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