker 1: the lead monk will be hitting when there was a stick
Speaker 1: when they're sat down, if they're not quite doing it right,
Speaker 1: or they don't interpret the energy from them right, and
Speaker 1: it almost becomes and then you have what's a I
Speaker 1: think it's called mondo, the questions and answer of like
Speaker 1: Coen's and you know, these strange riddles and there's certain
Speaker 1: answers you should give, almost formulaic, and I'm like, to me,
Speaker 1: walking in the woods and clearing your mind is probably
Speaker 1: more accurate to what the Buddha said than all those
Speaker 1: very strict Japanese rules. You know, the buddhy didn't it
Speaker 1: didn't have these rules. He just sat under the tree
Speaker 1: and said, I am going to have this realization. I'm
Speaker 1: going to break through. But yet the Japanese are so
Speaker 1: bothered about these little nuances in the uniform and the
Speaker 1: have I got this bubble right? And you know it's
Speaker 1: my top not right. It sort of takes away from
Speaker 1: the point of meditation. So I think what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say with this lesson is you must take some
Speaker 1: time out of the day. But so this is why
Speaker 1: we go back to one of the early questions when
Speaker 1: you meditate, are you trying to clear your mind or
Speaker 1: you're trying to leave the cycle of life and death
Speaker 1: and become a budder. Most people they don't even consider
Speaker 1: that as a question, And that is the fundamental question.
Speaker 1: You've got to ask yourself.
Speaker 2: So again, and you may have said it, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to ask you again. Yes, by practicing the meditation,
Speaker 2: are you looking for a clarity in life after you
Speaker 2: have finished the technique of meditation or is it just
Speaker 2: a daily practice that you must do to be fulfilled?
Speaker 1: So, yeah, that is Uh, it's a difficult question to
Speaker 1: answer that because I think it does both. I first,
Speaker 1: when I first started to investigating meditation, I put it
Speaker 1: to like defragging a computer. Everyone used to defrag computers
Speaker 1: and you used to have to go and it was like,
Speaker 1: I've got to reorganize it. Yeah, and that's what it is.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, meditation at its base level, what everybody
Speaker 1: does when they say they do zen, they defrag their mind.
Speaker 1: That's all they're doing. So step one is reset your
Speaker 1: mind because otherwise the stress of the day, and this
Speaker 1: is where people have breakdowns, commits suicide. Goal to alcoholism
Speaker 1: is because they don't stop. It's none stop. We no
Speaker 1: longer short shops, we don't follow the Sabbath, we don't
Speaker 1: have any time off, we work Christmases. People are just
Speaker 1: like blowing up and you're like, well, just stop for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes a day. Literally try to do nothing for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes a day, and no one can do it. Recently,
Speaker 1: there was a YouTube video came out and I think
Speaker 1: it was a professional or something. He said, if you
Speaker 1: don't stop and get bored every day, you're there's a
Speaker 1: certain chemical that doesn't get produced in your brain. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I've not memorized this. That just only started a youtubutor
Speaker 1: and he said, we need to be bored. If you're
Speaker 1: not bored, you're designed to have this to reset your mind.
Speaker 1: And that is meditation is really boring. It's really to
Speaker 1: me that.
Speaker 2: I always you said something that I've always believed in,
Speaker 2: which is when I meditate, I reset my brain. I
Speaker 2: totally reset. In fact, I studied Tibetan version it's called
Speaker 2: transcendental meditation, which was brought to the US in the
Speaker 2: in the seventies, and it's it's based on short twenty
Speaker 2: minutes twice a day. So you reset the morning, perfect,
Speaker 2: you reset the afternoon. So interesting, So that that's so,
Speaker 2: that's the reset. And then the question is what do
Speaker 2: you do next?
Speaker 1: So if you if all you do is you reset,
Speaker 1: that's like I clean my shoes every day, well done.
Speaker 1: I clean my gun every day. Every time I shoot
Speaker 1: my gun, I clean it. Yes, that's correct. Because if
Speaker 1: you shot your gun we're talking about ones all your
Speaker 1: life and never cleaned it, it suddenly stopped working. But
Speaker 1: nobody meditates. But then your question is is what what's
Speaker 1: the next step?
Speaker 2: Exactly? I want to do two more quick lessons and
Speaker 2: then our time is h lesson three is in this one?
Speaker 2: I would love to hear what you you're gonna tell
Speaker 2: me the explanation? Embrace the confusion?
Speaker 1: Right? And sorry? Is that lesson three? Did you let's
Speaker 1: in three?
Speaker 2: Right? I thought we were doing move but okay we're
Speaker 2: move's next? Right?
Speaker 1: Okay? The confused put me off, let me fry right basically,
Speaker 1: so yeah, you'd have to get me on that. I'd
Speaker 1: have to do. But reach But so basically going back
Speaker 1: to that. So the confusion in your mind really is
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say. It's all over the place,
Speaker 1: it's everywhere, and people try to escape that. But it's
Speaker 1: not that you're trying to escape confusion. What you've got
Speaker 1: to do is float through confusion. You're not like, don't
Speaker 1: isolate yourself from the world. A lot of people do monasteries.
Speaker 1: They're like, let's isolate ourselves, let's do this. But actually,
Speaker 1: you're meant to be zen and the Budda is meant
Speaker 1: to be inside of society. Why if you become a
Speaker 1: hermit outside of society, all you've done is made your
Speaker 1: life easy. What what have you achieved? So they say,
Speaker 1: in enlightenment stages, you become a hermit, and that's only
Speaker 1: the halfway mark. When you die and come back, you've
Speaker 1: got to get back into society. So at the minute,
Speaker 1: I cannot stand going out to society. It's really I've
Speaker 1: got all these things go in my head. Samurai this,
Speaker 1: Ninja that, and somebody is saying, oh, did you watch
Speaker 1: the football. No, I did not watch the football, and
Speaker 1: I do not care.
Speaker 2: I was quite meditating.
Speaker 1: I was having a jolly time. So but The question
Speaker 1: becomes is when when you the confusion out there in
Speaker 1: the world, when you go back into society, when you
Speaker 1: pass that half way mark, you will speak about football
Speaker 1: for ten hours and not be stressed about it, and
Speaker 1: you hate it, but you're like, that's wonderful you tell
Speaker 1: me about that football. I don't mind listening. I have
Speaker 1: got an easy going, amazing.
Speaker 2: The final one is, and this is an interesting one,
Speaker 2: is it's a less than fifty seven, which is discovering wo.
Speaker 1: Right. Moo is a concept which comes out of China
Speaker 1: and it we especially for anyone who meditates out there
Speaker 1: and does all the meditation. You often hear how many
Speaker 1: times have you read in a book no mind? They
Speaker 1: don't tell you the jap just saying no mind, no form.
Speaker 1: Know this and it's such a bad translation. So moo
Speaker 1: means absence, not no, so the absence of something. The
Speaker 1: best way to explain this is an apple on an
Speaker 1: apple tree. Right, an apple on an apple tree is
Speaker 1: only there from about July to September. It is not there.
Speaker 1: If you go there in January, the apple's not there.
Speaker 1: If you go there in March, is not there. But
Speaker 1: you know that apple is going to be there. That
Speaker 1: is the state of moo. If you open up the tree,
Speaker 1: the tree has no apples inside of it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: suddenly you open it. There's like a stock of fifty apples.
Speaker 1: All there is is the idea of the apple inside
Speaker 1: of that idea. So when you're talking, when you're doing anything,
Speaker 1: you're going constantly in and out of moo and which
Speaker 1: is called ooh, which is existence and non existence constantly.
Speaker 1: So your thought comes in I'm going to reach for
Speaker 1: a kind of coke, and you reach for a kind
Speaker 1: of coke, But before you reach for that kind of coke,
Speaker 1: it's in a state of moo. So there's a rhythm
Speaker 1: that goes in life in that moo and that absence.
Speaker 1: And what you're trying to do with that is what
Speaker 1: you're trying to do is reach deep down and stop
Speaker 1: your chattery mind going on a ticket and then just
Speaker 1: go back into that stage where it's not come out yet.
Speaker 1: You're thoughts are not rushing out, you're not throwing him
Speaker 1: into the world. You exist inside of that where it
Speaker 1: isn't quite there yet, and relax. And this is where
Speaker 1: subconscious and so in the best way I can explain
Speaker 1: it for is tennis. Tennis's one. Tennis players don't go
Speaker 1: in and go, oh, the balls coming from this angle
Speaker 1: or that's a seventy five degree angle, you would instantly
Speaker 1: to be defeated. They just go click click, click, click click,
Speaker 1: and it's perfect. Yeah, And that's why they say no
Speaker 1: form inside of form. So a tennis players going ah ah,
Speaker 1: and he's reaching and he's been dramatic. But how many
Speaker 1: thousands of hours did it take for him to have
Speaker 1: those reflexes? Thousands of hours because he lives in the
Speaker 1: state of moo. And that's what we should be trying
Speaker 1: to find, is this state of moo, this living inside
Speaker 1: a flowing world. And this is where the embrace of
Speaker 1: the confusion comes in. Is like don't don't, don't be
Speaker 1: like oh this and that and I'll think about that.
Speaker 1: Just flow through it. And the one of the examples
Speaker 1: they give in ancient Japanese texts is like a ball
Speaker 1: on the ocean. If there's a ball on the ocean
Speaker 1: and you try and grab it, it forever pushes and
Speaker 1: goes on the waist. If you're splashing around, the ball
Speaker 1: doesn't go on it just just pops around like that.
Speaker 1: So everything's confusion underneath, but it just exists inside of
Speaker 1: MEU like this.
Speaker 2: Wow, the books calls in in the Samurai sword. My
Speaker 2: guest today has been Anthony Cammens. You're so passionate about this.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. You know, I can see why you're ripping
Speaker 2: out books every year or two. How can people learn
Speaker 2: more about you? Do you have a YouTube channel?
Speaker 1: So what I would say to everyone the best thing
Speaker 1: to do is search on YouTube. Just search for the
Speaker 1: man who Killed the Ninja. I did a mini documentary
Speaker 1: called the Man who Killed the Ninja, and that will
Speaker 1: bring you to my channel and you can watch it
Speaker 1: and you can find out exactly what I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly okay, And your books are easily to get you.
Speaker 2: Watkins is a major publisher in England, so that means
Speaker 2: that you can get it on Amazon without a problem.
Speaker 2: Do you have like, uh lessons where you're actually teaching
Speaker 2: from the book or do you prefer the reader just
Speaker 2: take and interpret it in their own manner? I mean
Speaker 2: right or wrong way to go about reading your material?
Speaker 1: No, no, not at all, Not at all, keeping I
Speaker 1: would say, so it depends on what you're what the
Speaker 1: reader wants. If the reader wants a history of Japan.
Speaker 1: I have specifically got a series of books and I
Speaker 1: can do you know that, but if you want, if
Speaker 1: you just want the philosophical side, I would start with
Speaker 1: how to be a Modern Samurai and then Zen in
Speaker 1: the Samurai saw It and just read them and get
Speaker 1: them deep down my channel. I do talk about that,
Speaker 1: but it's about eighty percent history and about twenty percent philosophy,
Speaker 1: so you know, you have to be aware of that.
Speaker 1: This is my way of a getting people to really
Speaker 1: understand the Samurai. Basically, the samurai not popular anymore, and
Speaker 1: because of films like you know, the Last Summari, it's
Speaker 1: become cheesy. So my idea is let's recapture that samurai enthusiasm,
Speaker 1: go back to it.
Speaker 2: Anthony, A real pleasure having you on the program. Continue success,
Speaker 2: and I really appreciate you spending some time with me today.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much on a wonderful time.
Speaker 2: This book is also narrated, so if you want to
Speaker 2: get Zen in the Samurai Sword, he has narrated all
Speaker 2: the lessons, one hundred lessons in this new book. It's
Speaker 2: Zen in the Samurai Sword Japanese Warrior Techniques for Agility,
Speaker 2: clarity and calm. I don't know, and I looked at
Speaker 2: a little bit off. The meditation parts of it are
Speaker 2: pretty cool, actually, I like that, and he made some
Speaker 2: very good points. The Japanese are very exacting, very traditional
Speaker 2: in their meditative techniques as well as everything else, and
Speaker 2: maybe a little too formal for an American. I learned
Speaker 2: my transtdental meditation in a weekend, in three days, really,
Speaker 2: and then had follow ups after that. I don't know
Speaker 2: if I could have sat and done months or even
Speaker 2: years of practice before learning it. It was so simple.
Speaker 2: I haven't really talked about the experience I had. It
Speaker 2: was a school in Palo Alto, California, and I was
Speaker 2: only eighteen, and it was developed by the Maharishi Meshyogi,
Speaker 2: who understood the impatience of Americans and developed this twenty
Speaker 2: minute system which drops you down to a deep data level,
Speaker 2: almost like sleep, but deeper, but you're completely aware.
Speaker 1: And in that.
Speaker 2: Meditative date, you relax for twenty minutes and then you
Speaker 2: slowly come out of it, and what tremendous healing takes
Speaker 2: place and you reset, You reset for the morning, and
Speaker 2: you reset for the afternoon evening, and oh my god,
Speaker 2: I don't know I'd be a different person if I
Speaker 2: hadn't learned a meditative technique. So the Zen meditation may
Speaker 2: be something that people like my cousin took a Zen
Speaker 2: course and he said it was really good. He is
Speaker 2: an emergency room physician, he says, he, I mean, he
Speaker 2: swears by his meditative technique. He's in Santa Cruz, so
Speaker 2: you know, everybody's different. So check that out. Zen and
Speaker 2: the Samurai Sword. And by the way, Anthony's got just
Speaker 2: tons of video. You can see him on YouTube. It's
Speaker 2: all free. And also you look up Anthony Cummins his
Speaker 2: see umm s Antony is a nt O n Y
Speaker 2: Anthony Cummins and he's involved in numerous interviews because he's
Speaker 2: been doing this for years. And I mentioned at the
Speaker 2: very beginning this is the tenth book in this series,
Speaker 2: the Samurai series, so fascinating and really what a outstanding
Speaker 2: interview someone who's very passionate obviously in his work. So
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed that. Hey, listen, we have our
Speaker 2: first tour of the year. It's our seventh annual Grand
Speaker 2: Egyptian Tour April twenty eight through May tenth. This is
Speaker 2: really I'm excited about this. This is a megalithic tour
Speaker 2: because we have designed the itinerary to see very old,
Speaker 2: rarely visited sites up and down the Nile, and it
Speaker 2: is a fabulous tour. For all the details and information
Speaker 2: go to Earthacents dot com forward slash Tours. You'll see
Speaker 2: the entire itinerary and it is wonderful. I want to
Speaker 2: mention also that most of these tours are extremely expensive,
Speaker 2: and when I say expensively, between ten and twelve thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: ours are left than half that much. It includes all
Speaker 2: your in country flights, all your accommodations, your food, your beverages,
Speaker 2: and access to private tours. And when I say private tours,
Speaker 2: we are not with the general public. We have our
Speaker 2: own access to pyramids, to temples, to sites that are
Speaker 2: up and down the Nile. And it includes a five
Speaker 2: star tour of the Nile in this wonderful cruise ship
Speaker 2: that is just amazing. For all the details and all
Speaker 2: the information, go to Earth Ancients dot com forward slash
Speaker 2: tours check it out. If you have any questions whatsoever,
Speaker 2: go to send me an email. Go to Earth Agents
Speaker 2: to the number four of the letter you at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com and let me know what's going on. I'll
Speaker 2: be happy to answer your questions. All right, that's it
Speaker 2: for this program. I want to think my guest today
Speaker 2: Anthony Cummins and his new books In and the Samurai Sword,
Speaker 2: coming to us from England. As always, the team of
Speaker 2: Gail tour, Mark Foster and Faya Pavar. You guys rock
Speaker 2: all right, take care of you well and we'll talk
Speaker 2: to you next time. The Conduct