The Warrior Sages

It’s not a modern concept to understand a holy man as a fighter, but in old China the monks and sages had to fight, the land was dangerous, full of cut throats and bandits, a monk that didn’t fight and win never came home. So they got very good at wielding a sword or a long stick.

Later the Japanese Samurai came from the same tradition of swordsmanship and bravery, they became legendary.

Musashi (1584-1645) killed his first man at the age of fifteen. He fought with two wooden swords against opponents with metal swords. He was in over 60 fights, he won them all, killing his adversaries and then he retired at the age of 29 to write books, paint, and build temple gardens. His most famous book is “The Book of Five Rings”.

He never married but he had a long term girlfriend, a courtesan that he loved. He walked bare foot, rubbing his feet with oil at the end of the day and toweling them down. His Buddhist name was ‘Niten Dōraku’.

He adopted two sons called Mikinosuke and Lori. Minkinosuke died when he committed seppuku following the tradition of Junshi, which required a warrior to kill himself if his lord died. Musashi was a hermit, a Buddhist monk, he practiced zazen meditation.

I was taught the stories of the old warrior sages of China by my ol’ teacher. I love their simplicity, their bravery and their wisdom, and how they were always calm in a crisis, qualities I have tried to teach my readers, and to personally emulate in this life.

When I started to fight in the mirror-world against the devil beings (the ghouls) I often thought what would Musashi do? On several occasions I saw his armor, it was a deep green leather with studs on it, and on the shoulder was a raised piece that looked like a small curved wings.

If you are in a ghoul crisis refuse to give an inch and be calm, refuse to be a victim, vow to never retreat. This makes them very scared of you, as normally they can manipulate humans easily with fear. No fear, no emotion that was our sacred vow.

While observing your ghoul opponents look for their weaknesses. They may be full of bombast and threats, but that often is an attempt to hide their fear, look for that fear it’s your ally.

We learned in the ghoul worlds that if you are outnumbered knock the biggest one down first, the others will flee. That applies to real life as well.

One night we fought 70,000+ beings over a period of six hours, they looked like Orcs with armor, we were six in number. We destroyed them all by the time dawn came up.

Don’t let the bastards grind you down. The more you look for their weaknesses, the more it will encourage you enormously.