Meditation VI: Way of the Warrior
We’ve just gotten soft.
Gary V. He’s on it.
Today I didn’t want to work. All I did was being lazy. But watching a clip from Gary V gave me a kick up the ass.
I’m reminding myself that it’s much easier to be here working on this than to be in the trenches. As my great grandparents had to do during the first and second world wars. Much easier.
I need to not be full of shit. Today I need to get up, get out there and go hit the gym.
Heavy squats. And maybe rack up a 1/2 mile swim after that.
Why not?
There’s everything to play for.
To tell a good story… How can I tell my story and be authentic?
If I want to be authentic, well, then I need to put out what I am most afraid of sharing with the world. My story. Who I am, what I’ve done. It’s about real work with meaning and passion. Not just getting lots of people to see stuff. Focus on the gift.
You do need to give it, get it out there as well.
Gary V
There is a fine balance to be struck between creating and sharing. Between teaching and reaching.
Steve Pavlina spread his website via word of mouth.
He started in the days when blogging wasn’t a big thing. Now we have Vlogs.
Tell a story. Add value through entertaining or educating.
Brings up so many questions.
How do I do so? Are my articles on Musashi informative? Are they entertaining? To who? Who would enjoy reading such a piece?
Sometimes, I feel at a complete loss. Like nothing I’ve ever done has been right or useful or productive. Friends around me seem full of power and on the form.
Yet I am lackluster and drained. Though on paper I’ve been active and getting out there, there is a sense of pain and tension that bothers me.
The kind of pain and disease that you feel when you talk to an old school friend and they ask that dreadful question. “So what do you do now, for money?”
Questions like this, and the people who ask them, are always met by a sense of unease and revulsion within me.
For one reason or another, I begin to question myself. I’m just not someone who should be teaching or coaching men or women on relationships and sexuality. Maybe my articles are just useless and boring.
I begin to ask and dwell and strategise, instead of embarking on that journey. Even though the way is clear and all that can be done is to walk the path.
After a while, I ask myself: If it were true, how could I change that?
And thankfully, a sense of positive affirmation comes from somewhere within. And I remember that I’ve made many a positive difference in people’s lives. I rally myself by the need to get out there and make it happen. I remind myself of how many hurdles have been overcome. How many rivers crossed. How many lives before mine were laid down?
And then I think to myself: I just need to tell the story as it is and then the people will come and those who want to stay will stay.
—
Dealing with self-doubt is a grave challenge.
Reading Musashi has given me insights on this. And it has shown me further examples of where masculine and feminine is evident in our cultures and archetypes. Such as the notion that masculine presence, clarity, and confidence are renewed and restored through austerity and challenge.
I learned from David Deida’s book, the Way of the Superior Man, that through severe challenge and austerity, through the rawness encountered with wilderness, we come to know who we are and rediscovered our great realisations.
The promise and will to serve and follow our destiny.
This is clear to me through dozens of examples, but I will share some that I have been exploring lately.
When Musashi, the titular hero of the novel, feels “overcome with self-doubt” he goes directly into the mountains. And lives like a hermit or a mountain fugitive for several days or a week. Much like David recommends and like I have carried out with Vision Quests. Go out and find a hill and sit there in the wilderness. Just like John Krakauer, the novelist who wrote Into the Wild, and Into Thin Air has often described in his own life.
And it is one I’ve experienced myself as well. As well as in the lives and pilgrimages of others. Many great men, be they saints, great warriors, or novelists and teachers have undertaken this rite and passage.
Musashi himself (a historical figure, and author of The Book of the Five Rings) would sit under cold waterfalls up on the mountain. The novel describes his skin and hair to have a particular sheen to them from the effect of long hours under the torrents of water. He comes back into civilisation in a state of near sublime clarity. An incorrigible strength of conviction and utter confidence is his prize.
To observers, he looks like a man possessed. Having fasted or eaten very little, he is both dirty and emaciated.
Inside, however, he has claimed the ultimate prize.
Presence. Vision. Truth.
It reminds me of a fantastic scene in one of the best cartoons I have ever seen.
I’m referring to Samurai Jack and the Three Blind Archers.
In this, our samurai hero, Jack, is trying to locate and claim a stone of unspeakable power, so that he can return to the past and claim back the lands of his people, which have been taken from him by an evil, shapeshifting demon named Aku. But in order to claim this prize, Jack must climb a lone tower, defended by three archers.
These archers are exceptionally skilled. Raining withering hails of arrows down on anyone who attempts to summit their tower. They decimate an entire army at the beginning of the show. Without so much as a single hand being placed on the tower’s base.
Jack attempts to approach, but is almost killed, and quickly realises any ordinary effort he makes will surely fail. He continues to make his attempts, and through some clever deduction, eventually discovers the archers on top of the tower are only able to fire (with pinpoint accuracy) when he makes a sound.
They cannot see him.
They are blind.
He is puzzled by this. Awed and overwhelmed by their skill and ferocity he retreats further into the winter forest surrounding the tower to collect himself and plan his next move.
There, after a time sitting alone in the snow, he realises he must meditate on this dilemma. He seeks out a waterfall, and sitting underneath it, folds his legs into the lotus and begins to contemplate. This is the Zazen method of sitting. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to call this form Adhittanna, the type of meditation practiced by the Marathon Monks of Mount Hatai.
Enduring the steely waterfall, fed by the snow of this barren and frigid landscape, Jack remains alert and relaxed. He begins to unfold his attention outward. With gradual steps, he begins to hear the sounds of the world. The deer scraping away the snow to find the cud and chew. The bird landing on the birch tree. The sound of the water rolling along its way.
Through this focused, open attention, our samurai begins to see the world, not with his eyes, but with all his senses. He is now one with the forest. And one with his enemies. He now understands them so thoroughly, it is like he is one of them.
It is actually the highest form of martial art to love your opponent so completely that you can read their every moment. This is Bushido. The way of the Warrior. The highest ideal of the samurai was to take life in service of life, in service of the Buddha or the Gods. In service of freedom and love. In service of the divine.
At this point, Jack is ready to face his enemies. He returns to the tower, and, in a fierce and bloody battle, ends the Archer’s reign of terror. And sets free the souls who the stone had captured to do its evil bidding.
There are many parallels with stories such as this to real life. It’s how we try to inculcate values to ourselves and our children. The promise of the stone, to be able to turn back time, to give the wielder control over a power no mortal should ever have control over, even one as honourable and righteous as Samurai Jack.
It is through promises of such power that darker urges take control of our lives, blind and bind us to their will. This can be anything. A desire for control over others, over our fate, over the forces of nature itself.
Musashi also has become a far greater warrior, with a near-supernatural clarity and sense of indefatigable purpose after his period of time in austerity and isolation in the wilderness.
All this talk has got me thinking I need another period in the wilderness.
And has given me the energy to now hit the squat rack, and then the pool.
What about you?
