Jocko Podcast - 100: With Tim Ferriss. Musashi, and How Warrior Way Relates To Life

Episode Date: November 14, 2017

0:00:00 - Opening 0:01:00 - Tim's recent Silent Retreat. 0:09:12 - Musashi, An Epic Novel of The Samurai Era  3:03:52 - Final Take-Aways.  The Path. 3:33:37 - Support: JockoStore stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare, Origin Brand Apparel, with Jocko White Tea,  Onnit Fitness stuff, and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual.  4:02:26 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 100 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And we have a guest with us tonight who is in large part responsible for this podcast existing in the first place, who has provided massive support behind pretty much everything I've done, including books and podcast and events and all this other stuff that I've been getting after for the last couple of years. since I departed the shadows and stepped into the normal world. In fact, this is the person that pulled me from the shadows into the normal world. Mr. Tim Ferriss, Tim, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Jock.

And we have you in an interesting state right now. You do. Because you just got done with a 10-day, silent retreat and a five-day fast embedded in there somewhere, right? I did. So it was my first 10-day silent meditation. You know what my notes were in here? After I said that, my notes are dude question mark, like dude.

Because that's what that makes me think, just like, dude. Okay, tell us about it a little bit. I know you'll probably cover it in death later. It was in retrospect, probably layering a few too many things on top of one another. but it was my first meditation retreat, also my first silent retreat combined and consisted of 10 days of waking up at 5.30. I support that part.

Beginning, I know it's sleeping in, but starting at 5.30, hadn't woken up with the stars in a while. And then sitting for 45 minutes of meditation, walking for 45 minutes of meditation, and doing that until 9 p.m. with the exception of meals. But as you mentioned, I fasted for the first five days out of 10 because I wanted to see how that affected my state.

And I sat during meals effectively, meaning meditated during those times as well. And it was an intense, unexpectedly intense experience because it unlayers your psyche in a fashion that I hadn't experienced before. Since you have no distractions, you're not permitted to read. There's no music. there's no talking you're discouraged from any writing there are no devices and that means there's no real escape from whatever is ricocheting inside your own head and as you go through the passing days you drop into deeper layers of your personality and the stories that you've constructed for yourself as well as direct experience and memories that you haven't thought of and in my case

20, 25 years, 30 years, 35 years in some cases, these very vivid intense memories that come back. And so people have a very difficult time at points. And the teachers are there every other day to interact on a one-on-one basis to ensure that people don't have a complete psychotic break, I suppose. Did you hear random question? Would you hear people like crying? in their rooms or whatever. Heard people crying. Definitely heard people crying.

People went through a lot of pain. And there were sublime experiences as well in moments of deep clarity or alleviation of suffering. But I think that, and I was actually just looking forward to describing the experience to our mutual friend, Dr. Peter Attia. who may be the most like cerebral, intense, impatient, analytical person I've ever met to a degree that even I find hilarious,

which is difficult to achieve in this world, in this life. And his level of obsession and perseverating on concepts endlessly makes me want to do a second retreat with Peter when he's not allowed to tell me how he's feeling. because I think the more you have run your life through your prefrontal cortex, the harder you fall. And I would not recommend it for most people. Really? Because I would have left the retreat three or four times probably were it not for one particular teacher who had decades of experience with tens of thousands of retreatings.

because I felt like I was going to leave in worse shape than I came in, that I had regressed to a very reactive emotional state and that it was going to be a huge handicap when I left. I felt like I was regressing tremendously, and he was able to write the ship a little bit along the way. But if he had not been there and I had left, even on day nine, I remember I was like, people are supposed to be in this deep state of bliss, or at least that was my perception,

I feel like I've just been rubbed raw on all these nerves that I've numbed from difficult experiences in childhood and so on, have just been exposed at the surface. So I think it's, I think it requires a high level of supervision. And this may not be the, the forum for discussing what I'm about to say, but for those people who have the experience, it might make some sense, it had the characteristics of a very, a very strong psychedelic experience, but laid out over 10 days where there's no escape. So instead of ripping off the Band-Aid, you are being exposed to facets of your life and character that perhaps you have not faced in decades. So yeah, it was a fun 10 days.

we get when you get sleep deprivation which i've gone through some significant sleep deprivation you know you have those kind of um you know you take a trip without leaving the farm type situations and and for me it was nothing nothing crazy or anything you know i remember seeing stop signs in the ocean and uh traffic lights in the ocean and stuff like that's not crazy well okay crazy but it's not it wasn't some psychological sort of unpacking where i was meeting my former self or anything like that. But yeah, you definitely, that's when I hear, because I've never tried psychedelic drugs.

And when I, when people talk about them, to me, it does not sound fun to me. Because I think that where I think that where I would end up would not be a happy place. Yeah. And I don't really need to hang out there very much. And I should also say that I don't, in the case of the silent retreat or in the case of

psychedelics do it for fun. And I've had a few people ask me, did you enjoy your experience? I had a few staffers afterwards. They're like, oh, did you enjoy your retreat? And I'm like, I found it valuable. I wouldn't use the word enjoy. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you obviously are going to unpack this thing, and I'm sure you'll do awesome episode talking about it as you look back on it right now. your brain is it's still 70% there and they told us at the end which I thought was very appropriate

because it applies to so many things they said or one of the teachers said you think you're normal right now and you're not you're very hypersensitive your retreat is half done so it'll take 10 days the equivalent amount of time to reintegrate and get retethered and I remember thinking to myself I have fucking book launch coming

I don't have 10 days to gingerly walk my way back to reality But nonetheless, that's true for so much, right? I mean, it's if you have a book and your book is 90% done, I remember I told a more seasoned writer when I was writing my second book, I said, I'm 90% done. They said, oh, congratulations, you're only 50% left. Yeah, it's the trim work.

It's just like building a house. It's the trim work, all that little stuff that takes longer than you think it's going to take. Well, so to just set the stage a little bit, number one, you were on this podcast before, which was an awesome episode, and you talked about some of your hard experiences growing up and going through college and actually having suicidal thoughts and beyond that suicidal plans, that was podcast number 50. And it really helped out a lot of people.

I got an immense amount of great feedback from people. And so thank you for doing that. And on that podcast, we also briefly discussed a novel called Musa. And it's just this incredible book that you'd read and I had read and the ending of the book is just full on epic and it's also a thousand page book and it takes the whole the the the ending of the book is literally the last page and a half so that's it you have to read a thousand pages to get this thing this ending and we decided on that podcast that we would do do that book for podcast 100. So here we are and we're going to talk about the book Musashi by Iji Yashikawa Yeah Eiji Yoshikawa

And I'm just going to accept the fact That I will be getting my Japanese pronunciation corrected All day long I won't correct it Unless you want me to correct it

Well maybe After I get done with something You could tell me It's just gonna suck That's all there is too Now the book So if you don't know anything about it Miuoto Misashi

Great Japanese Swordsman and he wrote the book, The Book of Five Rings. And I actually covered that book on podcast number 80. So if you haven't listened to 50 and if you haven't listened to 80, go listen to those two. And it'll give you some background, which I don't want to spend a bunch of time on there because we spend a bunch of time on it on that podcast. But here's the basic understanding of whom we saw she was, born into a samurai family around 1584, fought his first duel at the age of 13 against a grown man who he killed by throwing him to the ground and beating him with a bockin bockin bockin oh this is going to get ugly that's a that's a tough but i but yeah

wooden sword which is a wooden sword see i should have just said wooden sword we would have been good in that in and then through his life he traveled and he did all kinds of things and he fought 60 sword duels i used to think that they were all to the death but they actually weren't right there's Some of them were just, like if you could submit. You know, the opponent could just say, yep, you won. And you could agree beforehand what the rules of engagement would be. Oh, okay. So they could have a discussion and determine the extent to which you can inflict damage on the other person.

So they weren't all to the death. They could have a basically gentleman's agreement, like, let's not kill each other today. Let's only do this one to broken bones and handicapping. How do you, you got a, that's a hardcore, um, conversation. Yeah, but how do you come off not looking like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you don't want to be the first one to say, hey, let's just break bones today. Let's just break bones.

You just be like, no, we'll go to the death. That's it. Yeah. That's weird. But yeah, so, but a bunch of them were to the death. A lot of them were to the death. And again, um, that then he got done with that, all that fighting and he wrote the book of five ranks.

He also wrote a book or, like, steps called, do kodo close japanese has this this stutter constant and for people who are wondering why am i at the like

japanese conciliary it's it's because I lived in Japan it's my first trip overseas ever from 15 to 16 as an exchange student

where I was the only not I was the only American in a 5,000 person Japanese high school where I also wore a uniform and did judo and lived with the Japanese family

for an entire year So that is why I'm commenting on Japanese. Dokkod. Doku is alone. Kho is to walk, let's say, do is way. It's the same do from judo or Aikido, which is way. So it's the way of walking alone. Yeah.

And I should have said that. That's the reason why I thought it would be awesome to have you on here, because you do have this knowledge, not only of the language, but of the culture. And you did this, you've done a bunch of weird stuff. Cool. Yeah, Yabusame, Japanese horseback archery. Right. Which, by the way, also pretty dangerous, turns out.

Yeah, yeah. And so that's why I wanted to have you on here, because you've got a massive amount of knowledge that I don't have. So, again, and that do-co-do. Close enough. We're going with it. Let's roll with it. It's covered in podcast 80 as well.

And also, this is a spoiler alert. And I guess I should do this every time I do a book, because I do books on here a lot, and I always tell what's going to happen. but for this one, this is a spoiler alert because the book, it does have the most epic ending. I think it might be the most epic ending of any book. I honestly think that it might be that. And we are going to cover it.

So if you want to read this book, then we gave you about a year to read it, but if you haven't read it yet, maybe you're not going to read it and you should just listen. But if you do want to read the book and get the full satisfaction of it, then stop right now and then go read Musashi. Take another year to read it. a thousand pages long and and then come back and listen us so can i say one thing jophe yeah absolutely all right this book and we can get back into some of the history but i bought this book i have a paperback version decades ago in tokyo at a bookstore called kino kynchuken's a huge bookstore it's i want to say at least four floors maybe six or seven and i carried it

around giving myself scoliosis for years and years because i was so intimidated by this thing. It's a few inches thick. The paper is, it's like onion skin. And I was like, oh, God, I just can't. Every time I pick it up, I just, oh, God, I can't get into this. Once I started, I could not put it down and I finished it in a couple of days. I mean, it's, it's that good. So it's, don't be intimidated by this, by the size. It's not, it's not as much of a slog as you would expect. Once you get into it, you just get sucked in. And the reading, the writing is beautiful. It's very clean, very clean writing. And the story is, that's another thing I should say too, is, so there's a bunch of intertwining narratives in there about a bunch of different people and characters. And they all are interesting and impactful. And they all add to the story. Obviously, for a couple hour podcast, we can't get into all those. And really, we'll be hitting like this, the main plot line, I guess. But there's all these other things that are going on that we just don't have time to touch on. that are really great to read about.

And there's so many, if this guy would have been a screenwriter. Oh my gosh. Yeah. The dialogue alone makes the book worth it. Yeah. It's just a great book. And that's that. I guess we might as well get into it a little bit.

And when I did podcast 80 with a book of Five Rings, I started with the beginning of this book. And I said when I did that, that when we do this book, I'm reading it again. because it's so legit. So here we go. Takezo. Is that right?

Takizzo. Takazzo. Takazzo lay among the corpses. There were thousands of them. The whole world's gone crazy, he thought dimly. A man might as well be a dead leaf floating in the autumn breeze. He himself looked like one of the lifeless bodies surrounding him. He tried to raise his head, but could only

lifted a few inches from the ground he couldn't remember ever feeling so weak how long have I been here he wondered flies came buzzing around his head he wanted to brush them away but couldn't even muster the energy to raise his arm it was stiff almost brittle like the rest of his body I must have been out for quite a while he thought wiggling one finger at a time little did he know he was wounded with two bullets lodged firmly in his thigh. Low, dark clouds shifted ominously across the sky. The night before, sometime between midnight and dawn, a blinding raid had drenched the

plain of Segi Jahara. It was now past noon on the 15th of the ninth month of 1600. Though the typhoon had passed, now and then fresh torrents of rain would fall on the corpses onto Tickazzo's upturned face. Each time it came, he opened and closed his mouth like a fish trying to drink in the droplets. It's like the water they wipe a dying man's lips with, he reflected savoring each bit of moisture. His head was numb, his thoughts, the fleeting shadows of delirium. His side had lost.

He knew that much. Hadiaki, supposedly an ally, had been secretly in league with the eastern arms. army and when it turned on Mitsunari's troops at twilight, the tide of the battle turned two. He then attacked the armies of the other commanders, Yukita, Shimazu, Konishi, and the collapse of the Western Army was complete. In only half a day's fighting, the question of who would henceforth rule the country was settled. It was Tokujawa Yasu, the powerful Edai's Daimal. Images of his sister and the old villagers floated before his eyes. I'm dying, he thought, without a tinge of sadness.

Is this what it's really like? He felt drawn to the piece of death like a child mesmerized by a flame. So that's how the book kind of kicks off. This guy was just born on the battlefield, basically, and is fighting in these savage battles as a kid, as a kid. And I think it's interesting that you start the book where a guy's about to die, you know, and I think that's, there's something significant to that, and it's not the only time in the book where he's about to die.

He faces these bad situations over and over again. And again, we just have to fast forward through massive chocker, of this book. And I was just going to make one comment. Absolutely. For those people who are wondering why we're saying, Takezo. So,

Takizzo is, represented by the same two characters that can also be read as Musashi. So there are different readings for characters in Japanese, depending on if they are adapted Chinese readings or native Japanese readings. So Musashi is the, what would be called the Kunyomi or the Japanese reading and Takazzo, same two characters, would be the Chinese reading, basically. I mean, the Chinese origin reading, which is called Onyomi.

So it's the same person. Takezo and then Musashi. Are the Japanese and Chinese characters related linguistically? They are very, very similar. So the Japanese took Chinese characters, which they call kanji, and they converted them into what are referred to as syllabaries. So we have an alphabet, A, B, C, D. We have vowels and consonants. In Japanese, they have what are called syllabaries,

meaning they are syllables instead of individual letters. So you have khaki kukuke, ma mimu, memo, sashi, which is part of the reason why Japanese have so much trouble with almost every language. They kind of got robbed when, like, the gods were handing out sounds. So they have trouble with a lot of languages, including English. But nonetheless, those were simplified versions of the characters. So, for instance, the character for that you could say represents peace in Chinese,

which is un. So if for instance, like, peace, the word in Chinese would be un-chuan. So I've spent time in China as well. In Japanese, it's Anzeng. It's very similar. And then the character for An is, has a roof and then a woman under a roof. and that represents peace. That was then modified into the sound,

the vowel ah, and there are fewer strokes in that. So that's some of the framework for the Japanese writing systems. They have two syllabaries and then the Chinese characters that they use. The languages are not mutually intelligible, though, are they?

Not at all. Now, there are certain words that are not terribly close, but maybe what you would find, say, between Portuguese and Spanish, for instance. So you would have a word like telephone, which is literally electric talk, which is, and even electricity has cloud and dragon underneath. It was kind of cool. But anyway, that's denwa in Japanese, Deng Hua in Mandarin, and then Zhonghua in Korean. because a lot of the words in Korea were also borrowed from the Chinese characters. But beyond that, the grammar, everything else is completely, completely different.

And I think I actually in here cover where he gets, where he comes up with a new name or when he decides to take the new name. Yeah, so the guy that I'm talking about in the beginning as Tim just pointed out, that is Musashi. Take azo. Takeozo. Takezo. Yeah. Takezo. It's a top one.

Takezo. The zo is a long o. Takizzo. Takezo. Takezo. And that is Musashi. Exactly. And you'll find that out shortly.

For those people who are watching the video, that is Takezole and Musashi, those two characters. Oh, okay. Anyway. So what does that, what does the rest of that thing that say? It's a bookmark? What is that? This is the wrapping that was put around the cover of this book in the English section

in Kino-Ku-Kinio bookstore so that people could figure out what the content was without having to read the back jacket in a. English. So this is you know, Musashi, Um, Umi Ovatur, Kokiminuong, and so on and so forth. And then Miyamoto, Musashi, and then Yoshikawa Eiji is all

here and then a little description on the back. Are there just copies of this? Everyone read this in Japan? This, I am maybe misremembering this, but I remember at the time looking

at this book and reading a about the, as they would call it on the back cover, the best-selling samurai epic. And somewhere reading that this book has sold something absurd, like 20 million plus copies in a country of whatever it might be, 150 million people, that seems, now that I've been through the book process a few times,

like it cannot be true, but it is a very, very, very famous book in Japan. And everybody's going to know, who, they would say Miyamoto Musashi they would give the last name first everyone is going to know who this guy is and they have, I mean,

hundreds of comic books and so on historical comic books, fictional comic books that have been written about Musashi. Yeah, and this thing originally came out in a series I think in

1939 or 1933 or 1933 or 1935 or something like that and it originally came out a series, I think in like a magazine or something. Quite, quite possibly. It could be the case. I don't know. I'm pretty sure.

So we'll go with it. All right. Now we are going to get to a point. Again, we're fast forwarding it. And at this point, Musashi's been accused of murder. And he's been hung from a tree. And Takuan.

Takuan, yeah. Takuan, yes. Takuan is sort of this kind of traveling priest, and he's sort of counseling and advising and, yeah, just sort of counseling and advising Musashi at this point. And he's kind of wandering around as Musashi's now been accused of murder and hung up in this tree where they're going to eventually kill him. And here we go, going to the book, Takuan, save me.

Takeo's cry for help was loud and plantive. The branch was beginning to tremble as though it, as though the whole tree were weeping. I want to be a better man. I realize how important it is. What a privilege it is to be born human. I'm almost dead, but I understand what it means to be alive. And now that I know my whole life will consist of being tied to this tree. I can't undo what I've done.

done. You're finally coming to your senses. For the first time in your life, you're talking like a human being. I don't want to die, Taka Zoa cried. I want to live. I want to go out. Try again. Do everything right this time. His body convulsed with his sobbing. Takawan, please, help me, help me. The monk shook his head. Sorry, Takazo. It is out of my hands. It is the law of nature. You can't do things over again. That's life. Everything in it is for keeps. Everything.

You can't put your head back on after the enemies cut it off. That's the way it is. Of course, I feel sorry for you, but I can't undo that rope because it wasn't me who tied it. It was you. All I can do is give you some advice. Face death bravely and quietly. Say a prayer.

and hope someone bothers to listen. And for the sake of your ancestors, Tekezo, have the decency to die with a peaceful look on your face. The clatter of Takwan's sandals faded into the distance. He was gone, and Takazzo cried no more. Following the spirit of the monk's advice, he shut the eyes that had just experienced a great awakening and forgot everything.

He forgot about living and dying, and under the myriad of tiny stars lay perfectly still as the night breeze sighed through the tree. He was cold. Very cold. I mean, obviously wrote a book called Extreme Ownership where you're responsible for your actions and you need to take responsibility for things in your lives,

but this thing where he says, I can't untie the rope because it wasn't me that tied it. It was you. You put yourself in this position. And that's the way it is. Once your head is caught off, you can't put it back on. Musashi or Takazzo gets he he does crazy stuff too right he's he's young and he does crazy things and one of the crazy things he does is his sister's in some kind of jail or something

and he just like attacks it and he loses and he gets arrested and he gets put in prison for three years and at this point he's getting released from jail after he's been in jail for three years and again obviously i just skipped three years of this guy's jail time which actually is pretty short in the book. They don't spend a lot of time in jail. But he's been in jail for three years. He gets out and he's he's having a conversation and here we talk. Takazzo smiled silently. I want to wander about on my own for a while. And then Takuan, who's back, that's who he's having the conversation with. Sorry. He says, you should change your first name to Takwana interjected. Why not read the Chinese characters of your name as Musashi instead of Takazzo?

You can keep writing your name as the same as before. It's only fitting that everything should begin anew on this day of your rebirth. Miyamoto Musashi, it's a good name, a very good name. We should drink to it. The following day, they both left the castle. Musashi was talking, Musashi was taking his first steps into a new life, a life of discipline and training in the martial arts. During his three-year incarceration, he had resolved to mass.

the art of war. Explain the first, the first last name thing. Miyamoto. That's a place, right? Or is it? In this case, in many cases, it refers to

originally a place. So my understanding is that Miyamoto refers to whether it's a town or a village or not province. It would be smaller where his family originated from. It's not always the case,

but even if you look at English names, you find the same thing, right? So it could have been in English and in a lot of languages, it often relates to an early vocation. So Ferris, for instance, comes from Ferris, like F-E-R-R-O-U-S, like Ferris Oxide, Iron. Because way back in the day, at some point, my family worked with metals.

And that's where the name comes from. Is Miyamoto the first name or the last name? Miamoto is the last name. So similarly, the author's, of this, the author of this book, Eiji Yoshikawa. The Yoshikawa is the last name. But why do I say Miyamoto-Masashi? The Japanese always say the last name first.

Okay. They say the family name first. Except for in this guy's case. Eiji. So this is because it's been English. Got it. Yeah.

That makes sense. Yeah. Making some progress here. So for instance, in January. Very slow progress with Djago. intellectual capability maxing out we're there yeah so in in in Japan for instance even as a young kid when you're talking to

your friends you you would never I can't recall even once saying someone's first name you would just say uh oh you know Yamamoto Tanaka like you would so I would call you Ferris yeah you call me well in my case because Ferris was like not confusing, but they knew I was American and Tim, like Timu, as they would say, was shorter, so they just called me Timu.

Yeah. Timu's something. You get that in the military too where everyone kind of gets introduced by your last name and everyone, for a while, everyone just kind of calls each other, you know, Willink, Ferris, Charles, you know. Right. But that's how they address each other pretty normally. Oh yeah, all the time.

Yeah. With the exception of saying my host family, where I'm dealing with everybody who has the same last name. It would get very confusing. So then I would call them by their first names. Check. Check. All right.

Now, this book does have a romantic interest in it. I hate to inform everyone. And it's so, it's absolutely worth covering because it's the, the way it gets handled throughout is just freaking epic. So his romantic interest is a woman named Outsu. Otsu. Oh, yes. See?

Otsu. And he's, again, we can't cover the whole story, but this is his romantic interest. And we will, he's, she's in and out of the story. And the main point is that even though he desires her and wants to be with her at the same time, there's something that's more important to him. And that is the way of the sword. So here we go. Back to the book.

Musashi covered her small white hand, which was resting on the rain. with his own listen he said plaintively I beg of you just stop and think what's there to think about I told you I've just become a new man I stayed in that musty hole for three years I read books I thought I screamed and cried then suddenly the light dawned I understood what it means to be human I have a new name Miyamoto Musashi I want to dedicate myself to training and discipline I want to spend moment of every day working to improve myself. I now know how far I have to go. If you choose to bind your life to mind, you'll never be happy. There will be nothing but hardship and it won't get

any easier as it goes along. It'll get more and more difficult. When you talk like that, I feel closer to you than ever. Now I'm convinced I was right. I found the best man I could ever find even if I search for the rest of my life. He saw he was just making things worse. I'm sorry, I just can't take you with me. Well, then, I'll just follow along. As long as I don't interfere with your training, what harm would it do?

You won't even know I'm around. Musashi could find no answer. I won't bother you, I promise. He remained silent. It's all right, then, isn't it? Just wait here. I'll be back in a second, and I'll be furious if you try and sneak away.

Outsu ran off towards the basket weaving shop. Musashi thought of ignoring everything and running to in the opposite direction. Though the will was there, his feet couldn't move. Otsu looked back and called, Remember, don't try to sneak off. She smiled, showing her dimples, and Musashi inadvertently nodded. Satisfied by this gesture, she disappeared into the shop. If he was going to escape, this was the time.

His heart told him so, but his body was still shackled by Outsu's pretty dimples and pleading eyes, how sweet she was. It was certain no one in the world would save his sister, or save his sister, loved him so much. And it wasn't as though he disliked her. He looked at the sky. He looked into the water, desperately gripped the railing, troubled and confused.

Soon tiny bits of wood began floating from the bridge into the flowing stream. Outsu reappeared on the bridge in new straw sandals, light yellow leggings, and a large traveling hat tied under the chin with a crimson ribbon. She'd never looked more beautiful. But Musashi was nowhere to be seen. With a cry of shock, she burst into tears. Then her eyes fell upon the spot on the railing from which the chips of wood had fallen. There, carved with the point of a dagger was the clearly inscribed message, forgive me, forgive me. I love how measured his emotions are in the prose. He clearly did not dislike her. Yeah. That's heavy. That's like, that's like I love you and talk his speech. Yeah, it is. It is. But yeah, that is the, that is the

nightmare scenario for women right there. That is it. That's abandonment issues. Yeah. And having spent, you know, quite some time in the SEAL teams, you know, this, this is a real thing, you know, guys, they have to choose between this girl and their job. And of course, some guys can wake at work and blah, blah, blah, and I did a pretty decent job of making it work. But I'm telling you, it's a hard. There's a 90% divorce rate in the SEAL teams and the military tie. So, this is a real choice that guys had to make. And it's, it can be really hard. And that's just a nightmare scenario. And honestly, what's jacked up is that the guys are actually trying to do the right thing.

They're actually trying, they're looking at a girl saying, look, you don't want to sign up for this. Like, this is not going to be fun. And, you know, of course, people fall in love and they, those emotions start to take over ridiculously.

And, you know, it's one of those things. But that's a nightmare scenario. For a girl. Yeah. And for a guy, I think this is the weird thing. I can't speak. guy, girl. I can't speak for girls because I'm not one. But for most guys, they read that and they

kind of go, yeah, at least I do, right? Do you? I get it. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, echoes a softie. I've, I've been drinking the, the Japan and samurai Kool-Aid for so long that I'm just like, oh yeah, no, I get it. Yeah. I bet if we had, you know those little, um, like meters where people can vote? Yeah. Or, or like this spike on the presidential debates where things would be like, people really agree with this thing. If you had that right there and males between the ages of 18 and 35 were hearing that, they're like, yeah, yeah, walk away, dude. That's what they're thinking.

Wouldn't surprise it. Yeah. For the SEAL teams, that's the totally normal culture. Oh, yeah, bro, you got to choose the teams. You got to choose the teams first, you know. Oh, you don't want to, you know, don't want to put her through this. So that's kind of messed up, but it's the reality. Sorry.

Well, especially imagine if your intention is to go duel people to the death repeatedly. I mean, the odds are not in your favor. Yeah, eventually someone's going to be better than you. What was that? Do you have that section mark that you were reading about how he felt about people that had gotten the upper hand on him? Because that was pretty epic. Let me find it. And that way people don't have to listen to a bad Japanese pronunciation.

Let's see. Let's see. All right, here we go. The adversaries he had, I'm not going to do his good job of reading as Jocko. He's well practiced. Plus he has the audiobook voice of Jocko Wurlingk. The adversaries he had defeated, even the ones he had killed or half killed, always disappeared from his mind like so much froth.

But he couldn't forget anyone who got the better of him in any way, or for that matter, anyone in whom he sensed an overpowering presence. That was the line I underlined. anyone in whom he sensed an overpowering presence. Men like that dwelt in his mind like living spirits and he thought constantly of how one day he might be able to overshadow them. Yeah, that's deep right there drive.

And that's also ego issues, clearly. Oh, yeah. Those are people are hard to deal with. And unless you recognize that it's your own ego that's causing these problems. Because a lot of people are so intimidated by, I've seen that many times where, you know, you get like a young seal that's a real badass.

when he's coming up. And some of the senior seals, maybe that are also badass. You know, basically you get two alpha males in a room, and it can be problematic. And unless one of them realizes the old guy realizes, usually it's the old guy that realizes, hey, there's a young buck coming up.

What I should do is trying to help him instead of trying to keep him down because I'm jealous. And that's what Musashi has that attitude of, you know, he doesn't care about the people that are, that he beats. Yeah. Yeah, he's like the Steve Jobs of Samurai. Yeah.

Yeah. Actually, I was thinking about this. On your podcast, it would be awesome if you did like, if you did like the jobs book and you read parts of it and you thought about it. I thought, I think that would be pretty cool. Yeah. You know, I've, I've considered it because I've listened to a lot of your episodes as you're going through books and I have all my highlights. Furthermore, and you saw this earlier, I showed you my index that I created for your book, the field manual. And I also have, I noticed this is what I was looking at as you're reading, my own index at the beginning of Musashi with the page numbers and things that I found interesting.

So I have everything locked and loaded and ready to go for all these books that I've read. I think it would be awesome, especially because, like, for instance, you know, I do books about war primarily because that's what I can relate to the most. but, you know, if you were reading business books and you were talking about, you know, what these people went through and then you could relate it to what you did and how, you know, it's just, I think it'd be, I like the idea of biographies. Because I recently, not to digress too far,

but I interviewed Walter Isaacson, who I know, actually, who wrote the Jobs book because he just finished a new book on Da Vinci, which is spectacular. Yeah, I actually noticed that book, because it's outselling my book, whatever. Walter, well, good for you, Walter. We're going to go off the rails for a second. So every year or every time I have a book come out,

there's Ena Garden who writes cookbooks, barefoot contessa, who for whatever reason always comes out in the same week and then it's just like lining the wall. She has her own walls in the bookstores. I'm like, how am I going to compete against walls? I'm trying to get an end cap. And then also on Amazon, every time I have a book come out.

Literally every time I took a screenshot of it a couple of weeks ago, and I said, man, this book is so hardcore. It's so undefeatable. Giraffes can't dance. It's a children's book. Oh, yeah. And it's, it is, it is always just slaying my books on Amazon. Fortunately not the same category for the best seller lists.

But yes, biographies and going through those to tie in pieces. would also be fun because I could compare my mindset and state, my development at the time that I made the highlights with my observations now. 100%. And I think, again, I think that would be, I think a lot of people would get a lot out of it because you got something out of it. And then you get to look back on it. You get three perspectives.

You get the person's perspective perspective. You get your old perspective and you get your current perspective. That's pretty legit. Yeah. That's a lot of growth and knowledge coming. from, you know, a pretty quick statement. So I just want to read one more note since it's right across from what I just read, the anyone in whom he sensed an overpowering presence.

And I don't have the full context here because I'm just looking at independent highlights. But it appears that Musashi has been approached by several men in some environment and they're asking him questions. Small talk. Musashi wondered why they were taking up their time. and his with their small talk. It became apparent that he would not find out unless he asked. So the next time there was a break in the conversation, he said,

presumably you came because you have some business with me. I just love these lines. The dialogue is so awesome. Yeah. They feigned surprise at the very idea, but soon admitted that they had come on what they regarded as a very important mission. And then it goes on and on. Yeah.

Yeah. There's so many good lines in there. So many good lines. Here's a good, here's a good part. Moving along in the story here. He has, throughout this thing,

it's, uh, when, when I was a kid and you remember you'd watch, what was the Saturday morning or one day they'd have Kung Fu Theater. Yeah. I think it was actually called Kung Fu Theater. Yeah.

And on Kung Fu Theater, it was always these, you know, my school against your school. And, and, and, you know, he go,

that, that seems neat. But that's real. Like, that stuff really happened. And he had these feuds with various schools of martial arts like you'd see in kung fu theater and in this particular one he had gone and kind of whooped up on this one school and then but like the leader wasn't there and so he writes a letter

and here's the letter that musashi writes which is to yoshi yoka yoshioka oh beautiful the same yoshi that is in yoshikawa it's the same character what does yoshi mean Yoshi, I'd have to look at it. Same, yeah, I don't recall of him, but Yoshida, Yoshi this, Yoshida, Yoshinoya, all that, same Yoshi. And this is Yoshioca. So here's what Musashi writes the letter. He says, I am told that you and your disciples are searching for me.

As it happens, I am now on the Yamoto High Road, my intention being to travel around in general area of Egan, Ise, for about a year to continue my study of swordsmanship. I do not wish to change my plans at this time, But since I regret as much as you do that I was unable to meet you during my previous visit to your school, I should like to inform you that I shall certainly be back in the capital by the first or second months of next year. Between now and then, I expect to improve my technique considerably. I trust that you yourself will not neglect your practice.

It would be a great shame if Yoshioca Kempo's flourishing school were to suffer a second defeat like the one that sustained last. time I was there. In closing, I send my respectful wishes for your continued health. Mimotu Masashi. I love the little jabs. You're flourishing school. Wink. Ha ha. It's so jacked up. But yeah, that's old school talking smack, right? Respect. It's like kind of what they do in the British Parliament. Oh, Hamilton, if you see the play, same thing. I haven't seen it. It's like with kindest regards after you basically say, I want to meet you and duel you and shoot you in the face. With kindest regards and wishes for your continued health.

You know, we've lost that. There's something to that, isn't there? You know? Like, can't you just have a feud and still be respectful to someone? Yeah, I respect your intellect and your capacities, and yet I will stop it nothing but until I destroy you. So this is another dojo storm, which, again, this is a modern term that I think jiu jitsu people created.

I don't know. Did you ever use the term? I've never heard that before. You've never heard Dojo Storm before? No. Oh, Dojo Storm is when you take your Jiu-Jitsu guys and you go to another. And this happened. Again, in San Diego, where we live is, it's gone through the phase already of all the schools being all, all,

all battling against each other. And really the battle, there's multiple reasons. One of them is because back in the day, before YouTube, you could actually have moves that you could keep contained in your school. and you could say, hey, look, don't show anyone this because we're going to use this in the next tournament and we want to be exactly what happened in Japan too, by the way. With these schools. With these schools.

So you'd have secret moves. Well, now, honestly, with YouTube, and every competition is on YouTube, and you can watch anybody from any school and you can see what moves they're doing and there's all this online. So basically, there's no more secret school knowledge anymore. The other thing is economically,

at one time it was, don't leave my school, because you're my student, you're giving me $150 a month, and so don't go to another school. And what that did, initially it worked, you could keep your students, but people realize that if you want to get good, you have to get out and train with other people sometimes.

And so if you weren't going to let me go and train at other schools sometimes, I'm not going to train at your school. And so they would actually end up losing students by trying to keep the students. So I think that's what kind of leveled San Diego out and other areas that are high concentration jiu-jitsu because, yeah, it's because now, you know, people will come and go and train at different schools and everyone's cool and it's just a much more

mellow atmosphere. Yeah, well I remember in 2000 when I first moved to the Bay Area and was training in Jiu-Jitsu and I walked into the school to take my first class and they had it wasn't very well written from a legal standpoint, but they had an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement that they had people sign so that they would not teach the inner workings and techniques of said school. Yeah, exactly. It used to be a lot tighter. And I think YouTube pretty much is the thing that destroyed that. But back in the day, the dojo storms would take place, which was we would go from one school and go to another school.

That was, let's say a school was saying, oh, we'll beat these guys, or we have better Jiu Jitsu. Oh, really? You got better Jiu Jitsu? Cool. Hello, how you doing? We're here to see who Jiu Jitsu is better. And it's a dojo storm and show up and, you know, everything is determined on the mat. That's a beautiful thing about Jiu Jitsu.

So this is old school dojo storm. and this is against Hozoin. Hozoin, I'd have to see it. How is it spelled? H-O-Z-O-I-N. Yeah, Hozoin. That's right.

Here we go for a Dojo Storm. And he's showing up there kind of looking for where the school is. He's kind of like a little bit lost looking around for where the actual school is and there's a priest that he's working with. When he reappeared, the priest handed him a registry and ink box saying,

write down your name and where you studied and what style you use. He spoke as though instructing a child. The title on the registry was, List of persons visiting this temple to study, Steward of the Hoizoin. Musashi opened the book and glanced over the names, each listed under the date on which the samurai or student had called. Following the style of the last entry,

he wrote down the required information omitting the name of his teacher. The priest, of course, was especially interested in that. Musashi's answer was essentially the one he'd given at the Yoshiko school. He had practiced the use of the truncheon under his father without working very hard at it. Since making up in his mind to study in earnest, he had taken as his teacher everything in the universe, as well as the example set by his predecessors throughout the country. He ended up by saying, I'm still in the process of learning. Hmm, you probably know this already, but since the time of our first master, the Holy

has been celebrated everywhere for its lance techniques. The fighting that goes on here is rough, and there are no exceptions. Before you go on, perhaps you better read what's written at the beginning of the registry. Musashi picked up the book, opened it, and read the stipulation, which he had skipped over before. It said, having come here for the purpose of study, I absolved the temple of all responsibility in the event that I suffer bodily injury or I'm killed. I agree to that, said Musashi. with a slight grin.

It amounted to no more than common sense for anyone committed to becoming a warrior. All right, this way. So that's the introduction. And that's actually cool, too. That's an old school jih Tzu thing. When you come in for, the other thing that would happen is challenge matches.

And I don't know if you've seen videos from the old school Gracie Academy at the challenge matches. Yeah, yeah. But those guys would come in and sign a waiver. Like, hey, if you die, we're not liable. This is the old gray market, black market, copy over copy VHS of Gracie in action.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had my old teacher Fabio Santos, and he had videos of himself doing Gracie challenge matches at the Gracie school up in Torrance, and he would play him for us, and it's the same thing, yep, sign your waiver, and then you're going to get your arm broken, by the way.

First, I break your leg. Then I put you in my guise. So in this point, he goes into this school, and there's some, Badass. He's not the head of the school, but he's like their best guy. And he's up there kicking everyone's ass. He's saying, next.

And he roughs a guy up and kicks his ass. Then next, roughs that guy up. Next. And finally, no one else wants to fight him. And here we go. This guy's name is Agon, A-G-O-N. Agon. Agon.

It's an unusual one. He's the guy that's been roughing everyone up. Is there no one else, Bellad A-Gon, now holding his practice lance horizontally? the brawny steward was comparing his registry with the faces of the waiting men he pointed at one no not today i'll come again some other time how about you no i don't feel quite up to it today one by one they backed out until musashi saw the finger pointing at him how about you if you please if you please what's that supposed to mean it means i'd like to fight um yeah and so he he's gonna go and

And I'm gonna pull a couple highlights out of this thing, but, but, but the, this guy, if you please. If you please. So this guy agone, he, he immediately does like a practice run at some board that he puts his lance right through. And it's sort of like an intimidation tactic, right? Oh, you wanna train?

Cool, watch this. Ah! And he screams and he puts his lance right through this, this, uh, right through this thing. And it's actually there's a, there's a, the old guy that had brought him into that it brought in musashi's looking at him and saying hey um don't be a fool you look stupid that's not a board you're about to take on meaning like you just killed the board the piece of

wood but that's this guy is not just a board um bricks don't hit back yeah brigs don't and and paper targets don't shoot back and they don't move that's something i've said many many times um Musashi then says after he does this you know like this crazy scream and puts his Lance through the wood he says are you ready now Back to the book this solicitude drove agon wild his muscles were like steel When he jumped he did so with awesome lightness His feet seemed to be on the floor and in the air at the same time quivering like the moonlight on ocean waves

Usashi stood perfectly still or so it seemed There was nothing unusual about his stance. He held his sword straight out with both hands, but being slightly smaller than his opponent and not so conspicuously muscular, he looked almost casual. The greatest difference was in their eyes. Musashi's were sharp as a bird, their pupils, a clear coral tinted with blood. Agan shook his head, perhaps to shake off the streams of sweat pouring down from his forehead, perhaps to shake off the old man's warning words.

Had they lingered on? Was he attempting to cast him out of his mind? Whatever the reason, he was extremely agitated. He repletedly shifted his position trying to draw out Musashi, but Musashi remained motionless. Agon's lunge was accompanied by a piercing scream. In the split second that decided the encounter, Musashi parried and counter-attacked. What happened? Agan's fellow priest hastily ran over and crowded around him in a black circle.

In the general confusion, some tripped over his practice lance and went sprawling. A priest stood up, his hands and chest smeared with blood, shouting, medicine, bring the medicine, quick. You won't need any medicine. It was the old man who had come in the front entrance and quickly assess the situation. His face turned sour. If I thought medicine would save him, I wouldn't have tried to stop him in the first place. So that's it. Musashi, one shot, one kill, takes the dude out.

And interestingly, here's the advice. So that guy that had taken him in is the actual master. And he says, is your name me, Mottu Masashi? That's correct. Under whom did you study the martial arts? I've had no teacher in the ordinary sense. My father taught me how to use the truncheon when I was young. Since then, I've picked up a number of points from the older samurai in various provinces.

I've also spent some time traveling about the countryside, learning from the mountains and the rivers. I regard them too as teachers. You seem to have the right attitude, but you're so, strong, much too strong. Believing he was being praised, Musashi blushed and said, oh no, I'm still immature. I'm always making blunders. That is not what I mean. Your strength is your problem. You must learn to control it, become weaker. What's also fun to do, and I'm thinking about doing this when I reread this book in full again, is to spend some time on YouTube watching

a high level Kendo competition to see how fast it is. Yeah. Just to get an idea of the, how much can transpire in the blink of an eye. Is there a referee that calls it as a kill shot? How does it, how does it get scored and judged? There are referees. So I had a chance to train in Kendo when I went back to Japan about eight years ago, something like that, eight or ten years ago.

And I trained at this place called Qumekang. And I still have the armor, still have everything. And you have to, much like calling your shots in pool, you have to call your target a split second before you hit it or as you hit it. So you would say like men is head, do is abdomen, kote is the gauntlet or the arm, and then tzki is a jab to the throat, which is pretty nasty. And you line up in such.

The sword is the tip of the sword is basically pointing at your opponent's throat as you track them and you can see But there are referees in cases of any type of they're definitely referees in cases of any dispute They're very rarely disputes but it's so subtle and the the the misses are so close much like really maybe high Really really high level boxing I mean when someone parries it's not like it's traveling a foot to the side of their head It's just grazing the side of their head and then they counterpunch. And you see it in Kendo, the movement's just faster. So it's really wild to see.

Do you get your bell rung when you get hit? I expected, because I saw the armor, and the armor seems pretty hard, that you don't. You absolutely get your bell rung, especially, I remember my first class and, you know, I'm bigger than a lot of Japanese guys, not all. I mean, there's certainly some big Japanese guys. And I was more heavily muscled, and they're like, oh, okay. And there's, and most of the Japanese, this is. been my experience in Japanese schools, whether it's judo,

jujitsu, kendo, or otherwise, spent some time way back in the day with the pancras guys and so on, before MMA really came to the U.S. Is generally speaking, everyone's pretty cool. I suppose this is true in the U.S. too. Then there are just one or two guys who are like, oh, foreigner in my school.

Okay. I want to ring your bell. And there was one guy there who wanted to fight. And I was like, okay. because I figured like my reflexes are pretty good, but the reflexes of head movement in Kendo, bad idea. You always want to have the sword in between you and your opponent

and to protect the center line. So if you start moving your head or your shoulders in such a way that you might say evade a punch, you really expose yourself. So I ended up getting whacked, not just on the top of the head, but behind the armor because your back is open and the back of your head is open.

And so I ended up getting whacked like on the upper traps and neck with these shinai, these bamboo swords, which hurt. Those absolutely will ring your bell. So yeah, you feel it. You're familiar with the dog brothers, right? I am. Yeah. They bring it. They really bring it.

Yeah. They're awesome. I have nothing but respect for the dog. If you don't know what they are, you can check them out on YouTube. But they do full contact simulated knife and stick. And I think it started with stick fighting. Started with stick. Yeah.

Started with a screma. And my understanding is they have the gathering. I was watching these videos at the same time as I was watching the Gracian Action videos. And I remember like, oh, people were just learning what a triangle choke was. It was like, ooh, I can choke people with my legs. That was a new thing.

And I remember seeing this video of, I think it was the gathering where you have salty dog and so on. And the participants who come just have to mutually agree on which weapons are acceptable. So you'd have like one guy with a garden hose and then another guy with like, a kendo sword with like the tip cut off so it's spayed open and then they would go at it and i remember at this

one point i saw this guy pull guard you know people are just going nuts some people have lacrosse helmets on i mean it's like it's just bonkers mad max and these two guys are going at it and one's clearly a wrestler he takes the guy down and gets caught in a triangle and i'm like oh i guess that's it and he's like no that's not it and the guy took his his scream a stick and took the end of it and just shoved it right in between the guy's ass cheeks. Great way to break the triangle, it turns out. And then just proceeded to beat the living shit

out of him with a stick on the ground. That's not fun. I don't like that triangle of the fence at all. Don't like that at all. I think we're getting into another just good. He's about to meet up with these, more of these Hozoin guys.

for some battle. All the priests carried lances. Black sleeves tucked up. They were ready for action apparently set upon avenging the death of Agon and restoring the temple's honor. They looked grotesque like so many demons from hell. The Ronan formed a semicircle

so they could watch the show and at the same time keep Musashi from escaping. This precaution, however, proved unnecessary. Frumushashi showed no signs of either running or backing down. In fact, he was walking steadily and directly toward them. Slowly, pace by pace, he advanced, looking as if he might pounce at any moment. For a moment, there was an ominous silence as both sides contemplated approaching death. Musashi's face went deadly white and through his eyes stared the eyes of the god of vengeance, glittering with venom. He was selecting his prey.

Neither the Ronan nor the priest were as tense as Musashi. Their numbers gave them confidence, and their optimism was unshakable. Still, no one wanted to be attacked. Wanted to be the first attacked. A priest at the end of the column of the Lancers gave a signal, and without breaking formation, they rushed around to Musashi's right. Musashi, I am in shun, shouted the same priest. I'm told you came while I was away and killed Agon,

that you later publicly insulted the honor of the Hozoin. that you mocked us by having posters put up all over town. Is this true? No, shouted Musashi. If you're a priest, you should know better than to trust only what you see and hear. You should consider things with your mind and spirit. It was like pouring oil on the flames. Ignoring their leader, the priest began to shout, saying talk was cheap.

It was time to fight. They were enthusiastically seconded by the Ronan who had grouped themselves in close formation to Musashi's left, screaming, cursing, and waving their swords in the air, they egged the priests on into action. Musashi convinced that the Ronan were all mouth and no fight, suddenly turned to them and shouted, All right, which one of you wants to come forward. All but two or three fell back a pace, each sure that Musashi's evil eye was upon him. The two or three brave ones stood ready, swords outstretched in issuing at the challenge. In the wink of an eye, Musashi was on one of them like a fighting cock. There was a sound of a popping cork and the ground turned red. Then came a chilling

noise, not a battle cry, not a curse, but a truly blood-curdling howl. Musashi's sword screeched back and forth through the air, a reverberation in its own body, in his own body telling him when he connected with human bone. Blood and brain spattered from his blade. Fingers and arms flew through the air. Most of the time Musashi wasn't really conscious of what he was doing. He was in a sort of trance, a murderous dream in which body and soul were concentrated in this three-foot sword. Unconsciously, his whole life experience, the knowledge his father had beaten into him, what he had learned at the Segejara, the theories he had heard at the various schools of swordsmanship,

the lessons taught to him by the mountains and trees, everything came into play in the rapid movements of his body. He became a disembodied whirlwind mowing down the herd of Ronan who by their stunned bewilderment left themselves wide open to his sword. I'm trying to think of why these particular passages, but one of the things, you know, this disembodiment, which I talk about all the time being able to be detached from what's happening, is so important as a person as a leader and as a, you know, in martial arts you have to do it too. if you're getting so wrapped up around the thought of what's happening, you won't make good decisions. But this actually goes beyond it. This is like getting in the zone. This is, you know, when you're not thinking anymore.

And I always say in Jiu-Jitsu, if you're thinking about your next move, it's too late. A person's already doing something to you. But that idea of being disembodied and being detached and not thinking about what you're doing, but just doing it is epic if you can do it. And we were chatting a little bit. at you and I, before we started recording about Marcelo Garcia in New York, and I've spent some time with Marcello and rolled with Marcello. I'm not by any stretch, I would say good at Jiu-Jitsu,

but nonetheless had a chance to spend some time on the mat with him and a handful of other guys. Sweetest guy you could ever imagine, for people who don't know the name, I suppose it's fair to say the Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, Wayne Gretzky of Jiu-Jitsu, wrapped into one. he's he's just uh kind of like the kimura after which the kamura is named so who was a very famous judoka and also really good of jujitsu who fought helio gracie

people in japan used to say before kimura no kimura after kimura no kimura like a non-recurring phenomenon and uh marcello's i mean got to be close to that i mean he's he's really good and one of the things that you observe with Marcello and Josh Waitzkin, who coens the school with him, was a very close friend of mine and also considered a chess prodigy. He was the basis for searching for Bobby Fisher. He says that, you know, Marcelo's nickname is the, I think the king of the scramble, but he doesn't view it as a scramble. And what Josh was telling me is that Marcello can basically see a move in, and movement in general in more frames per second. So where most people see position A,

transition that is kind of undefined to position B, he sees 30 positions between A and B. And you see that when, if people want to really see some wild stuff, you can check out, just look up the Marcellotene, which is his brand of guillotine, which is really, it's so technical for something that can be so sloppy when people don't know what they're. It's so technical. And he can catch people in a guillotine from any kind of. conceivable position that most people wouldn't even consider a position. I've seen him, I've seen him catch people in guillotine, people who weigh like 300 pounds and not fat 300,

like big, big, big people. And then they try to come around his legs into say a north-south position and he gets them to tap when they appear to have him in a north-south position. but he seems to be able to access this same type of mind state at will yeah i mean obviously it has to do with he's training all the time i mean all the time and he just turns his mind off and his body's working without him i bet you i bet you if you hooked up like brain scan and you see what he's thinking about he's probably thinking about like chicken yeah for dinner or whatever you know what i mean like his thoughts are just not there and that's how i feel when i have good when i do good jihitoo i come off the mat and I don't know.

Someone to say, hey, what was that move you did? I mean, I have no idea what I just did. You know, I just have no idea. I don't know what happened. And sometimes if you're thinking about something, you might remember bits and pieces, but that's what he's talking about in that section is like, hey, it's not even, you're not even there. It's all the trainings there, things you've been instructed, the practice that you've done. That's what's there and that's what's executing the movements.

It's a beautiful place to be. Whenever people ask me about meditation, like, do you meditate, John? I'm like, yeah, do jujititoo. You know? I agree with that. Yeah. I think it's the brain. Yeah.

I mean, it's just present state awareness and not endlessly thinking about whatever it is that might occupy and distract you otherwise. Yeah. It gives you that. Actually, somebody asked me that the other day. I was doing an event. And a guy says, you know, how do you recharge your batteries? Like, it just seems like you're going hard all the time. How do you recharge your batteries?

And my initial, I actually responded. I said, look, to be honest with you, I don't really recharge. I mean, I'm just going. And then as I thought about it, I said, actually, no, I'm wrong. I recharge all the time. I'm solar powered. Yeah, I'm solar powered. I move myself to get energized, right?

I'm like the wind-up watch or whatever. But no, the reality is I recharge myself through physical activity. That's where I recharge myself is by surfing and jihitsu and working out. That's the recharge. So just to build on that, because I think it's really important, people think of recharging as physical rest. But if anyone has really gone through a very, very stressful period in their lives, whether that's the death of a loved one or a breakup, anything that you obsessively think about, you can not move for most of the day and feel like you've run five marathons. So by getting out of your head and into your body, say, in jiu-jitsu or surfing, you're taking a break from these loops that we can replay that are what drain the battery.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, you know, again, luckily the guy asked me that question and I realized as I was answered. You know, first I sounded like an arrogant jerk. I was like, hey, I'm always on. You don't, I don't need no recharge. That's not true. Actually, if I go days without training or without working out, I start to feel like, crap and I and how do I recharge? I get home and I'm like oh there's my squat rack

or there's the mat and you can get on it and train so yeah that's totally true totally true one quick story about Marcello which also makes me you can tell Marcello's stories for the rest of the day think about Musashi is he's famous for being hard to find when he gets called to the mat when it's his turn to compete even at a world championship level and he is almost always found, because Josh has had to track him down a few times, asleep, like in between the bleachers. And they're like, Marcelo, Marcelo, you're up and be like, oh, okay, cool.

And he'll like get up and stretch and literally walk 50 feet, like seven seconds later onto the mat for the finals and the world championships and just turn it on and then destroy people. And that's cool too. And I don't know if I hit it in the book, but that's one of Musashi's things is, Musashi would show up late. He'd have duels and he'd show up hour late, 15 minutes late, 20 minutes late,

and have that person getting all frustrated. Yeah. It's in, I mean, it's, I was thinking about this because I was, I remember this about Musashi. And I was trying to think of how to explain in a culture like Japan in that period, what showing up an hour late might equate to in the U.S. It would be like coming over to meet someone at their house. house, shaking their hands, sitting down at the dinner table, then like getting up on the dinner

table and taking a shit right on their planet. It's like, and then asking them to clean it up because it smells bad. Like it would be, it would be that rude. So, of course, and it also made me think of this book. I think it's called Winning Ugly. It's about tennis, but it relates to this form of psychological warfare. Right. And like taking too much time, like in between serves and making your opponent unnerved.

so that even if they're technically superior, you can end up beating them. And so Musashi, it's the simplest trick in the book, but he would show up late, late, and these people lose their minds. And then if they're like, oh, this guy always shows up late, and then he'd show up three hours early and scout the whole place out and then kill everybody.

This was an interesting piece. Here's another weapon, and he's working with this guy who designs weapons, and it's called the chain ball. sickle. So it's like the sickle and then a chain and then a ball. Again, this reminds me of kung fu movies when I was a kid. But he's seeing this and here this guy's name is bacon. B-A-I-K-E-N. Biking. Biking. Did you just chime in over there, A-Q-A-C-Raws? Yeah. Why is that, bro? Because I know. But no, no, many of you guys do your thing. It's good. You speak Japanese or

something? You've been holding out on me? A little bit, yeah. I do like the idea of calling him bacon though. If I have another kid, I might name him bacon. No, you know, in Hawaii the pronunciation is similar. It's very similar. Yeah. Bikin. Bikin insisted.

You said you wanted to hear more about this chain ball sickle. I'll tell you everything I know, but let's have a few drinks while we're talking. When Iwa returned with a sake, Bikin poured some into a heating jar, put it on the fire, and talked at great length about the

chain, ball, sickle, and ways to use it to advantage in actual combat. The best thing about it, he told Musashi, was that, unlike a sword, it gave the enemy no time to defend himself. Also, before attacking the enemy directly, it was possible to snatch his weapon away from him with the chain, a skilful throw of the chain, a sharp yank, and the enemy had no sword. Still seated, Bacon demonstrated a stance. You see, you hold the sickle in your left hand and the ball in your right. If the enemy comes at you, take him on with the blade, then hurl the ball at his face. That's one way. Changing positions he went on.

Now, in this case, when there's some space between you and the enemy, you take his weapon away with the chain. It doesn't make any difference what kind of weapon it is. A sword, lance, wooden staff, or whatever. Bikin went on and on telling Musashi about the ways of throwing the ball, about the 10 or more oral traditions concerning the weapon, about how the chain was like a snake, about how it was possible by cleverly alternating movements of the chain and sickle to create optical illusions and cause the enemy's defense to work to his own detriment about all the secret ways of using the weapon

musashi was fascinated when he heard talk like this he listened with his whole body eager to absorb every detail the chain the sickle two hands as he listened the seeds of other thoughts formed in his mind the sword can be used with one hand but a man has two hands. And that's where he gets this idea for using two swords when he fights. And I'm sure you know more about that than me. Yeah, so he originated a style that has many different names. I think there are a few different.

I'm probably going to get this incorrect, but there's like Nita Niche, I think is one way to say it. But the form of having one long sword and then the equivalent of, say, I would imagine in the military of like a sidearm, like a pistol. So you have your primary, and then you would have your whatever might be, you know, like Block 19 or whatever. And typically, Samurai would use their primary and then failing that if it broke or if they were disarmed, then they would use their shorter. sword. And he would, in some cases, utilize both simultaneously, which is very, very highly, highly unusual and requires a completely different method of fighting because the grip on the sword is very, very particular. When you look at, say, a kendo sword and how it's positioned, if you,

if you have then two swords, it requires a completely different repertoire of technique. And I don't know, I don't recall offhand if they get into it in this book, but Musashi was also an expert in weaponry throwing. So there were instances and I would have loved to have seen this. And I'm sure there's a video on YouTube of someone trying this, but he would routinely throw his shorter sword.

And also later on, because he was, and I don't want to skip too far ahead, but he would also instruct in the use of Shuriken, which are the throwing stars. So he was an expert at throwing weapons as well as wielding the sword. And it's a completely different school of training that some people still use in Kendo.

At the highest levels, I haven't seen it very much because I think there aren't as many teachers. Is that legal? It is legal, as far as I can tell. Yeah, there were people who I've seen demonstrate it and you can find some video, not much, but a little bit of video, of using one short and one long. And they're not.

a degree of difference. They're different species altogether. Yeah. That's weird sometimes when I'm rolling jiu-jitsu and you get sweaty enough and slippery enough and it's a it's a little bit of a different sport. Oh totally. You know like it's like you are not going to be able to do this to me right now because it's too slippery and and same with ghi and no-ghi and it's weird you know of course I always tell people like ghi and no-ghi they're different but they're the same and and then it goes one degree further because when you get just super slippery no ghee it's it's about the difference between gey and no gee maybe not quite as much but another marcello story yeah can't resist so i trained with uh dave camereo for a period of time who he's one of my favorite human beings i'm just a sweetheart

of a guy and a hell of a competitor and also high-level judo yeah and so when he competed in jujitsu most people were terrified of his stand-up and they would kick their hips back and then he would do a flying arm bar and routinely used flying arm bars on everyone. Yeah, he was a total beast competitor. I was on the competition circuit around the same time as him and some of the other guys we were talking about earlier and they, yeah, they were killers. So Dave went to New York and trained with Marcello for a period of time. And to me, I mean, Dave, he's a high level competitor.

Like I've never seen Dave thrown around or anything like that. And so he's telling me about his experience, and he's friends with Marcella, but the experience of rolling no ghee. and I was like, oh, well, that makes, I suppose that makes sense. I've heard so much about Marcello, but once you put on the ghee, it was a different game, I assume, because of all your experience with judo, and he's like, no, it was even worse. Yeah, I find that with Dean, my buddy Dean, who is, you know, a world champion multiple times

with no ghee. And everyone thinks, oh, well, if you put the ghee on, maybe you can neutralize some of stuff. No, it's worse because you can't move at all. And it's not like he doesn't know jujitsu with ghee. he's savage. So someone's really good, it gives them more control. They already have control over you.

Now they have even more control over it. Now they have handles. Yeah, it's not fun. Do you got one, you want to read? You know, yeah,

I want to just, these are, these are things that I highlighted when I was really just coming into the professional world and felt like I needed to toughen myself on a number of different levels.

and this is one that I highlighted. This is from fairly early in the book, which means it's like the end of a normal book. It's early in the book. And it's talking about a period of his traveling. And he says, or I should say it reads, he stopped along the way to look at several well-known temples. And at each of them he bowed and said two prayers.

One was, please protect my sister from harm. The other was, please test the lowly musashi with hardship. Let him become the greatest swordsman in the land. or let him die. Please test the lowly musashi with hardship. That's what he's praying for. And that's what you would think when you were getting into the professional world. You're like, all right, bring it.

Because you were scared, you think you were scared about what was going to happen? I knew that I had relatively high pain tolerance and I could handle a lot of workload. So I was preparing myself for several years of being lowest on the total pole and suffering, but making up for a lack of experience by just absorbing more punishment in the form of working longer hours. Work hard. Doing more, always doing more. And serve me well at the time. Got an idea for a book anyways, I guess.

Yeah, exactly. And then when I disintegrated and self-employed, I had an idea for a book. Yeah, there's... Go. This is another one. And it's referring to, I believe, Musashi's writing.

And it says, well, his writing has a certain childish quality. But there's an appealing. What can I say, directness about it? If I had a swordsman in mind, I would say it shows spiritual breadth. The boy may eventually be somebody. I just like that. The childish directness.

Yeah. Yeah, those good stuff. And again, that's what you were thinking about yourself. Like, hey, at that time, you were the young swordsman coming up in the business world. That's right. Having to make things happen. There's another fight scene here.

I hate calling them fight scenes. Because I don't know. That sounds like a movie, a kung fu movie. Not that there's anything wrong with kung fu movies because some kung fu movies are awesome. but some of them are also cheesy. Sure. You're a movie professional there, Echo Charles.

Yeah, I don't think you'd be called a scene if it's in a book. Okay. I don't know, though. I don't know. Is it not a scene if it's in a book? It could be. It reads like a screenplay. So if it were a screenplay, we could call it a beat or a scene, I think.

Here's a scene. After an inner, this is a fight with a guy named Denshin Chiro. After an interval of two or three breaths, Denshin Chiro shouted, Musashi, he was well aware that the man standing several feet above him was in a very advantageous position. Not only was he perfectly safe from the rear, but anyone trying to attack him either from the right or left

would first have to climb up to his level. He was thus free to devote his entire attention to the enemy before him. So he's about to fight this guy. And as you said earlier, sometimes he shows up late, sometimes he shows up early. In this case, he showed up early and he got an elevated position.

And so his enemy, Deschenchar, is sitting there looking going oh this sucks I'm below him and he's protected from the back and left and right and Then Musashi says are you ready Musashi's question was calm but trenchant falling like so much ice water on his opponents feverish excitement Dens Charo now got his first good look at Musashi so this is the bastard he thought his hatred was total he resented the maiminging of his brother He was vexed at being compared with Masashi by the common people and he had an ingrained contempt for what he regarded as a country upstart posing as a samurai Who are you to ask are you ready? It is well past the hour of nine Did I say I'd be here exactly at nine? Don't make excuses

I've been waiting a long time as you can see I'm fully prepared now come down from there He did not underestimate his opponent in the extent of daring attack daring to attack from his present position. In a minute, answered Musashi with a slight laugh. There was a difference between Musashi's idea of preparation and his opponents. Denson Shiro, though physically prepared, had only begun to pull himself together spiritually, whereas Musashi had started fighting long before he presented himself to his enemy. For him, the battle was now entering its second and central phase. At the Geyon shrine, he had seen the footprints in the snow, and at that moment, his fighting instinct had been aroused.

Knowing that the shadow of the man following him was no longer there, he had boldly entered the gate and made a quick approach to the kitchen. Having waking the priest, he struck up a conversation, subtly questioning the man as to what had been going on earlier in the evening. Disregarding the fact that he was a little late, he had had had some tea and warmed himself up. Then when he made his appearance, it was abrupt and from relative safety of the veranda. He had seized the initiative. So I guess I was wrong in this section. He doesn't show up late, but he shows up late, but he like gets to an advantageous position without the other guy realizing

it, which is just as cool. Did you find one? I've got so many. I know, I know. But this one, this one, this one is good because it highlights how profound is maybe too strong a word. but deep some of the characters in the book are besides Musashi, because there are quite a few characters in here. And this is a teacher, this is an exchange between, as far as I can tell, Kizai Mon, who's one of the teachers or a prospective teacher and Musashi. And Musashi has brought a letter that he wants Kizamun to read, which is some type of request for instruction.

And Kizamun is ignoring both Musashi and the letter. And he says, but just please read the letter. I don't want to. Just please read the letter. No, I'm not going to read your letter. And then he says, please read the letter. I don't need to. And then Musashi says, what's the matter?

Can't you read? Because I'm unsnorted. And then Musashi says, well, if you can read, read it. And this is what he says. You're a tricky brat. the reason I said I don't need to read it is that I already know what it says. Musashi says, even so,

wouldn't it be more polite to read it? And this is how the teacher responds. Student warriors swarm here like mosquitoes and maggots. If I took time to be polite to all of them, I wouldn't be able to do anything else. And he continues. I feel sorry for you, however,

so I'll tell you what the letter says. All right. This piece right here is just good. This is the continuation of that fight scene, which actually goes on for multiple. pages. His technique is better than mine, Musashi thought candidly. He had the same feeling of inferiority at Koyugayu Castle when he had been encircled by four leading swordsmen of the Yagu school. It was always this way when he faced swordsmen of the unorthy, of the orthodox schools,

for his own technique was without form or reason. Nothing more really than a do-or-die method. staring at Dechencherro, he saw that the style, Yoshika Kempo, had created and spent his life, had both simplicity and complexity, was well-ordered and systematic, and was not to be overcome by brute strength or spirit alone. Musashi was cautious about making any unnecessary movements. His primitive tactics refused to come into play to an extent that surprised him. His arms rebelled against being extended. The best he could do is maintain a conservative defensive stance and wait.

His eyes grew red searching for an opening. He prayed to Hachiman for victory. And then they go through, and it's just dead silence. Snow accumulated on Musashi's hair. And then he kind of breaks him down mentally. Desencharo's feet inched forward. At the tip of his sword, his willpower quivered toward the start of a movement. lives expired with two strokes of a single sword. First, Musashi attacked to his rear. So a guy

had snuck up behind him, Musashi kills that guy and then kills, it's just another, another great battle scene. And the eyes, they talk about the eyes quite a bit in this book. And I'll come back to Kendo where you experience something that's very uncommon in Japanese culture, which is really intense direct eye contact. It doesn't happen a whole lot in Japanese culture, even in the martial arts. In judo, it's more of a relaxed gaze, and you might come out first, and there's some yelling, so you'll hear that quite a bit. I don't know if non-Japanese do it, but in Japan, when I was watching certain people compete or competing myself, and you hear people like, yes, yeah, they come out, and after they bow, they'll let out a bit of a scream. But then it's,

then it's down to business. And in Kendo, you hear a lot more vocalization and really intense eye contact. Are you trained to look at their eyes? Yeah. Okay. So where do you look in wrestling? In wrestling, and I should say, I mean, I was a decent high school wrestler, had a good competitive record, but I wouldn't consider myself anywhere, like a D1 wrestler,

would just mop the floor with me. But I would typically have kind of more of a soft, like hips type of... I mean, I'm always looking at people's chest in every sport. I'm looking kind of like navel and chest. Usually kind of watching the hips in wrestling.

Yeah. But in Kempo, they teach you to look at the eyes. In Kendo. Oh, sorry, Kendo, they teach you to look at the eyes. And are you looking for like, to see what they're going to do? That's where you're going to see their movement?

You know, there isn't any explicit instruction in why, but you communicate a lot with your eyes. And so you can tell if someone, someone's intimidated, you can tell if someone's angry, you can tell, you can also throw people off. So for instance, I mean, you have Mendo Kote and all this stuff, you have the targets, right? And what I realized pretty quickly is that much like in say Muay Thai, so in Thai kickboxing, one of the oldest tricks in the book, which is really, really unpleasant if you happen to get caught with it, is particularly since I, well, I'll just say, I got caught.

with it when I went to Japan because I wanted to also cross-train in striking. And so I went to a number of schools, including a place called Sedo Kaikang. And Kang is, it's at the end of like Kodokan, this, this Khan, whatever it is, that's sort of place of practice, right? And first time I sparred someone and in the karate schools in Japan, like Kiyokashin and so on, they don't have head contact with the fists, but it's bare-fisted. So you're punching each other in the chest and body and so on. And this guy was wailing on my legs. He was just like hitting me with these roundhouse kicks to the legs.

And I'd never even seen like kicks before. So I was punching him right in the chest, like just below his collarbone and right below his throat. And then punching him in the stomach. And he was kicking me in the legs. I was like, hey, bro, like I'll do this all day long. And so I'm punching the chest. And I had to skip school the next day because I couldn't walk. But the trick in Muay Thai that you see a lot is like,

look at the leg low kick look at the leg low kick look at the leg low kick until it really starts the hook hurt and then look at the leg head kick and you see a lot of people get knocked out that way so in Kenno you can do something very similar where you're sort of telegraphing

deliberately with your eyes and going for a certain target you get parried you do that four or five times and then you telegraph the same way and go for a different target but yeah the eye contact was it's really it's really intense and if you watch kendo and say youtube and imagine what the eye contact is like if their eyes are like wide open staring at each other it adds another layer of flavor to the entire experience and then you can read a passage like this and you're like oh god

i can see it and it's opposite of jiu jihitsu where you don't really look at the person yeah it's almost like the little unwritten rule like don't know eye contact yeah yeah No gazing lovingly into someone's eyes. In fact, I only do it like purposefully when I'm trying to really mess with someone, you know. I just look right at them like and shake my head very subtly. Yeah. And you probably notice that they never really look at you unless you do it super deliberately. Like if you try to roll with someone when you roll with someone, try like notice where they're looking.

It's almost like they're just blank. Yeah. I try and be just blank. Yeah. I'm just, I mean, that's a weird thing, too. With Jiu-Jitsu, you don't even have to use your eyes. Like, I used to notice, I don't notice it so much anymore. I used to notice if someone was in a good position on me, I would actually close my eyes.

I started viewing it like I was not, it wasn't smart. Like, I was doing it to relax myself. Someone gets in a good position. I'd just close my eyes because you know where they are. They're freaking, you know, on your back or they're across the side. You know exactly where they are, but I would just close my eyes to kind of relax. I don't do it anymore because it seems like a bad idea, right? Why would you close your eyes?

That's stupid. It burns a lot of energy, though. I remember doing training with Laird Hamilton, who's one of the most famous big wave surfers of all time. If anyone hasn't seen the documentary riding giants. Oh my God. Go see that. The invention of toin surfing.

Holy God. And he, Laird is a beast. I mean, he's one of the most incredible physical specimens I've ever seen. He's in his 50s and just wipes the floor with like first round draft picks routinely in terms of workouts. And he likes to do a lot of underwater training with weights. And he's devised all of these original exercises. Like there's one called ammo boxes where you hold a dumbbell. He holds a 50-pound dumbbell to his chest and then swims across the surface of the pool

or just slightly submerged with one arm and then does all manner of different exercises. And his wife, Gabby, Gabby Reese, who's also a world-class athlete of her own right, said to me, relax your eyes. Because underwater, when I'm holding like two 50 pound dumbbells, understandably my eyes are bugging out of my head. And she's like, you're burning too much energy. She's like, try relaxing your eyes. And I could hold my breath for another 10, 15 seconds,

just by relaxing my eyes. And just another side note that's related. And I think relates to a lot in this book also, not just jujitsu, is in tango. I'm making it a point to bring up tango every time we talk publicly. Not cool. Not cool.

The best female dancers very frequently close their eyes because if they try to read the male's movement in order to respond, it's already too late. If they try to do it visually, it's too late. And I think that with a lot of martial arts, certainly, that in particular, with grappling,

I mean, your body is always going to sense it before your eyes can interpret it. Maybe that's why I was doing it originally. Yeah. Much like the female tango dancer. Sure. Yeah. I remember Greg had a drill where you'd start back to back and say, okay, you got to close your eyes.

It's kind of trust. You got to close your eyes. And then grapple. And I remember doing it and think, oh, it's not that much harder. It's like, as long as you're already connected with the guy, it's not that much harder. Yeah. So speaking of tango dancing and women. Here's

He He again Otsu is in and out of the book And at this point He is heading to a battle And the odds are against him And Outsu wants to go in With him

And she actually wants to die if he dies And so he's having a conversation with her And here we go Don't be a fool Outsu He suddenly blurted There's no reason why you should die The strength in his own voice And the depth of his feeling

Surprised even him There's one thing for me to die fighting against the Yoshiochas. Not only is it right for a man who lives by the sword to die by the sword, I have a duty to remind those cowards of the way of the samurai. Your willingness to follow me to death is deeply touching, but what good would it do? No more than the pitiful death of an insect. Seeing her burst into tears, he regretted the brutality of his words. Now I understand how over the years I've lied to you and I've lied to myself.

I didn't intend to deceive you when we ran away from the bridge, from the village or when I saw you at Hanata Bridge, but I did by pretending to be cold and indifferent. That wasn't the way I really felt. In a little while, I'll be dead. What I'm about to say is the truth. I love you, Ozu.

I throw everything to the four winds and live out my life with you. If only, after a moment's pause he continued in a more forceful vein you must believe every word i say because i'll never have another chance to tell you this i speak with neither pride nor pretense there have been days when i couldn't concentrate for thinking about you nights i couldn't sleep for dreaming of you hot passionate dreams oh too dreams that nearly drove me mad often have hugged my palate pretending it was you but even when i felt like that if i took out my sword and looked at it

The madness evaporated and my blood cooled. Her face turned toward him, tearful, but as radiant as the morning glory. She started to speak. Seeing the fervor in his eyes, her words caught in her throat and she looked again at the ground. The sword is my refuge. Anytime my passion threatens to overcome me, I force myself back into the world of swordsmanship. This is my fate, Outsu. I'm torn between love and self-discipline.

I seem to be traveling on two paths at once. Yet when the past diverge, I invariably manage to keep myself on the right one. I know myself better than anyone does. I'm neither a genius nor a great man. He became silent again. Despite his desires to express his feelings honestly, his words seemed to be concealing the truth. His heart told him to be even more candid. That's the kind of man I am.

What else can I say? I think of my sword and you disappear into some dark corner of my mind. No, disappear altogether, leaving no trace. At times like that, I'm happiest and most satisfied with my life. Do you understand? All this time you've suffered, you've risked your body and soul on a man who loves his sword more than he loves you. I'll die to vindicate my sword, but I wouldn't die for the love of a woman. Not even you.

as so much as I'd like to fall on my knees and beg forgiveness. I can't. Another speech. Another scene that most women would rather not go through. Yeah. And it's another, I, again, I know I don't relate to every normal person at all in very little ways. But like when I read that, I'm always like, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

And I've been married for 20 years to an awesome woman. And, but yeah, when I hear that, I just think, yeah, that's how you do it. right hey look every time i would start thinking about you i'd just look at my rifle and be i'm good i want to i want to i want to chime in with another one that is not chronologically yeah sorry we're out we're out of sync oh it's okay but i the ones that i underline tend to be universally i think universally applicable in some ways yeah so to the forward this is a and i apparently a discussion about some type of battle and they're going back and forth

All right so this is Musashi Then what else can I do but challenge him I realize of course that even if I do he'll probably refuse to come out of retirement so I'm challenging this whole castle to a battle instead A battle Chorus the fore

And then Here we go So his arms still held by Kazimon and Debucci Musashi looked up at the sky there was a flapping sound as an eagle flew towards them from the blackness enveloping Mount Kasagi. Like a giant shroud, its silhouette hid the stars from view before it glided noisily down to the roof of the rice storehouse. And then this is the part that I highlighted.

To the four retainers, the word battle sounded so melodramatic as to be laughable, but to Musashi it barely sufficed to express his concept of what was to come. Yes. Yes. This part, so Musashi's had this, another clan, another group that he's been battling with. And the senior guy in the family, the senior guy from the school died. Or is, yeah, he's died. And this 13-year-old boy is now the senior guy in the family. His name is Genjiiro.

And he shows up. So he challenges, again, he challenges all these people to a fight. And he shows up and they show up. and he gets there, it's by some tree. And of course it starts off. Musashi, you're late. cried a horse voice. He took a shit on my dinner table.

Many took encouragement from Musashi's declaration that he was alone, believing it was a trick. They started looking around for phantom seconds. A loud twang off to one side, a loud, was followed a split second later by the glint of Musashi's sword flashing through the air.

Oh, someone has shot an arrow at him. The arrow aimed at his face broke, half falling behind his shoulder, the other half near the tip of his lowered sword. Or rather, where his sword had just been. For Musashi was already on the move. His hair bristling like a lion's mane. He was bounding toward the shadowy form behind the spreading pine. Genjiro hugged the tree trunk, screaming, help. scared. Gazzimon jumped forward, howling as though the blow had struck him, but it was too late.

Musashi's sword sliced a two-foot strip of bark off the trunk. It fell to the ground by Kenjuro's blood-covered head. It was the act of a ferocious demon. Musashi, ignoring the others, had made straight for the boy. And it seemed he had had this in mind from the the beginning, the assault was of a savagery beyond conception. Gingero's death did not reduce the Yoshiko's fighting capacity in the slightest. What had been, nervous excitement rose to a level of murderous frenzy. And so that's how he kicks off the battle. There's the 13-year-old boy, and he goes right for him and cuts off his head. So, and this is the first time he starts using Both swords. I think this is the first time onlookers who had a clear view of him covered their eyes in horror. This is as this battle continues

Most more ghastly still was the sight of the dead and wounded left in his wake as he continued his tactical retreat up the path He reached a patch of open land where his pursuers surged forward in a mass attack in a matter of seconds four or five of men had been cut down They lay scattered over a wide area more than testimony to the speed with which Musashi struck and moved on he seemed to be everywhere at once once. But for all his agile shifts and dodges, Musashi clung to one basic strategy. He never attacked a group from the front or the side, always obliquely at an exposed corner. Whenever a battery of samurai approached him head on, he somehow contrived to shift like lightning to a corner of their formation from which he could confront only one or two of them at a time. In this way, he managed to keep them essentially in the same position. But eventually, Musashi was bound to be

be worn down eventually to his opponents seemed to be seemed bound to find a way to thwart his method of attack to do this they would need to form themselves into two large forces before and behind him then he would be in the in even greater danger it took all musashi's resourcefulness to stop that from happening at some point musashi drew his smaller sword and started to fight with both hands while the large sword in his right hand was smeared with blood up to the hilt and the fist that held it the small sword in his left hand was clean and though it picked up a bit of flesh the first time it was used it continued to sparkle greedy for blood musashi himself was not fully aware that he had drawn it even though he was wielding it with the same deafness as the larger sword so he's just getting after it with two swords and eventually run crowd cried a thousand voices. You fighting by yourself, run, run while you can. So he just crushes everyone. There's another weapon that, I don't know if they talk about in this book, that he was quite adept at using, as I understand it, before he began fighting with two swords. And it goes by a number

of different names. In English, sometimes it's called a jut or a jutty, J-U-T-T-E. In Japanese, it's jite. J-te. J-te means ten-hand. literally and it was a baton basically if you could imagine this will make sense in a moment if you could imagine a half inch thick iron rod that's about 18 inches long or 12 inches long that then has what looks like the clip of a say ballpoint pen that is a little that is pulled away from that rod so that you have a space in between this hook effectively and the rod. Palace guards and so on would use these as the equivalent of a police badge because they

were forbidden from having swords in certain quarters because they could be used to assassinate higher ranking officials and so on. And you could use that in combination with a sword to effectively parry or catch the blade in between those two prongs and then twist it away or then twist it away or just use it to temporarily arrest the use of that blade and then pull your own long sword and cut someone down and musashi was very adept as i understand it at using the jite before he started using two swords you could also just used it. They don't like club somebody to do. And it's a big, which I'm sure is exactly what it was used for. Now, as the story progresses, you know, he matures and, and starts moving into a little bit

of a different phase. And this is kind of where the first time he starts, he's wounded and he's traveling. And eventually he lays up for the night. After they had said good night, Musashi went to his room where he lay awake in the dark, his eyes glistening, the way of the samurai. He concentrated on this concept as it applied to himself and to his sword. Suddenly he saw the truth. The techniques of a swordsman were not his goal. He sought the all-embracing way of the sword. The sword was to be far more than a simple weapon.

It had to be an answer to life's questions. The way of Usugi Kenshin and Date Masunami was too narrowly military to hidebound. It would be up to him to add to it its human aspect to give it greater profundity, greater loftiness. For the first time, he asked whether it was possible for an insignificant human to become one with the universe. So he's starting to, like I said, mature. Do you got one? Yeah, I have one which I think is philosophically very similar and brings back one of the characters that you read about earlier. And it refers to a lesson that he learns from, or head learned from Takuan. And here's how it goes.

It wasn't that he, that's Masashi, had forgotten the lesson Takwan had taught him. And that is, the truly brave man is one who loves life, cherishing it as a treasure that once forfeited can never be recovered. he well knew that to live was more than to merely survive. That's the one that I highlighted. The problem was how to imbue this life with meaning, how to ensure that his day would cast a bright ray of light into the future, even if it became necessary to give up that life for a cause. If he succeeded in doing this,

the length of his life, 20 years or 70, made a little difference. A lifetime was only an insignificant interval in the endless flow of time. I think I've heard you say that quote before, like not just surviving. Living is not just surviving. That's kind of wild. Maybe this is where I got. I don't think I've heard you say the quote, but I think I've heard you say that concept before.

Yeah, I have. And maybe, I mean, this is where it incepted me 20 years ago. I was in Missashi. He ends up with a guy named Iori, who's sort of a student of his. And they're living in the mountains. And again, I think this is as, as he's starting to mature and grow. and this area where he's going to, where he is, it's a mountainous area in Japan.

And for those of you that haven't been in Japan, it's got some incredibly beautiful, beautiful mountains. Incredible. Yeah, beautiful. Even right outside of Tokyo, for people who are ever thinking of going, there's a place called Nikko,

which is N-I-K-O, and the O is long, but Niko, and they have beautiful temples and mountains. That is where I did the Japanese horseback archery. Just as a side note on the Japanese horseback archery, the Japanese horseback archery, it was so great. So there are not, as you would imagine, many schools for horseback archery.

But one of the families, one of the clans that still exists, the Ogasaura. So the Ogasawara is the family. And then Riu, like RYU, is the school. And that Rue comes up a lot in Musashi's life. If you look at the history, it's like such and such, Rue, such and such do you, like the school of whatever. And Ogasawara Rew, Japanese horseback. archery is what I ended up studying with one of the members of the Ogasawara family, and we did it in Niko, which is a stunning place to train.

And just is a little bit of context on what exactly this means. So the ceremonial version of Japanese horseback archery entails a straightaway that is marked off in my case with metal rods like rebar. So you effectively have these stakes in the ground that are about three feet high of rebar, like every five feet, two parallel lines running, let's call it 300 or 500 feet. And you get on a horse at the very beginning of this track

and there are three targets laid out equally distance over that 500 foot space. the first one probably comes up at about 100 meters and they're about the size of a big dinner plate and you're on the horse the saddle is wood so you don't sit on it you do you squat above it and you have tabby on which are these split socks

you don't have shoes on in these stirrups that actually do not enclose the foot around the foot they don't encircle the foot you stick it in kind of like a slipper and you have a really wide stance, and then you have a bow, which is about six feet long, in my case in my left hand. And the bottom of the bow, you keep inside your thigh,

and then you have arrows that are stuck into your belt on your lower back, and your first arrow is knocked, and then you pull the line slightly and lock it down with your index finger so that there's tension on it. And then you have the reins, and you take off at a full gallop, and then you throw the reins down, and you fly with,

you gallop with no control of the horse. And these rebar that are set, every five feet, keep the horse galloping in a straight direction, and you fire the first arrow at the first target, and then you have to reload your arrow by reaching to your back, pulling the arrow out, and there's a really technical,

somewhat complicated way of knocking the arrow very, very quickly while you're riding a horse, and then you intend to hit the next two targets while you're yelling. There are certain things you're supposed to yell as you shoot at your target. And it's an incredible, incredible demonstration. And they do this at the temples in Nikol, which to me is what comes to mind in terms of imagery when we're talking about his experience in these mountainous regions. And yeah, lesson number one, or you do not want to fall off.

and people do fall off, because if you fall off your horse, you get trampled by the horse and you hit the rebar. But the reason I brought this up is that everyone has seen restaurants, say, established 1946, established 1987, established, whatever. And the son, a pretty young guy in his mid-30s, really strong. The bow-eye shot had maybe like a 60-pound or 65. pound tension, which is surprisingly difficult for people who have not done much archery to hold that at full extension for a period of time, especially on a horse.

It's like 65 is 70 pounds is quite legit on a long bow or a recurve bow. And he was pulling a bow that was 120 pounds like nothing. And his jacket, he had what might look like sort of a shiny, like 1980. like break dancing jacket is kind of what it looked like with like the like the elastic tube portions on the wrists and on the back it said ohasawara yabusami established 1157 and it's just like yeah this goes back away did you hit the targets at the very end i did yeah you got them that because you know shooting from vehicles is really is is really hard shooting guns from vehicles i mean it's just hard i can't i can't even imagine

to do a bow and arrow on horseback on a wooden saddle. Yeah, it's definitely a different thing. I was very surprised that I actually ended up hitting the targets. But yeah, at the very end. How long did you train it for? Another thing I would not recommend. I crammed it into a week. I had a week to train.

Did you know how to ride a horse before? I had some experience on a horse, but Western and Western style for people don't know. Think rodeo where you're effectively seated in the saddle. It's kind of like the Harley Davidson of horse riding. Like your feet are out in front of your heels are dropped. You don't post. And Japanese is somewhere between, it's closer to English, where you'd be more elevated.

And the position is very, very different. You're effectively in almost a sumo stance. Like you're very much abducted. Like your groin, it is very, very open. So I was extremely sore. I felt like I was doing like suspended squat practice for hours every day. So after a few days of that, pretty uncomfortable. And we lost three days, I want to say, to rain.

We couldn't. It was too dangerous for the horses and the humans to train doing anything in those conditions. So we had about four, I'd say four days of real training. So speaking of rain, they're up there. Musashi and Iori are up there and well, here we're going to the book. As autumn waned, the insect voices faded into silence, leaves, withered and fell. Musashi and Iori finished their cabin because they built a cabin and addressed themselves to the task of making the land ready for planting.

One day while surveying the land, Musashi suddenly found himself thinking it was like a diagram of the social unrest that it lasted for a century after the own in war. Such thoughts aside, it was not an encouraging picture. Unknown to Musashi, Houghton Gahara, had over the centuries been buried many times by volcanic ash from Mount Fuji, and the Tone River had repeatedly flooded the flatlands. Whenever, when the weather was fair and the land bone dry, but whenever there was heavy rains, the water carved out new channels,

carrying great quantities of dirt and rock along with it. There was no principal stream into which smaller ones flowed naturally. The nearest thing to this being a wide basin that locked sufficiently sufficient capacity or to either water or drain the area as a whole. The most urgent need was obvious to bring the water under control. So he's got this big piece of land. And he thinks, okay, I'm going to turn this into a farm. He doesn't really know that there's no pathway for the streams when the water comes down

out of the mountains and when it rains, he doesn't know that there's nowhere for it to go. It doesn't make sense to the water, so it just kind of floods everything. Still, the more he looked, the more he had questioned why the area was undeveloped. It won't be easy, he thought, excited by the challenge posed, joining the water and earth to create productive fields was not much different than leading men and women in such a way that civilization might bloom. To Musashi, it seemed that his goal was in complete agreement with his ideals of swordsmanship. He had come to see the way of the sword in a new light.

A year or two earlier, he had wanted only to conquer all rivals. But now the idea that the sword existed for the purpose of giving him power over other people was unsatisfying. To cut people down, to triumph over them, to display the limits of one's strength, seemed increasingly vain. He wanted to conquer himself, to make life itself submit to him, to cause people to live rather than die. The way of the sword should not be used

merely for his own perfection. It should be a source of strength for governing people and leading them to peace and happiness. He realized his grand ideals were no more than dreams and would remain so as long as he lacked the political authority to implement them.

But here in this wasteland, he needed neither rank nor power. He plunged into the struggle with joy and enthusiasm Day in and day out stumps were uprooted gravel sifted land level soil and rocks made into dikes Musashi and Iori worked from before dawn until after the stars were shining bright in the sky Now as he's doing this the villagers keep coming by and they say what do they think they're doing in How do they think they can live in the place like that and you're wasting your time that's what all the villagers are saying to them

They've seen this for you know since 1,100 or whatever they've seen this place get flooded and he keeps going he keeps you know trying and every time he makes some progress he the it'll rain and everything gets washed away or it'll get flooded and then he thinks he's doing okay and it's a big snow in the mountain so everything survives but then it thaws and every all the water comes down again so he goes on he keeps working the land he keeps trying to make it work back to the book musashi carried on in his stubborn struggle throughout the winter into the second month of the new year it took several weeks of strenuous labor to dig ditches drain the water off piled dirt for a

dyke and then cover it with heavy rocks three weeks later everything was again washed away look you're wasting our energy on something impossible is that the way of the sword the question struck close to the bone but Musashi would not give in only a month passed before the next disaster a heavy snowfall followed by a quick thaw Iori on his return trips from the temple for food inevitably wore a long face for the people there rode him mercilessly about Musashi's failure. And finally, Musashi himself began to lose heart. For two full days and on into a third, he sat silently brooding and staring at his field.

Then it dawned on him suddenly. Unconsciously, he had been trying to create a neat square field like those common in other parts of the plain. But this was not what the... terrain called for here despite the general flatness there were slight variations in the lay of the land and the quality of the soil that argued for an irregular shape what a fool i've been he exclaimed aloud i tried to make the water flow where i thought it should and forced the dirt to stay where i thought it ought to be but it didn't work how could it waters water dirt's dirt I can't change nature.

What I've got to do is learn to be a servant to the water and a protector of the land. In his own way, he had submitted to the attitude of the peasants. On that day, he became nature's man's servant. He ceased trying to impose his will on nature and let nature lead the way, while at the same time seeking out possibilities beyond the grasp of other inhabitants of the plain. The snow came again and another thaw. The muddy water oozed slowly over the plane, but Musashi had had time to work out his new approach,

and his field remained intact. The same rules must apply to governing people, he said to himself. In his notebook, he wrote, Do not attempt to oppose the way of the universe, but first make sure you know the way of the universe. as I was telling one of my seal buddies about this we were talking about that you can't you can't as a leader a lot of times people want to change people

you want to change them and you just you can't change people right I mean you can shift them and they can change themselves but when you try and impose change on someone you try and make someone what you want them to be it's very difficult to do if not impossible I was talking about this one, had a guy in a seal platoon. And he had potential, right? But he had some flaws.

You know, he was a loud mouth and that kind of thing and just wanted like to bring them along and tried everything. Beating. Um, counseling. Um, you know, befriending.

Um, more beatings. Did everything. And, and, you know, he would like make slight adjustments for a little while. And then he'd go back to just be in the way he was. And eventually I said, okay well we have to that's the way he is that's the way this person is and you know how do we

work with him so he's working within the confines of things that he can do and do them acceptably but i think people get caught on the idea that they're going to change people and it's really hard and you see this especially with people getting involved in relationships with people that they think they're going to be able to change and you're not going to be able to do it i have a question for you jogo in in your own life experience experience, how do you separate the way of the universe meaning in you personally the things that are just you that you shouldn't try to change versus the things that you should try to improve? Because I think that there's the temptation for a lot of people to say, well, that's just the way

I am, but it absolves them of the responsibility of doing the work. I got asked a similar question, and it'll tie into it. But I asked by, I was working with a company the other day, and I asked, You know, if I've got a guy that's really good at something, but a person that's not really good, should I just give up on trying to get the person that's not good at that job, give up on them and just let the person that's good at it, do it. And I said, well, yes and no. I mean, if we have somebody that is a really good shot, like he's a sniper, but we got a guy that's not a good shot. Okay, so we're going to give the sniper all the good missions and he's going to go do all the tough shots. Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

That doesn't mean we just let the other guy never learn how to shoot. No, we actually continue to train him and make him better. And I think it's the same thing with your individual self, right? If I've got weaknesses, I don't just say, well, I'm just going to avoid being in those areas where I'm weak. I'm going to actually go and try and get better at them. Now, I'm not going to make that the focus of my life, right? I'm not going to try and become a ballerina, right?

Would I like to be more flexible? Absolutely. Do I need to work on that? Absolutely. But I'm not trying to become a ballerina. I wouldn't focus on that because it would be a significant waste of my time and of my entire life in a very fruitless situation. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't try and be more flexible, right?

So I think you still apply some time to try and improve it, but you don't waste, you know, you don't waste a valuable energy. You'd still look at what you're good at and say, you know, I'm better at doing Jiu-Jitsu. I'm better at whatever. Can I tell you one of the thoughts that for whatever reason consumed my mind? mind for about an hour and a half during my silent meditation retreat. I was thinking about giraffes can't dance, this book, this, this demon slayer that crushes me on Amazon, always by like five spots when I launch a book. And I started thinking about how incredible it would be to take

jaco, the cartoon character, uh, as seen in the jaco approved logo on your teeth. and to have a parody of that book called Jocko Can't Dance with like thought bubbles of what you're thinking throughout the book. In any case, for whatever reason, that is what my mind decided to settle on. I'm sorry. So confession over. Confession. So do you find that yourself that you say like, oh, I'm not good at this or I'm going to avoid it? Or do you find yourself getting focused? Because, you know, you're talking about what Musashi, what they described, Musashi. Dune as earlier, which is I only worry about things that are beating me, right? I only worry

about the opponent that beat me. Just like the only book you think about is this book, Giraffes Can't Dance, which is the one book that beats you because, and that's what you're focused on. You don't worry about these other books that you kick the crap out of. I also just like talking about it because I love the fact that it's called Giraffes can't dance. Yeah. And it kicks your ass. Do you think you get focused on things that are, that you shouldn't be focused on? Or that you're wasting time on? I, I, I, you kind of, know what you're good at? I do. I think that I've become better at working on or distinguishing between low-level weaknesses and high-level weaknesses. And what I mean by that is if you imagine,

say, people have seen like a champagne pyramid where sometimes built at weddings where you stack up all these champagne glasses and you pour into one or it could be any type of glass and it cascades down into the others. Or you could think of it through a domino analogy. I use this analogy a lot looking at lead dominoes. Like what can I do? If I have a task list, let's say, which of these five tasks will make all of the others easier or irrelevant?

And that'll help me sequence things in the right order so that I'm not wasting energy. If I've 10 units of energy, I'd rather focus on identifying, at least to begin with, the lead dominoes. And so a high level weakness would be a lead domino, something that has downstream negative effects on many different areas, even that can compromise your strengths. So for me, for instance, I think for a very long time, I viewed, I only viewed impatience

through the lens of the benefits of aggression because having a good offense has always been my model ever since I became fascinated by Dan Gable, who is about as close to 100% offense, legendary wrestling competitor and coach. Oh, man, I have a lot of stories about Dan Gable. Incredible, incredible, incredible guy. But what I've realized in the last few years, for instance, is that there are low-level weaknesses, Let's say I am not a programmer. I am not good at A, B, C, D, or E skill that is more of a technician's craft.

I will not spend time on those things if I can delegate it or outsource it. But if there are core psychological traits that are higher order that can negatively impact other things, then I've realized for the long haul I do want. to at least experiment with developing those capacities. What I think has helped me a lot is I'm always, and I was, when I was in the SEAL teams, I was always looking at other people. I was always looking at their leadership.

I was looking at what they're doing. I was looking at why they weren't getting along. I was looking at what was wrong with the platoon. And as I would sit there and watch these people, I would learn from because, and I'd see, you know, I'd see two people that didn't get along. and I'd say, why can't these guys get along?

What's wrong with them? And I'd watch them. And I'd see that, you know, this one guy has a giant ego. Oh, and so is the other guy. And instead of one of them disarming the other guy's ego, they both can't figure that out. And so they're just battling. And it's, you know, you got that inside of a seal platoon. It's a horrible thing.

And so as I'd watch them, it allowed me that then I could see to myself where I would see, oh, like I've got frustrated with someone. I'd say, or I'd get, I'd have a negative thought about someone. I think, why do I have that negative thought about that person? That's actually a badass or it seems like a really strong personality or a strong presence, right? Why do I have that? Oh, I have that because that's my ego. And it's the same thing with when I see people getting excited.

I don't think excitement is usually a positive thing. I mean, it's not a negative thing, but sometimes people in a meeting, someone just immediately has an opinion. and and I think and I watched their their opinion fall apart because they didn't listen long enough. They didn't assess things long enough. And so I hear them state their opinion and they state it with vigor and with conviction. And then you listen to it and all of a sudden they can't help but look bad because what they initially thought was wrong. And I probably had the same thoughts that I said to but I kept my mouth shut and I listened. And so I'd see people do that.

And I'd say, you know what? when you're in a meeting and there's people talking about things, you don't need to say anything. You don't need to appear stupid or whatever. Is it better to appear stupid than open your mouth and remove all doubt, right? This is just, but I would learn these things about people, which I think were helpful to me just by watching and seeing people and being really a really kind of a jerk in my own mind. Like I watch people like a jerk. Like, why would you do that?

What's wrong with you? Very accusatory tone in my own head. But then it was really easy for me to flip that back on myself. the time and say, well, wait a second, you do that too. Wait a second. You make that same mistake. So I think that from a psychological perspective, I think what's given me a good perspective of my own psychology is watching other people intently and closely with the goal of actually

helping them correct that, of going up to the guy and say, hey, man, this is your ego versus that guy's ego. And you're either going to, one of you is going to have to disarm the other one or your guys are never going to go along and this is never going to move forward. and so I think that really helped me out a lot. I'm sure it did. And I have found certainly that there are many benefits in my case of being a solo practitioner, so to speak, being unemployed slash self-employed for decades now. But one of the clear downsides is that I don't have that in-person peer group to observe or superiors or subordinates to observe.

with the rare exception of a handful of employees now. But what I ended up doing for myself to try to improve because I assumed, and I think this is good for a lot of people to assume that you may not have sufficient self-awareness to accurately self-diagnose your weaknesses and strengths. So I would seek out environments that made it very obvious. And the way I did that, and I think Musashi in a way, alludes to this, is if you say are on the battlefield, in Masashi's case, your strengths and

weaknesses, or at least your weaknesses, tend to become clearer or magnified. So if I could put myself into a really intense training environment like AKA in San Jose, a lot of professionals there at the time, Kane Velasquez and a number of others, and training, with Dave and a handful of other folks, I could watch my response to increasing levels of stress. Like, how did I respond to extreme heat? What was the self-talk when I wanted to quit? Did I, at what point was I inclined to try to find someone easy to roll with?

Like, how many rounds did it take, right? Was it? And then I would note that, and I would actually take notes. I bring my notebook, as you can see, I have notebooks everywhere here. And I would note not just the technical learnings and what I wanted to improve, but the decisions and the self-talk that I made that I wanted to improve upon and experiment with that. So I used the physical arena as a way to try to identify the high-level weaknesses that I could work on

because everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face, right? So it's all great and theoretically, academically beautiful to sit down and try to self-analyze when you're journaling in the morning, which I also do. But it's quite another thing to be like, okay, tough guy. Yeah. And that's even with that long explanation I just gave at looking at all these people, I didn't, I wasn't consciously thinking. Actually, I wasn't even consciously thinking about it from a psychological perspective. I was just thinking it from a pragmatic, here's two guys, why don't they get along? And then when I would see myself, dude, I go, oh, you're like, you're doing the same stupid stuff. It wasn't like this, um, you know, this idea of I was looking at myself and I was just doing what I had to do, right? I guess there's always the,

the subconscious, uh, feeling of like trying to do better and trying to self-improve, but I'm not a person that has the, the constant like, um, I'm trying to self-improve. I think it's just a, it's just a natural thing. Like, yeah, I'm trying to get better.

Of course. But that's not, I don't think about it. I guess that's my point. I don't think about it. I'm not focused on it. I'm just doing it. I'm just doing it and living it. Yeah, well, I think in your case,

and I have, well, we have some mutual friends, I mean, from the SEALs, but also force recon. And a number of friends who have been engaged at very high levels in elite ranks within the military. And I think that in my experience, thus far, most of them have whether it's by virtue of the filtering that their careers impose on them right I mean you have a thousand people start at step one how many make it to step 100 that they they self-select and are selected to have a high degree of what I would consider or what you

could consider mindfulness which is usually associated with like hippies in San Francisco with didgeridus and burning man and so on. It's a buzzword there, but I think the ability to detach in that way comes naturally to you and to many people I know who also have made it to step 100. They just seem in a military context. If you don't have that, you,

and certainly you can get killed or get washed out for many different reasons, but I think one of them seems to be if you have no self-awareness, you just you get broken or you get disqualified at some point. Yeah. Or, or you,

you get as good as the machine can make you. And I think that's, that's the real difference. You get as good as the machine. The machine's going to make you good, right? Right. But you, the only person that can take you past what the machine can make is you.

Right. And so if you're not self-aware, if you can't, if you can't figure that out, if you can't look in the mirror and see, like, things that you can correct, then you're, you're just going to be what the machine made you,

which is a high quality item. I mean, you know, the military is filled with some high quality guys, great guys, fabulous guys, that perform outstanding. But then there's like this one more level of guys that are, you look at him and you go, man, that guy's really good. Why is that? That's because that guy, the machine got him to hear and he's looking himself going, what can I do better? He's got that detachment. And that's definitely, definitely important. I got to introduce somebody in this book now

that there's, his name is Sasaki Kojiro Ganru. I'd have to see the last part. Yeah, you got the first. G-A-N-R-Y-U. G-A-N-R-Y-U. Yeah, that gets me hard to say. Riyah, I guess I'm going to go with what I'm going with.

So this guy, and he dances in and out throughout the book, but this is Musashi's arch-rival, the other swordsman that's got this incredible reputation. Only he's been a little bit more. He stays on the scene more. Musashi's going and trying to farm and doing other things. And this guy's kind of on the scene. And there's one part where these elderly gentlemen are talking about

who is truly the best swordsman slash samurai in Japan. And here we go to the book. As he compared the two, he had to admit that the most daimyo, am I saying that right? Diomio. Daimyo would prefer Kojiro. He came from a good family and he had studied the art of war thoroughly.

Despite his youth, he had developed a formidable style of his own and he gained considerable fame as a fighter. The story of his brilliant defeat of men from the Obata Academy on the banks of the Sumida River and again at the dike on the Kanda River was already well known. Nothing had been heard from Musashi for some time. His victory at Ichi-Joji had made his reputation. but that had been years ago. And soon afterward, had spread this story that the story was exaggerated, that Musashi was a seeker of after fame who had trumped up the fight, made a flashy attack, and then fled to Mount He.

Every time Musashi did something praiseworthy, a spate of rumors followed denigrating his character and ability. It had reached the point where even the mention of his name usually met with critical. remarks or or else people ignored him entirely as the son of a nameless warrior in the mountains of Mimasaka his lineage was insignificant so he kind of faded and he does some dumb stuff too right like he does dumb things like he's a young he didn't come from the from the ranks that of people that were counseling him and keeping in line so he did dumb stuff like have battles against whole castles and attack people he was kind of crazy yeah

right? And so his reputation. And then of course, you know, this is like, I guess, ancient social media, right? There was rumors and they would post signs about people and they would do these things to denigrate people's reputations and such. And they had done that considerably to massage. Yeah, I was just thinking about how labor intensive it would be. You're talking about spreading posters, like to hand create piles of posters that you then go post to denigrate someone. Like the equivalent of a tweet was like sitting, sitting. down for a week and hand-making posters to put around town. And they do it in this book. They do it multiple times. They go on both sides. People write signs. Musashi does it. The other people do it.

It's, um, yeah, it's, it's crazy. We're getting, we're getting closer, closer. Musashi's wandering in the mountains. And here we go back to the book. At times, he was so tortured with his sword. It seemed like a weapon that turned against. him among the possibilities he considered was choosing the easy way if he could bring himself to live in a comfortable ordinary way with Outsu life would be simple almost

any fife would be willing to pay him enough to live on perhaps five hundred two thousand bushels but when he put it but when he put it to himself in the form of a question the answer was always no an easy existence imposed restrictions he could not submit to them. So he's got the idea. You know, I could just marry Outsu, get a good job, make 100K a year, we'll call it good. He doesn't like that though. He doesn't like that.

The easy path has restrictions. It is the discipline that provides freedom, apparently, for Musashi. Just as a contemporary example, one of my, I would consider him a teacher. He's certainly become a friend, but a political, originally, at least when he came to the U.S., a Polish political refugee named Jersey Gregorick, he's now in his 60s,

lives in Woodside, California, and he's a world champion and world record holder in Olympic weightlifting, as is his wife. That was a good podcast, by the way. Oh, yeah. He's awesome.

He's so salty. And to give people a little bit of background, the first time I met him, I was just, at the time, suffering from a malaise and a general fatigue with the

hypersensitivity of the Bay Area and I walked in to meet him for the first time to get an assessment and we sat down and we drank Marco Polo black tea. It's the only tea that he drinks and he's like, have a seat. So I sit down and we're talking he's asking me about my goals

about my athletic background, past injuries and he's sitting across from me he's in great shape. He's in his 60s. He can still do as an example. I've seen him on an Indobo You know what those are? It's a balanced board.

It's like a wobble board on top of a cylinder with a loaded barbell. He's holding a loaded barbell in a position like a hand clean on an Indoboard. He's in his 60s, throw it up like 150, 200 pounds

and land in a full asht to heels snatch on an Indobar. That is legit. And so he reached across, sipping tea, and then he stopped mid-thought and reached across and sort of pinched my right tit and just said,

you are too fat. So I just love this guy. Like after that I was like, yes, we are going to work together. But his, one of his mantras that he uses for everything is easy choices, hard life, hard choices, easy life. Yeah. Discipline equals freedom. For sure. That's awesome.

That is awesome. Did you like get on the program with him? I did for quite a period of time, yeah. Were you traveling down? I mean, how did you do? Were you following instructions? I traveled. I traveled down regularly and made excellent progress.

It's very, to do Olympic weightlifting the way that Jersey would want you to do it, which is the way I would want to do it, you really need hands-on instruction. It's highly, highly, highly technical. And also you need a logical progression because most people who just want to do a weekend course and figure out the snatch, they do not have any of the ankle or shoulder mobility, thoracic spine mobility to even perform the right movement, regardless of who the instructor is. They could have a 500-time world champion teaching them and doing video recording, but if they don't have the mobility, they're just going to hurt themselves. So I went down regularly,

and then when I was traveling, would send him video, and he would reply with video commentary. Great experience. I mean, I still think the jury, Z-style, relatively narrow stance, ass to the grass, overhead squat, one of the best movements. How wide is his grip when he does that? It's a snatch grip, so it would be a wider grip. Wider grip, but he can, there are videos of Jersey, people can look him up, J-E-R-Z-Y, Gregor-E-G-O-R-E-K, their videos, he is one of the most flexible mobile humans I've ever seen. and he's strong as an ox,

but he can, with his feet together, holding a, say, 35 pound plate overhead with his hands flat underneath it, like he's holding a dinner platter, go down into a perfect squat with his chest up, asked to his heels holding that overhead with his fingers basically touching. Yeah.

Which people might say, oh, I could do that. Trust me, you can't. Like, trust. Trust me, you cannot do it. That's awesome. So we're getting towards the end here. Again, this rivalry is brewing. And finally, there is a, speaking of social media,

there is a command issued by the castle. And here's what it says. On the 13th day of this month at 8 o'clock in the morning, on Funashima in the Nagato Straits of Buzin, Sasaki, Kajiro, Ghanru, a samurai of this fife, will at his lordship's bidding, fight about with Miyumatu, Masashi, Masana, a ronin from the province of Mimasaaka. It is strictly forbidden for supporters of either swordsmen to go to his aid or set forth on

the water between the mainland and Fushinama, and Funishama, sorry. until 10 o'clock on the morning of the 13th. No sightseeing vessels, passenger ships, and fishing boats will be permitted to enter the straits. 1612, that document right there. So there you go. It's on.

They're going to fight. And for people wondering what Ronin is, that is a masterless warrior. That is a samurai without a lord, a floating person. Ninus person. And you could think of them, in some cases, I mean, they would either be freelance,

self-directed learners, an autodidact like Musashi, or they would be mercenaries. So Ronin were also swords for hire. Negative connotation to it? Negative connotation. Got it. I would say, for sure.

Negative connotation, simply because the lineage and a in Japanese culture is so important that if you don't have a master or a particular thief that you're associated with, particularly if you come from, you are born of unknown origins or from a no-name warrior, it is very much an important class distinction. And Sasaki also, as I understand it, and this may come up later, but used to slightly different sword.

And we can get to that. You want me to hold. No, no, it's cool. He uses a sword called the drying pole. And for years, until I was actually prepping for this podcast, I thought that that was a badass name for a sword, of course. But what I thought, I was thought to myself, that means it like dries you of your blood.

That's what I thought it meant. It dries you of your blood. blood. And then as I was researching for this podcast, it's actually, and correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I found, there's a method of drying your clothes on a stick, a long stick, and his sword was longer than most swords. And so the full name of it was the clothes drying sword. Did I get all that right? That part, I'm not sure of it. It makes sense to me. And I remember when I was in Japan a number of years ago, I go back as, as, it's a lot of. often as I possibly can. And I'm still in close contact with my host family. I've been to my brother's

weddings and so on. It's just been fantastic. And I went back and I went to a Japanese sword museum, which was incredibly hard to find. And it was empty. And I'm decent at, still decent at reading Japanese, but it's been a long time. And it's been almost 20 years, more than 20 years since I formally studied it. So given there are thousands of characters, one gets a little rusty. And I went into this Japanese sword museum and the displays and everything. You can imagine.

I mean, it's Japan. Things are clean, meticulous. And I went in and it was just walls and walls of displays with different swords from different eras. So, I mean, swords we're talking about. Swords from these eras are there, preserved, and they look brand new.

And I was walking around, and there was a gentleman who was cleaning. And I asked him a question at one point about how to pronounce a character, and he proceeded to pause his cleaning and walk me through the entire museum explaining how each of them was used. And one of them, or one type, I should say, which I believe is what Sasaki used, it is long, and it's called it dachi. I think it's dachi.

And the difference, the most remarkable difference is A, yes, it's very long, and it is curved. And it would be used very often by horsemen, and it was curved. so that they could strike down their opponents without getting the blades stuck in their bodies. Because if you have a straight blade or relatively straight blade, like a katana, it's almost like having a straight-bladed hatchet that you swing into a tree.

It's like, fuck, and it gets stuck. Well, if you're on horseback, that's a big problem. You lose your sword. You're in a very bad position. And so it would be more of a slight, motion as opposed to a chopping motion. And the dachy was very effective for that reason. Also another reason that it tended to be longer.

Yeah, because you're fighting from on top of a horse, so you've got to reach down. Yeah, apparently they were saying that this sword was about nine to 12 inches longer than the normal sword. And they gave it this name, the drawing pole, which again, I always thought was about it. That's the way my mind works, Echo Charles. Don't be laughing.

Turned out, it's just drying. underwear outside on a broom handle. Everything's cooler in my brain. Outsu, who, by the way, this whole time that she's been in and out, she's, they've never actually like gotten together as, as whatever mates or as permanent partners, right? It's always just been this kind of thing.

Very Japanese. Yeah. Oh, is that very Japanese? Yeah, yeah, I would say so. just this very what we would consider sort of awkward tension that never has resolution. Right. Well, then that's exactly what this is. And that's exactly where they've been for 962 pages of a book, right? Awkward tension for 962 pages. And God bless her. She's still like saying, hey, I'm here for you. Even though he told her, I love my sword and not you.

Well, now to be fair, he said, I love my sword more than I love you. No, he said, I don't dislike you. Which in Musashi speak, is like, I will love you until my dying day. Yeah, true, true. So she is going to say goodbye to him because there's, you know, this is, this is a match where someone is going to die. And it's, I guess I'm looking at it's a little bit the older guy that has been out of practice against the young stud that's in the game fully. So it seems like people are thinking there's a good chance he's going to die So he's having that final conversation with her Outsu please forgive me

I may seem harmless but I'm not not where you're concerned I I know that do you truly? Yes, but I beg you say one word for me just one word Tell me that I'm your wife It would spoil it if I told you what you know already. But, but she was sobbing with her whole body, but with a burst of strength, she seized his hand and cried, say it. Sam, your wife, throughout this life. He nodded slowly, silently. Then one by one, he pulled her delicate fingers from his arm and stood erect. A samurai's wife must not weep and go

to pieces when he goes off to war. Laugh from Miyotsu. Send me away with a smile this may be your husband's last departure both knew the time had come for a brief moment he looked at her and smiled then he said until then yes until then she wanted to return his smile but only managed to hold back the tears farewell he turned and walked with firm strides towards the water's edge a parting word rose to her throat but refused to be uttered. The tears welled up irrepressibly. She could no longer see him. The strong, salty wind ruffled Musashi's sideburns. His kimono flapped briskly. Sasuki, bring the boat a little closer. Though he had been waiting for over two hours and knew Musashi was on the beach, Sasuki had carefully

kept his eyes averted. Now he looked at Musashi and said, right away, sir. With a few strong rapid movements, he pulled the boat in. When it touched the shore, Musashi jumped lightly into the prow, and they moved out to sea. Outsu, stop. The shout was Jutaro's, another guy that's there on the scene. Outsu was running straight toward the water. He raced after her, startled. Gonosuke and Osugi joined the chase.

Osu, stop. What are you doing? Don't be foolish. Reaching her simultaneously, they threw her arms around her and held her back. No, no, she protested shaking her head slowly. You don't understand. What are you trying to do? Let me sit down by myself.

Her voice was calm. When they released her and she walked with dignity to a spot a few yards away where she knelt on the sand seemingly exhausted. But she had found her strength. She straightened her collar, smoothed her hair, and bowed her head. towards Musashi's little craft go without regrets, she said. That's how you do it right there.

So again, it was mentioned, or if I didn't explain that well enough, this battle is going to take place on a little island in the middle of a stream. Or straight. Yeah, or is it straight. What's the difference between those two? Well, actually, that's a great question.

The way I said, this is fun. Okay, so, I mean, novel like this is created in your own head, right? It's an active experience of creating. So in my head, and maybe I don't know what a straight is, but the way I envisioned a straight was almost like a small or extended, so long but narrow sandbank in the middle of, say, a river. Okay. Okay. But a wide river, like Mississippi type of river. Yeah, that's kind of what I pictured you. I pictured a wide, a wide, wide river that has a little uninhabited sort of strip of land in the middle.

Yeah, exactly. That's what I picture. And that's what you picture too. So I guess we created the same thing. So he's in this boat and he's headed, obviously he's running late. And as per usual. As per usual. And here we go to the book, Sasuki, may I have this?

What is it? this broken ore in the bottom of the boat. I don't need it. Why do you want it? It's about the right size, Musashi said cryptically. He held the slightly waterlogged ore out with one hand and squinted down it to see if it was straight. One edge of the blade was split off. He placed the ore on his knee and totally absorbed began carving with his short sword.

Sasuki cast backward glances toward, Shimoseki several times, but Musashi seemed oblivious of the people he had left behind. Was this the way a samurai approached a life and death battle? To a townsman like Sasuki, it was cold and heartless. So this is important. He picked up this old waterlogged ore from the bottom of the boat, says, can I have this? The guy says, yeah, sure. And now he starts carving it.

Susuki was growing more and more nervous with each stroke of the skull. He had broken out in a cold sweat. His heart was palpitating. How could a man going into battle be so calm? It would be a fight to the death. No question about that. Would he be taking a passenger back to the mainland later? Or a cruelly maimed corpse?

There was no way of knowing. Musashi thought Suzuki was like a white cloud floating across the sky. This was not a pose on Musashi's part, for in fact, he was thinking of nothing at all. He was, if anything, a little bored. He looked over the side of the boat at the swirling blue water. It was deep here, infinitely deep and alive with what seemed to be eternal life. But water had no fixed, determined form. Was it not because man had a fixed, determined form that he cannot possess eternal life?

Does not true life begin only when tangible form has been lost? To Masashi's eyes, life and death seemed like so much froth. He felt goose pimples on his skin, not from the cold water, but because his body felt a premonition. Though his mind had risen above life and death, body and mind were not in accord. every pore of his body as well of his mind forgot there would remain nothing inside but being inside his being but the water and the clouds so he's going into a full on like trance yeah full on trance and skipping ahead a little bit here they arrive at the island go straight in musashi flew off the

quilted quote the bow advanced at a very restrained pace Suzuki could not bring himself to stroke with vigor his arms moved only slightly exerting little force the sound of bulbous was in the air Sasuki yes sir it's shallow enough here there's no need to get close you don't want to damage your boat besides it's about time for the tide to turn silently Suzuki fixed his eyes on a thin pine tree standing alone underneath it the wind was playing with a brilliant red cloak Sasuki started to point but realized that Musashi had already seen his opponent keeping his eyes on Ganru Musashi took a russet hand towel from his obi folded it in four lengthwise and tied it around his wind-blown hair then he

shifted his short short sword to the front of his obi Taking off his long sword, he laid it in the bottom of the boat and covered it with a reed mat. In his right hand, he held the wooden sword he had made from the broken ore. This is far enough, he said to Suzuki. So he's going to fight the best swordsman in the world. He carves a wooden sword out of an ore on the way, leaves his long sword in the And there is a novel, but there's also some historic precedent for this. So he would routinely use wooden swords when dueling with opponents who were using live blades.

Book at that moment, Musashi, his Hakama, which is pants. Yeah, it's kind of like a Japanese kilt, let's say. Very, very long. Usually comes down to the angles. His Akama, hitched high on both sides, jumped lightly into the sea, landing so lightly he barely made a splash. He strode rapidly toward the waterline, his wooden sword cutting through the spray. Five steps. Ten steps.

Sasuki, abandoning his skull, watched in wonderment, unconscious of where he was, what he was doing. As Ganru streaked away from the pine like a red streamer, his polished scabbard caught the glint of the the sun. Musashi! Gonro planted his feet resolutely in the sand, unwilling to give up an inch. Musashi stopped and stood still, exposed to the water and the wind. A hint of a grin appeared on his face. Cojuro, he said quietly. There was an unearthly fierceness in his eyes, a force pulling so irresistibly. It threatened to draw Cajiro inexorably. into the peril and destruction. The waves washed his wooden sword.

Gonroos were the eyes that shot fire. A bloodthirsty flame burned in his pupils like the rainbows of fierce intensity seeking to terrify and debilitate. Musashi! No answer. Musashi! The sea rumbled ominously in the distance.

The tide lapped and murmured at the two men's feet. You're late again, aren't you? Is that your strategy? As far as I'm concerned, it's a cowardly ploy. It's two hours past the appointed time. I was here at eight just as promised. I've been waiting. Musashi did not reply.

You did this at Ichi, and before that, at the Ren Gion. Your method seems to be to throw your opponent off by deliberately making him wait. That trick will get you nowhere with Ganru. Now prepare your spirit and come forward bravely so future generations won't laugh at you. Come ahead and fight Musashi. The end of his scabbard rose high behind him as he drew the great drying pole. With his left hand, he slid off the scabbard and threw it into the water.

Waiting just long enough for a wave to strike the reef and retreat. treat. Musashi suddenly said in a quiet voice, you've lost, Cogiro. What? Gonro was shaken to the core. The fight's been fought. I say you've been defeated. What are you talking about? If you were going to win, you wouldn't throw your scabbard away. You've cast away your future, your life. Words. Nonsense. Too bad, Cajuro. Ready to fall? Do you want to fall? Do you want to fall? Do you want to get it over with fast come come forward you bastard ho ho musashi's cry and the sound of the water rose to a crescendo together stepping into the water the drying pole positioned high above his head gonro faced musashi squarely a line of white foam streaked across the surface as musashi ran up on shore to gonro's left gonro pursued musashi's feet left the water and touched the sand at almost the same instant that Ghanru's sword,

his whole body hurtled at him like a flying fish. When Musashi sensed that the drying pole was coming toward him, his body was still at the end of the motion that had taken him out of the water, leaning slightly forward. He held the wooden sword with both hands, extended out to the right behind him and partially hidden. Satisfied with his position, he half grunted an almost noiseless, sound that wafted before Ghanur's face. The drying pole had appeared to be on the verge of a

downward slice, but it wavered slightly, then stopped. Nine feet away from Musashi, Gondru changed directions by leaping nimbly to the right. The two men stared at each other. Musashi, two or three paces from the water, had the sea to his back. Gondru was facing him. His sword held high with both hands. Their lives were totally absorbed in deadly combat, and both were free from conscious thought. The scene of battle was a perfect vacuum. But in the waiting stations and beyond the sound of the waves, countless people held their breaths. Above Gonroo hovered the prayers and the hopes of those who believed in him and wanted him to live. Above Musashi, the prayers and hopes of others. of Sedo and Iori on the island,

of Outsu and Osugi and Gonosuki on the beach, of Akemi and Matahachi on their hill. All their prayers were directed to heaven. Here, hopes, prayers, and the gods were of no assistance, nor was chance. There was only a vacuum, in personal and perfect, impartial is this vacuum so difficult of achievement by one who has life the

perfect expression of the mind that has risen above thought and transcended ideas the two men spoke without speaking then to each came the unconscious realization of the other the pores of their bodies stood out like needles directed at the adversary muscles flesh nail hair even Eyebrows, all bodily elements that partake of life were united into a single force against the enemy Defending the living organism of which they were part The mind alone was one with the universe clear and untroubled like the reflection of the moon in a pond amidst the rages of a typhoon To reach this sublime immobility is the supreme achievement that seemed like Ian

But the interval was in fact short the time required for the waves to come in and recede a half a dozen times Then a great shout more than vocal coming from the depths of being shattered the instant It came from Gan Rue and was followed immediately by Musashi's shout The two cries like angry waves lashing a rocky shore sent their spirits skyward The challenger's sword raised so high that it seemed to threaten the sun, streaked through the air like a rainbow. Musashi threw his shoulder, his left shoulder forward, drew his right foot back, and shifted his upper body into a position half facing his opponent.

His wooden sword held in both hands swept through the air at the same moment that the tip of the drying pole came down directly before his nose. The breathing of the two combatants grew louder than the sound of the waves. Now the wooden sword was extended at eye level, the drying pole high above its bearer's head. Gonroo had bounded about ten pieces away where he had the sea to one side. Though he had not succeeded in injuring Musashi in his first attack, he had put himself in a much better position. Had he remained where he was, with the sun reflecting from the water into his eyes, his visor. vision would soon have faltered, than his spirit, and he would have been at Musashi's

mercy. With renewed confidence, Ganru began inching forward, keeping a sharp eye out for a chink in Musashi's defense and stealing his own spirit for a decisive move. Musashi did the unexpected. Instead of proceeding slowly and cautiously, he strode bold, boldly toward Gonroo, his sword projecting before him, ready to thrust into Ganyu's eyes. The artlessness of this approach brought Gondru to a halt. He almost lost sight of Musashi.

The wooden sword rose straight in the air. With one great kick, Musashi leapt high and folding his legs, reduced his six-foot frame to four feet or less. Yeah, Gondru's sword screamed through the space above him. The stroke missed, but the tip of the drying pole cut through Musashi's headband, which went flying through the air. Gan Rue mistook it for his opponent's head, and a smile flitted briefly across his face. The next instant, his skull broke like gravel under the blow of Musashi's sword. As Garn Rue lay where the sand met the grass, his face betrayed no content.

of defeat blood streamed from his mouth but his lips formed the smile of triumph oh no gone Rue forgetting himself Iwama Kabuki jumped up and with him all his writ knew their faces distorted with shock then they saw Nagoda Sadu and Iori sitting calmly and sedately on their benches Shamed, they somehow managed to keep from running forward. They tried to regain a degree of composure, but there was no concealing their grief and delusion. Some swallowed hard, refusing to believe what they had seen, and their minds went blank.

In an instant, the island was quiet and still as it had ever been. Only the rustle of the pines and the swaying grasses mocked the frailty and the impermanence of mankind, Musashi was watching a small cloud in the sky. As he did, his soul returned to his body, and it became possible for him to distinguish between the cloud and himself, between his body, and the universe. Sasaki, Kajiro, Ganru did not return to the world of the living. Lying face down, he still had a grip on his sword. His tenacity was still visible. There was no sign of anguish on his face.

Nothing but satisfaction at having fought a good fight, not the faintest shadow of regret. The sight of his own headband lying on the ground sent shivers up and down Musashi's spine. Never in this life, he thought, would he meet another opponent like this? A wave of admiration and respect flowed over. over him. He was grateful to Kujiro for what the man had given him. In strength, in the will to fight, he ranked higher than Musashi. And it was because of this that Musashi had been forced to excel himself. What was it that it enabled Musashi to defeat Kajiro? Skill? The help of the gods?

While knowing it was neither of these, Musashi was never able to express a reason in words. Certainly it was something more important than either strength or godly providence. Kojero had put his confidence in the sword of strength and skill. Musashi trusted in the sword of spirit. That was the only difference between them. silently Musashi walked the 10 paces to Cajiro and knelt beside him he put his left hand near the nostrils of Cajuro and found there was no trace of breath with the right treatment he may recover Musashi told himself and he wanted to believe this wanted to believe that this

most valiant of all adversaries would be spared but the battle was over it was time to go farewell he said to Kajiro then to the officials on their beat benches having bowed once to the ground he ran to the reef and jumped into the boat there was not a drop of blood on his wooden sword the tiny craft moved out to sea who is to say where there is no record as to whether Ghanru's supporters on Hikojima attempted to take revenge people do not give up their loves and hates as long as life lasts. Waves of feeling come and go with the passage of time. Throughout Musashi's lifetime, there were those who resented his victory and criticized his conduct on that day. He rushed away. It was said because he feared reprisal. He was confused.

He even neglected to administer the Kudagra. The world is always full of the sound of waves, the little fishes, abandoning themselves to the waves, dance and sing and play. But who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows its depth? The end. Book finishes up, knows the heart of the sea. Who knows its depths? And as I read that, I wondered to myself, are we just the little fishes, abandoning ourselves to the waves to sing and dance? I'm not saying don't have fun. I'm not saying don't sing and dance and play. Enjoy life, of course, and relish the joy of life.

I think you have to make sure you don't dance your life away. One of the little fishes. And in do Kodo, that final writing of Masashi before he died, the last thing he wrote was never stray from the way. Think that singing and the dancing and all the play, it's okay. It's good. Distractions. There is a path. There is a way.

And you know what that way is. You know what you should be doing. to stay on that path because it is the path of discipline and discomfort, but it is the right path. And you know that. And it is that path that will ultimately lead you to where you really want to be so that you can live. I think a lot of times people are trying to find the path and they're looking all around

different places and different people and different influences. But man, I think so often that path, you know what the path is and people know what they're supposed to be doing, but they just don't get on the path and stay on the path. Yeah, I agree. Or it's something they felt when they were eight or 12 and they travel the world or travel through life's experiences trying to find the answer that was in front of them the entire time. And so they come back to see what they knew with different eyes and to recognize that they knew the path all along, which is something that I so enjoyed about this book and the character, both real and certainly presented by the author of Musashi, who is using his experiences in this domain of the sword as a, means of thematic interconnectedness.

And so unlike Kojiro at the end, he is not just a technician with the sword, although he is a brilliant technician. He's tilling the soil. He's constructing buildings, which later he did quite a lot of, in terms of architecture and overseeing the building instead of destruction of things,

and finding at the highest levels of performance with the sword in felling opponents, the principles, the first principles that he can apply everywhere. And that's part of what fascinates me so much about Musashi or anyone who's the best of what they do, is that it could be anything, it could be pottery, it could be sniping, it could be calligraphy, but like the best.

They see the depth. They see the, the interwoven web that can expand from that one fine focus into everything that they do. And I think that, for me at least, is the path and maybe it's just coming off of a silent retreat

that I want to talk this way. But it doesn't strike me as something that is cleanly expressed in an Instagram post or a quote necessarily. It's more of a feeling. Like you know if you're sober and take a moment to sit in the stillness. And by stillness, I don't mean sitting on a mountaintop.

It could just be five minutes of silence when you first get up in the morning and observe your own mind and how you feel like you know if you're on the path or not. Or at least you know when you're not on it. God, you totally agree. You know when you're not on it. And I think that the feeling of being on it, when you're on the path it has that

beauty of mindlessness or no mind is what they would say and say zen the state of no mind and it sounds like unconscious but it's different it's not unconscious it's not subconscious

it's something else where you feel that you're exactly where you should be doing exactly what you should be doing and you're not planning you're just putting one foot in front of the other on this path that you didn't have to find because in a way the path was

seeking you the whole time and it's just a feeling it's a really it's a feeling i think that everyone can have but they get so caught up we all get caught up well i don't want to speak for you two find gents i'll speak for myself it's it's easy to get caught up in the noise and the shiny objects and just like the little fish you were talking about earlier It's like when you see that lure, to recognize it as a lure is sort of the first step. And then to realize that when you look past the lure, all right, there's a lure 16 inches in front of you. And then you're in an ocean that has endless fathoms of depth. What a journey.

Yeah, the same, the line that says, the world is always filled with the sound of waves. It's like, yeah, those sounds are going on and the waves are out there. and there's little fishy swimming around in the waves. Yeah. And I think you've experienced this type of, that type of clarity in many different contexts. I haven't surfed much, but I have done a bit, certainly not as regularly as you have. But the feeling of when I've been out in surf that suddenly exceeded my capacities, which is also not necessarily something I recommend,

but I've had this harrowing experience, particularly as someone who didn't learn to swim until I was in my 30s, which is a whole separate thing that I think we covered in episode 50. I have fear related to the ocean, which I think is healthy on a lot of levels. But when you're out there and suddenly sets come in that are 70%, 100% bigger than what you went in with,

The feeling of, or just sitting calmly on your board waiting for a set and looking out over the water, the sense of insignificance that you feel is not a, at least that I feel, it's not a negative thing. It's a very, I hesitate to use the word, but I can't find a better one. Spiritual experience, where you're like, oh yeah, that email, that comment on social media, that commitment I made to go to an event that I now really six months later don't want to go to who gives a fuck it's like we're a bunch of monkeys on a spinning rock yeah in the middle of this whole thing whatever this whole thing is and all that thing is singing and dancing and playing and it's like compared to the depths of the ocean it means nothing yeah nothing yeah it's it's

it's just I love the the purity of uh discery of uh Despite his stupidity, let's be honest, right? We already talked about it. Like, he made a lot of stupid decisions. Storming the jail? I mean, what do you think is going to happen? And so on and so forth. But despite all that coming back to what he knew,

one of the few things that he felt, I shouldn't say no, felt to be true to him, which was this commitment to the way of the sword. It doesn't have to be a commitment to the way of the sword, but I've always had a certain envy for people, including yourself who from a very, very early age, just felt a beacon for a direction that called them. You're really lucky.

I feel like I was really lucky in that aspect. Or you meet people I've met, for instance, Laird Hamilton, I mentioned him earlier. It's like he still serves every day, wakes up at four, stoked to go out and train. He's on the path. He's on the path. And I mean, this is a guy who he was with, I mean, he's out there with large tiger sharks,

which are routinely out where he serves in Hawaii, where he spends a good portion of the year. And I've heard stories, and these are real, these are not several hundred years later embellished stories. This is a real story where someone was bitten by a tiger shark bleeding out. He went back to a jet ski that they had. Oh, it took off. some piece of clothing he had put a makeshift tourniquet on this guy who's bleeding

in the water with tiger sharks. Keep in mind, he's already been bitten. The key has been lost to the jet ski. Hot wires the jet ski and brings the guy back and saves him. And I'd say every few months he saves someone's life in the water. And he's in his 50s.

We were sitting in a steam room at one point and I in retrospect realized not a a good idea to try to outlast Laird in the steam room. But he was saying roughly along these lines, like 20, once it's 20 feet, you can start to have fun, start to play around.

He goes, 20 to 30, yeah, you're really jamming. It's like 30 to 40, you can definitely get into the zone. He's like, above 50, you're not allowed to fall. And that's his day. And he has kids, but as far as I can tell, Gabby, who's just incredible, incredible, on so many levels in her own, right? She understands, like, this is his path. He's still chasing giants.

And he's not going to stop. How could he? Like, that's part of who he is. What do you think draws people, like, in the wrong direction in their life? I think it's just a little distractions as you talk about. It's little distractions, little things that just pull you off. And I think maybe people don't want to accept. the fact, like they know what the path is, but they want to deny it for whatever reason.

I think that can be part of it. The distraction of the path. I mean, I will say for those people out there, like, well, for God's sake, I don't know what my path is. I can't define it. I don't know if I could say to someone with absolute conviction, my path is X. But, but, but I can tell when I've strayed, if that makes sense. There's a certain agitation. There's a certain scattered feeling that I have. And as to reasons people get off the path, and I think people may have multiple paths,

but you were going to say. I was going to say, because I'm trying to formulate what we're talking about because I know exactly what you mean. Like the path is, it might not be like, hey, I want to do this thing. Like, there's something else. And I think it, I think there's something else is,

the path is how you are going to live. That's not necessarily a destination. You could, you could follow the same path and get to a bunch of different destinations, but the path itself of how you're going to live, how you're going to go through life, how you're going to do things. That's, that's what I'm talking about.

And even the path that I'm on could have led, to other things in my life. And even though, you know, I was in the military for 20 years, I'm not in the military anymore. I'm still on the same path. Like the path is the same of the way I'm trying to live my life. That's the same. And if I'm in, when I'm in business, the way I run my business, I'm on the same path. It's so the path, it's like the way you're living your life more than anything else. And it doesn't matter if you're in college, if you're starting a business, if you're working for someone, are you on the path that you're supposed to be on?

Are you living the way that you feel you're supposed to live, that you know you're supposed to live? I think people get off that. They get off that. They're not living the way that they know they should live. Regardless of circumstances. You've been in horrible circumstances before. We all go situations where things just went sideways.

And you can either stray off the path and turn into something that you're not or something that you know you should. couldn't be, or you can stay on the path. You can continue to do the things that you're supposed to do and do and live the way that you want to live. And really, lately I've been talking about, because I've been trying to explain this, you know what the right thing to do is, right? You know what you're supposed to do as a person, as you. You know what you're supposed to do. Do it. Do that thing. What is that thing that you're supposed to? You know you're supposed to live a certain way.

and when you don't live that way, like you said, there's friction and there's tension and there's disruption and it doesn't feel right. And when you live the right way, it's often harder. It often is less immediate gratification. But the internal gratification that you get from living the way you're supposed to live is very satisfying. And another thing I need to absolutely point out is I am by no means sitting here trying to say that I've always maintained, I'm the worst human ever. I'm horrible. And, and, you know, I was on with a with a guy named Charlie Plum came on the podcast and a guy named Jim, Jim Conkle. Charlie Plum was a Vietnam fighter pilot shot down, spent six years in the Honoy Hilton. And another guy named Jim Conkel who was a fighter pilot in World War II. And we got in this

conversation like about, you know, doing good. And these guys are, Just levels, infinite levels above me as far as being good people. And I kind of went along with the conversation, almost as if I was one of their, like, had that level of goodness, which I don't, you know. I mean, I'm trying. But, you know, when I was a young seal, I was a maniac. You know, I made Musashi look like a brilliant saint when his youth. You know, I was a crazy maniac kid filled with just mayhem in my brain.

And all my friends, we were all the same and we got after it. And so, believe me, I'm not trying to say that. But I will say that as I've grown up, I think I've gotten myself closer to living the way that I know I'm supposed to live or what I believe to be the right way and the right path to be on. And, you know, so I just wanted to make that quick caveat that anybody that's listening that's like, oh, wow, Jocko is really just a saintly person wrong. I'm not even remotely making that claim. But I am trying. I'll give myself at least that much credit. I think that everyone is a work in progress and that the path, so to speak, is illustrated for me in this book.

And I'll get into a couple of specifics that might be helpful for people to think about, or at least have been helpful to me as I think through what distinguishes the relative last, lack of friction and scatteredness and agitation versus states without those things. Because being on the path is not necessarily for me a feeling of overwhelming joy and happiness per se. It's a lack of excess agitation and distractedness. And I think that what I've found for myself is that as I get older and feel more at peace with what I'm doing and how I'm behaving, like you said, it's having certain first principles in mind that transcend any given project, any given conversation, any one relationship. And early on, it's as you're hoping to define yourself or find yourself or build yourself, you very often succumb because how could you not to pursuing shiny object after shiny object.

And in the beginning, I think that's fine. And even for a very long period of time, you throw a lot against the wall to see what sticks and to discover what you're good at, what you're terrible at, what your weaknesses are, what your strengths are. But over time, whether you're looking at some of the most successful investors in the world, like Ray Dahlia of Bridgewater Associates, they manage $160 billion at last count. and or athletes like Marcelo Garcia who will not train a technique that he cannot use on a 300 pound muscular opponent.

He just will not train. He does not drill techniques that he cannot apply to someone twice his size. And these are principles, right? Whether it's, say, and you can take principles from one domain and transplant them, which is why I think this book is such an excellent

illustration of the value of becoming exceptionally exceptionally good at something in a very, very narrow band. Because when you do that, the constitution and the frameworks and the principles that you develop for yourself can then be applied everywhere. So in jujitsu, let's just say, and I'm talking out my ass a little bit, since I certainly don't feel qualified to speak too much on jujitsu at this table. but if you take something like position before submission, right? Let's just say for whatever reason you adopt that and that's worked very well for you. You can apply that to a lot, right? You can apply that to a lot of things.

And when you start to really think about precepts and principles and the do-codo, that last short book or treatise of Musashi is in effect a bulleted list of precepts. And pretty tough to follow all of them at the same time, by the way, if you read them. But if you just have a few, and they can be very plain, very much plain speech. I mean, let's just say it's say what you mean, mean what you say. Do what you say you are going to do on time. I mean, very simple, right?

And then you have a recipe book. You have an algorithm, which is really just a step, a set of steps that produce given known predetermined outcome usually. If you follow those, you can start to mold and define this path, your way of moving through the world and interacting with the world. But if you're stuck in, say, the weather patterns of the world, instead of looking at sort of the tectonic plate level, and you're focused on these things that change very, very quickly,

like the news cycle, like what your friends are saying on social media at all times, the fear of missing out and social expectations that are set that make you want to posture because all of your friends are putting highlights of their lives on the internet which makes you feel like a failure because it's not all glamour shots. Those are all just shifting weather patterns. They mean nothing.

And you should let those pass as they say in this book. It comes up a lot as much as froth. froth. That comes up a lot in Musashi and flies, right? Froth and flies and insects. These passing phenomena versus thinking about, in his case, he uses the mountains and so on. But the lower levels that tend to be less,

they're less sexy, they don't move as quickly. But if you understand those slower moving, and just by extensions, timeless principles, and you can use those to carve and form and find, rediscover your own path, then I think it just gives you a much greater level of peace, in part because it gives you a much greater level of agency. You feel like you can craft your experience of life

as opposed to being tossed back and forth by the vagaries of fast-changing, factors you have no control over. Man. Well, I suppose we could talk about this indefinitely, but we're using up too much bandwidth already. Echo, speaking of the path, do you have any recommendations of maybe how people could stay on the path and, you know, maybe even support? Sure.

Real quick, though. As far as pronunciation goes, When there's like a double consonant, you kind of say them both, huh? Like this dokoto. You say dokoto. Yeah, and there's a little stutter in it. Yeah, yeah, because it's almost like you've got to finish the first K and then start the second K. Yeah, it's kind of a, I think it would be considered what they call it glottal stop.

So like Hokkaido in Japan is actually Hokkaido. Right, right. But if there was only one K, it'd be Hokkaido. That's right. Yeah, you know, it's that. Yeah, or school. It took me a long time to, which was really embarrassing. in the beginning, working on my pronunciation,

I had to say the word school a lot. I was going to school, walking to school, when are you going to school? And it's gackol, which has that little stutter. And man, did I mess that up? Well, I certainly cast a broad apology to all of my Japanese friends, especially, they're going to be going crazy. I'm sorry.

It's interesting that you care, because in the Hawaiian language, they put a, like, it's actually considered another letter. It's called the Okina. It's basically an apostrophe. Yeah. And that you, in Hawaii, there's a lot of vowels go together, right? So when you want, when you want to do that little function to separate them, you put the Okina there.

Like the word Hawaii, Hawaii, there's two I's at the end. So you say Hawaii. Remember, you were asking me, oh, how do you say Kauai? How do you say Kauai? Is it Kauai or Kauai? I think technically it's Kauai. Kauai. People typically don't say Kauai anymore.

That's a whole not. Very, very similar. But similar deal, right? Similar deal. Except this is with consonants, straight out. I don't want to take us too far afield, but there are some really weird similarities between Japanese and other languages where there may have been trade routes established before the dawn of man in weird places.

So there are some commonalities in Polynesian languages. And then you also find incredible commonalities. with Turkish of all languages. Nearly identical grammar. I remember when I was taking linguistic classes, and they would point out these weird, weird commonalities that you say, wow, that's, you know, like things like the number one,

things like the sun, things that, you know, everyone kind of has to have created a word for at some point. Yeah, there's definitely some strings. And I forget what they are. I didn't study hard enough. I wasn't on the path. Closely enough.

But a lot of these languages like that, you know, even the pronunciation of like A is A. You know, Japanese, Hawaiian. Yeah. You know, all these other. Very, very soft vowels typically. Yeah. Ah, A, I, E, O, U. Yeah.

And then that I is like E. Yeah. Yeah. Japanese people can handle Spanish is probably the closest that I've seen. Language that they can handle. Any language that ends on consonants a lot is going to be so hard. I remember, oh, they have such a tough time. They add the U at the end.

Yeah, him. Timu. Yeah, for the same like, beer, or yeah, beer, Namabir, McDonald's is Macdonald's. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, man, they have a tough time. But the, and they, and they, for those people wondering, the reason they can't or have so much

trouble distinguishing between R's and L's, which many other Asian people do not, but in the case of Japanese is because they have a blended, phoneme, a blended sound.

It's a, it's a combination of R, L, and D. So, Bari du-de-ro, is how they say it. So that, du, that, like, sound is not clearly distinguished into multiple consonants in Japanese, which is why they have so much trouble with ours and L's, but you can teach them to fix that in a few minutes

if you explain how the tongue is positioned. And I remember at one point, I give credit to my first Japanese teacher, Mr. Shimano, who was fantastic because we would hit a sticking point in class. So we'd be going over some concept that was really difficult for a native English speaker's brain to wrap itself around. Like they have subject markers and the difference between why and ga. And if it's known to the speaker, it's this. If it's not known to the speaker, it's that.

And you're like, what? What does that even mean? And he could sense because I transferred from a very weak school, very bad school on Long Island to a very highly competitive school in New Hampshire that had classes six days a week. mandatory seated meal like Dead Poet Society, mandatory sports, classes from 8 a.m. or so to about 6 p.m. And the Japanese class was very often. The class after sports, so people wiped out, hadn't had dinner. And we'd be struggling and getting agitated with some aspect of Japanese, and he could tell that we were losing it. But we still had 45 minutes to go. So we'd say, all right, had a really strong Japanese accent. And he'd be like, we're going to stop from

minute and I am going to attempt to say this word for you and you would write squirrel on the blackboard if you want to talk about a word that would be designed to be kryptonite for Japanese person and so he would he would take like five minutes for just comedic effect to just go scurr squirrel scro and you do that for like a few minutes and we crack up and loosen up and realize okay everyone who's learning a new language has some type of sticking point like this and then be like, okay, enough fun in games. Now back to the hard stuff. He's an excellent, excellent teacher.

Legit. Speaking of hard stuff. Speak quick, my brother. Please, for the love of God. All good. I was going to talk more about your retreat, but we can talk about that later. In the meantime, we're going to take care of our joints.

Origin mane.com is a good spot to get these joint supplements, jaco supplements. Super krill oil, not just regular. Crill oil. Are you on krill oil? Yeah, curle oil upstairs, actually.

Boom, there you go. Also, another one called Jocko Joint Warfare. It's a blend of joint degeneration warfare weapons. Check. Technically. Also, for some legit fitness gear, if you're into kettle, you're into kettle bells? Yeah, I have some in my garage here. It's the only fitness tools I have right now are two kettlebells.

Boom, there you go. So boom, I got mine from on it. Yeah, squadroakis I go to a gym for that right now But yeah Yeah, yeah But kettlebells are dope Yeah

Especially the ones from on it By the way Werewolf Gorilla Bigfoot Chimp I'm just listing the ones I personally have

Calling me names I thought you were trying out New names for me No, not no Those are the kettlebells I have You know the artistic ones Oh I know The dope ones

Did you say artistic or autistic Artistic? Artistic I'm just kidding I'm just messing with you I don't think they're autistic at all but they are dope though

in my opinion you're the regular ones I have the eyes so we're sitting here in Austin Texas not too far from on at HQ and I actually bought two of the standard issue I know you're like me yeah just cut the decorations and just go

they got some new Star Wars ones though they do yeah the Darth Vader one and Stormtrooper the Darth Vader one's cool yeah I've seen it you gotta kind of admit it after a while you're like okay I mean me I don't care I'm like hey come to my house see my kettlebells yeah they're dope but some people jocco they're like no you know wants to stay hardcore but you got to admit it I'm more of a bobafeck guy myself but yeah I do like Darth Vader yeah check those out anyway on it dot com that they got other stuff on there too um pretty much for any kind of workout

other than what like your typical gym workout like they have maces and whatnot so anyway go there on it yeah just as a side note for people listening don't all right I've had enough caffeine I've been off caffeine for 10 days so I've got a lot of personality right now uh all good don't let perfect be the enemy of good when it comes to working out or home gyms or anything like that don't say I can't start because I don't have these seven pieces of equipment for two years when I had very little money and was training in jiu-jitsu when I just moved to the bay area which is stupidly expensive I had roommates and no space whatsoever,

I had one 53 pound kettlebell and I did everything with that kettlebell. I did and I got into that combined with Jiu-Jitsu. That's all I had space for was one kettlebell. I got into some of the best shape of my entire life. You're like, kettlebell 53 pounds? That's nothing. It's like, okay, do 20 pistols with 53-pounder.

Yeah. You're done. Yeah, let's see how you do. Let's see if you can do one with a 53-pound kettle. Because a lot of people couldn't even do one pistol with a 53-pound kettlebell. Yeah, that's like the goal. Yeah.

Yeah. And I don't want to say I was against kettlebells before, but you know when they first kind of came on the scene here? Yeah. And then people were like, yeah, kettle bells and look how cool we are. You know how like when people do that, you kind of build this kind of natural, not resentment, but just some resistance. Like, I'm not going to jump on your little bandway.

I see what you're doing, you know. I'm going to stick to this. Yeah. And then finally I got on the boat and kind of should have got on that earlier, man. Yeah. Cettle bells. And you don't need to be, I will say. not a doctor, don't play one on the internet,

but just to keep Jago's liability insurance premiums low, kettlebells don't get too fancy kids with the kettlebells. Don't pick up a kettlebell for the first time and try to do snatches. Yeah. It's a good way to get reconstructive shoulder surgery. Yeah. You don't need to do a whole lot. If you just do two-handed kettlebell swings properly,

which I would not, in my book, would not be above the shoulder. and you do, let's just say, some Turkish get-ups, even partial Turkish get-ups, and a handful of other exercises on particular to windmills and Cossack squads and so on, you really don't need much, and you don't have to do potentially dangerous, ballistic movements to get a lot out of kettlebells.

Yeah, and I personally would even go further and say, don't do much, especially like the Turkish get to snatch to, like, these ones where, snatch in particular. Yeah, if you're trying to like, let me see how much I can get and let me get that big one because it's cool. You look at them and this one's like obviously bigger than the other. I like I got out of talking over here because like the last time you're at my house, I was over there doing every exercise with the biggest cattlebells I have. Yeah, yeah.

So I dig it, man. But man, if you start doing these snatches or that, man, I had to have this big foot one, it's 90 pounds. Yeah. And so I can, I mean, now I can, boom, clean and press one hand. I'll go like, I'll go to this side and to this side. And two this, you know, I'll do that. And it wasn't, like, I don't know if I wasn't warm or I just hit it at the wrong angle. I got it up to here.

And then when I pressed it up, I think it was too far back. So it went like when I pressed, it was weird. You know how kettle bills are they, they hang back there. So when I pressed it up, it's almost like it went backwards. Messed up my shoulder a little bit. Yeah, yeah. You will be able to press as well as you can clean. So if you cannot clean a weight extremely smoothly to,

your side do not try to press it yeah it didn't just be careful there start light that's the point right yeah unless you're jocco I'm not saying anything over here because of liability

I know I give the worst advice on this kind of stuff sometimes yes for sure also if you don't have a copy of musashi yeah I'm gonna list it on the website go to joccopodcast.com, go to the books section, right there on the top menu, boom, click on there.

It'll be, actually, it's been on there. It's been on there since you mentioned it. Yeah, it's been on there for a year. Yeah. So if you had a lot of people have read it. Yeah. I'll put it right at the top. Don't even have to scroll down, boom, click on it.

Could I add another book to the book page or recommendation? 100,000%? That's a lot of percent. I'm on it. So I have a, Brenda. book that is out which Jocko is part of as a continuation of our lifelong partnership. Jocko has a reappearance in Tribe of Mentors, which is, I think, the easiest to read book that I have yet put together.

It is brand spankanoo. It has 130 people all asked the same 11 questions that were most burning for me. And... Is that a thousand page book? Because it's thick. It's thick, it's shorter than Musashi, which isn't saying much. It is about 650 pages. Each profile is, ranges between two and ten pages.

And a number of the people who came up in our conversation, like Dan Gable, who won a gold medal in the Olympics for wrestling without having a single point scored on him. Ridiculous. It's like winning Wimbledon without having a point scored on it. It doesn't happen, people. And many, many, many, many others.

So it covers every possible facet of human performance, whether it's physical training, expert meditators, world-class investors, the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, LinkedIn,

you name it. If you want super, super tactical nuggets of advice, including some from our good friend, Jocka Willing, then Tribe of Mentors is an easy-to-digest, choose your own adventure. Book that would be a nice,

nonfiction compliment to our friend Musashi. Yeah. And put it up there right next to it. Boom. And so what that does is you click on it, takes you to Amazon. Boom. And what was the website again for your book page? Joccopodcast.com.

I think it might be slash books, maybe, but the easiest way, you know, the top menu, the website, but it's just books from the podcast, whatever. Yeah. Click on there. Boom, click through there. And if you're doing any other Amazon shopping, you know, hey, carry on. no one's going to stop you there also subscribe to the podcast i was just going to say they may have already removed this uh little glitch in the system but i used to be able to buy trap bars and so on

on amazon prime with no shipping trap bars right so hex bar equipment oh right right it's like a it's like 60 pounds to 100 pounds of metal uh so while you're picking up your brain food you can pick up your body tools. Boom, yeah. Dig it. You can get anything from Amazon. Yeah.

Amazon's pretty good with their shipping situation. I gotta tell you. Like even if you want it like whatever, the next day, you know, they're like, pay additional shipping.

It's like four bucks or something. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. You got something right on that one. Anyway, also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already

on iTunes and Stitcher and Google Play and Spotify, I think, I think. Real confident there. Yeah. I know, whatever you're listening to the podcast on, boom, subscribe. Also, on YouTube, if you haven't already, there's more than just the podcast on YouTube.

It's excerpts on YouTube. Well, are you going to put some takeaways or what are they called outtakes from this one? Because there are some pretty funny ones into getting there. Yeah, I will. I forget that they were, but we were all laughing. Yeah, yeah. I think so. In fact, yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do, which is one of the many reasons to subscribe to

YouTube channel in my opinion what is the YouTube channel jaco podcast do you're a pro the ubiquitous is you're a pro making sure we spell it out I'm so bad at this I'm just the hand-waving P-D Barton guy yeah I guess technically we're true when we say subscribe to the podcast technically we are asking them to go on YouTube search for jocco podcast make sure it's the correct one you know sometimes they'll be like jocco academy or something yeah see Tim adding tons It's probably you. Yeah, you could just get, and since this will not be published for probably a few hours at least, you guys could get a URL like jaco subscribe.com and then have it point to a page

on your website where you have all of the links where people can click for different services to subscribe. Man, I wish I had somebody that worked with me that like did computer type stuff and stuff like that because maybe they would have done that already. You know what's funny? At the beginning, when we first started this stuff, like, I'll, thinking of all of these things. This is what I'm, I'm going to buy Jocko podcast, this and all this,

and we can have them all and we'll all do this stuff. And then, like, your whole attitude. You didn't tell me not to do it. I'm not blaming this on you. I'm just saying that that's what I was real fired up to do. But he's like, no, man, that's it. Jocco's store. That's it.

You know, like super simple. So I'm like, oh, yeah, that's cool right there. So, like, all the cool little things. No, I will, I'll, I will, in Jaco's defense. I'm sorry. No, say it. I'm not going to. You were messing this whole thing up.

I see tears welling up in the eyes. In Django's defense, I will say that a lot of people who try to start podcasts or do X get caught with the obsession on new tactics. And then above tactics, you would have strategy. And then above strategy, you would have principles. And so if you're constantly focused on optimizing for an additional 1% with these tools, you get nowhere. on the other hand if i would say like you guys have done with this podcast focus on exceptionally high quality that fixes a lot of problems and then other people use tactics on your behalf and you don't have to be as concerned with the ebb and flow and expiration dates of

said tools so there's always a good time always a market you right on that side the only uncrowded market great. That's the only ungraded market. Dang. See? And just to be clear, when you were like that, it wasn't that you were, like, influencing me not to do it. You just, like, the way you were was cool to me. I was like, dang, that's cool. So I'm going to just keep it super simple, too. You know, there's me just trying to be like you. But yeah, I thought of that same thing. I'm going to have a thing, and it'll have all the links. Oh, man, it'll be great. But then, meanwhile, he's like, let's record a podcast. So, okay, let's do that, you know?

So we let that other stuff go. Anyway, YouTube, back to YouTube. Jocko podcast, the regular logo black white letters. Boom, that's it. That's the one that you want to subscribe to. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store. See that.

No bells, no whistles, Jocco store.com. T-shirts, travel mugs, bumper, stickers, all that stuff. Some rash guards. New rash guards. Hoodies? Picker hoodies. I got people sending me pictures of thermometers in Nebraska. Say, where's my hoodie at, dude?

Actually, yeah, someone did that to me too. What about your crop tops with the Discipline equals love on them? Are those out of stock still? Those are out of stock, bro. Actually, but the women's stuff is back in stock as well. That was out for a while. The girls, you know, for the girls, for the ladies. Boom, back in the game, big time.

Some patches in there. And again, the rash guards were your kid. I think that's the one. Yeah. Actually, there's another one. They're out. Or Pete, it's got them running. Question about rash guards.

I always assumed because I had never seen rash guards until a few years into the jiu-jitsu game, I guess, or observing that. I assume that rash guards. became part of jiu-jitsu because Brazilians also surf a lot and would then just use them in the gym. What is the function of the rash guard? I've never quite understood that. I know that because let's say versus wearing a tight-fitting, like sweat-wicking shirt. Well, I mean, it's not going to be as tight-fitting as a rash guard is, right?

A rash guard is as tight-fitting as a piece of garment can be. And therefore, your fingers won't get caught in it. Your toes won't get caught in it. It won't get in the way. And that's why. Now, you could also just go shirtless, but when you go shirtless, now you've got, you know, ringworm and all whatever other heinous forms of diseases that live on the mat. And so that's, and it's just kind of, you know, it just takes it one, one separation away from pure nastiness when you're rolling with everyone. What you guys should make, maybe I'm the only one with this issue, but I always find I feel constricted at the neck and hot in certain rash guards, not all rash guards, but if there were one that gave some space to the neck,

that would be yeah i think i think some brands will have a wider neck wider neck some brands will actually on purpose have like a higher neck yeah right some people want full coverage in the gym they want they don't want to make human contact with anybody else just a spider-man outfit while they're trying to throw out no kidding actually there's people that wear little hoods i'm not kidding yeah so yeah it's getting crazy yeah that's people with like hair or something like that like long you know long stuff they'll do that hood thing that's cool but i can get you i can get you whatever kind of rash you want a loose neck rash card i'll get you a loose neck rash card i'm gonna one piece and it'll say discipline equals love if you could get me a discipline equals love unitard

for my re-entry to the jiu jihitsu world that'll go for good just before i tapped at t ferris out comma i commented on his garment but yeah hey jocco store dot com that's where you get them They're cool. Also, psychological warfare. If you don't know what that is, it's an album with tracks, Tim Ferriss, that if you're on the path. Oh, fully. But you find those days or those moments, whatever, that maybe you might want to get this, or you feel like you're going to choose to step off the path.

That's what it's for, really. It's not like when you suddenly get distracted. It's like, I'm going to wake up at what, five? And I'm just too tired. I'm not going to wake up at five. I'm going to sleep in. You listen to one of these tracks. The specified track, though, wake up and get a, what's it called?

Wake up and get after it. Wake up and get after it. What it is, is you play it, and it's jaco, telling you why you should wake up and get after it. Pragmatically, in his own jaco way. But there's tracks for everything, though, waking up, slipping on the diet, skipping the workout, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. Now, let me interject here or actually take over, if you don't mind. Please. because the Psychological Warfare album on iTunes

was the number one spoken word album for about, I think, nine months straight. And unfortunately, good news and bad news, it was just taken down. It just got beat out as the number one album. There's now a new number one album. Giraffes can't dance. It's not Giraffs can't dance.

The new number one album on iTunes spoken word is Discipline equals freedom, field manual. Now is number one. Did you see that? Yes. I get the report every day. So if you've been looking for discipline equals freedom, field manual in audio form yet.

Formula, it's not on audible because then you couldn't put it in your alarm. You couldn't listen to tracks whenever you wanted to. That's why we didn't do it that way. We put it as an album with tracks on Amazon, music, Google Play, Spotify.

Spotify everywhere. I think you can ask Alexa. She'll deliver it. Alexa, like, boom, you're there. So that's out. Also on Amazon, Jocka White Tea. Most people think it's the best tea that they've ever had. And it's guaranteed and scientifically proven

to increase your deadlift to a minimum of 8,000 pounds. We have all backed up data on that one. Double blind, quadruple blind. Other books to get on Amazon, and we might as well to put all these books on our website. So first, Tim, Tim, obviously, four-hour work week, four-hour chef, four-hour body, tools of Titans, those are all books, awesome books. And I was thinking about

four-hour work week. And what I was thinking about four-hour work week that I think when I read it for the first time, which was before I knew you, what it did, I didn't follow anything in your book for our work week. I didn't. I didn't follow one thing. Maybe, I don't know, maybe there's two or three things in there. What it did, though, is it made me look at things in a different way. Because you were saying, look, here's this. And you looked at it from over here. And what it showed me was like, I can look at things differently. And, you know, like I said, I probably grabbed a couple things from there.

But the most important thing that it gave me was like, okay, you don't have to look at this the way everyone else is looking at it. And that's the best damn drill you can get from somebody or the best advice you can get somebody who's like, don't look at things the same way everyone else is. There's a whole other angle. And once I saw what angle you were looking at it from, I looked at it from, I looked at it. I started saying, well, let's look at it from my angle. What is this going to look like from over here? So that's, you know, a great book. And again, the four-hour chef, which is, it's about cooking,

but it's really about learning. It's really about learning. Four-hour body, all kinds of good experiments that you did on yourself. You're similar to me in the fact that I'm always chasing some different goal. I'm either trying to do max pull-ups or I'm trying to do a max deadlift, or I'm trying to cut down my one-mile runtime. I've always got some random thing that I'm trying to do. And I explained this, I actually explained it when I was just on your podcast.

I'm not going to get to a 600 pound deadlift because my whole life would have to be different and I wouldn't be able to do other things that I like to do. So I get to an 80% or an 85% of what I'm actually humanly capable of and then I'm looking for that next goal because I'm not going to change my entire life. But what the four hour body is good for is you've got a lot of different things that you can bounce from thing to thing and they're all going to improve some aspects. So I thought that was awesome. Tools of Titans, obviously tons of good information from a lot of different people. And now you got tribe of mentors. And it's interesting because, you know, when we talk about for 20 minutes or however long we were talking about the path for, well, for people out there that are saying like, well, what path?

And now I'm sitting here trying to explain. It's hard. I don't think I did a good job. I took a swing at it. But what's cool is you get a book like tribe of mentors and you can kind of get a feel for. for what other people's paths are and how they stay on them and way they live their lives. And then you can at least at a minimum get a different perspective from different people, which just like for our work week,

for me, is very important to see different people's angles on the way they look at things. It's like it's an eye-opener at a minimum. Yeah, the lens. I mean, if you have a set of different lenses that you can look through to evaluate the world and make decisions,

evaluate yourself and make different decisions, it can really change your life and the lives of those around you very, very quickly. What's been fun about putting together, in this case, tribe of mentors is that I'm asking people the same 11 questions. So for instance, I might ask, what do you do or what do you tell yourself when you feel overwhelmed or get distracted? So we were talking about staying on the path. And I asked, that was one of the questions that I sent to everyone and people were able to pick and choose their questions, but when you see that across disciplines, and so you have everyone from, say, David Lynch, or Darren Aronofsky, who were incredible directors to the Dan Gables, the Kelly Slater's, most decorated surfer of all time,

to artists and investors and so on, there are commonalities, so you can spot patterns and then assemble your own toolkit of these first principles we've been talking about. So, for instance, one that I've been applying, there are many that I've been applying myself from the book. You may have met Kyle Maynard before. I know who you're saying. I have better. So Kyle, incredible guy, a congenital quad amputee.

That means he was born without arms or legs, became a wrestler. I mean, among many other things. I mean, became a wrestler, lost every match his first season. and his dad supported him throughout it all. They were accused of child abuse. He kept competing, and then he started winning. And the same people who said it was child abuse were like, oh, now he has an unfair advantage.

Because people can't grab his arms and legs. I was like, really? Wow. What a world. And just a fascinating guy who has done a lot. Climed Kilimanjero. I think he was the first person ever to do so. Quad amputee without prosthetics.

carried the ashes of a fallen member of our military to the top, which was one of their dying wishes. And he gave a piece of advice that he learned from a business icon, which was you can't answer seven. And what that refers to is any time you are rating for yourself, say how important something is or how much you want to do something on a scale of zero to ten, you can't use seven. If you're asking someone for feedback, they can't use seven.

Why? Because all of a sudden now, they can't choose what I realized after reading it is a safe, comfortable, nebulous number. And that's always seven. Now you have to choose a six, which is barely better than 50%, or an eight. And you accelerate your path to better decisions almost immediately, just by adopting that. or the way that say

Daniel Nogranu, Fador Holtz, these are two of the biggest winning poker players of all time, one in live, in person tournaments, the other online,

and to look at their decision frameworks, how they decide how much to bet, how they stake other people. These are all tools that you can apply everywhere. It's really cool stuff. So yeah, travel mentors have been a very,

very fun book to put together. Yeah, I've been on the road but one of your people sent it to me. So I think it's waiting for me at my house when I get back. So I'm stoked on that one. And what you show me that I flipped through, that's kind of why I know it's going to be cool for people to get again,

find the path, find various paths and help them guide them towards theirs. I also wrote a couple other books. One of them is called Way of the Warrior Kid. It's about a kid who turns into a warrior kid. Best book ever. Sure. Extreme ownership, book about leadership, combat leadership principles from war

and how to apply them in your business and life. The Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. Once again to everyone that got this book, including Tim. Yes, thank you for supporting it. Also, the book, because of your support, it made the New York Times bestseller list, which is pretty awesome.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Tim. Of course. That's awesome. And, and you know, the book, it doesn't follow any formula, really. It's not normal. It's kind of like this podcast. It's not normal.

It's not everyone's going to get it. Some people are going to turn on this podcast and go, I don't think I can listen to that. That's okay. Same thing with the book. That's okay, too. I'm not here to write things that everyone likes and I'm not here to record a podcast that everyone wants to listen to. I'm okay with that.

those of you that do get it, thank you for for getting it. For those of you don't get it, why are you still listening? It's three and a half hours later. Stop punishing yourself. They're imposing discipline on themselves.

I can make it through this guy's annoying voice for another 20 minutes. Like I said, the audio version is on MP3 platforms. I've been asked that 5,000 times on social media. It's everywhere, by the way. Everywhere.

So that's good. If you need some leadership support for your team or for your business, Eschalon Front, that's our leadership consulting company. It's me, Laif Babin, J.P. DeNell, Dave Burke. Info at Eschalonfront.com, if you want to get it. Echo, you got any clothing sauce? That's it. Thanks, Tim.

Again. Yeah, thank you, gentlemen. Then I use the word gentleman loosely. If you want to keep this conversation going, we are actually on the interwebs fairly heavily on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocka Willink and Tim is at T. Ferris 2Rs, 2S's, 2S is on Twitter, on Instagram, at Tim Ferriss, 2Rs, 2Ss, on Facebook, Tim Ferriss.

You got it. Did I miss anything else? All right, Tim, any closing thoughts from you, sir? Any closing thoughts? I'll share one quote if people like quotes that I think relates well to a lot of what we talked about

and certainly Musashi. And this is a quote from Arkelocus. So by the sound of the name, you might guess it's very, very old. And it is we do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training. Hope is not a strategy.

as James Cameron would say. Train hard. Train. Train hard. Tim, as always, thanks for everything. I literally would not be sitting here right now if it wasn't for you. And what's cool is you've helped me out a lot, but more importantly, you've helped out all kinds of people all over the world.

I think that's awesome. The content that you put out, the advice that you give to people. And so thank you for, what you've done for me and thanks for what you do for all kinds of people everywhere. Thank you, I'm much appreciated. And while I'm thanking people to close this out, I want to thank the real warriors out there that are in uniform on the front holding the line against evil. Thank you for what you do.

And those of you that are back here in uniform at home, police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, all the other first respond. Thank you all for keeping our homeland safe and to everyone else that's listening just remember that the world is filled with the sound of waves and the waves are filled with little fishes Let them play let them dance let them sing you You get on the path and stay on the path and keep getting after it until next time this is Tim Ferriss and echo and jocco out