Musashi – Treehouse Writers

Most of us are suckers for “plucky underdog” stories. I say “most,” because I assume bullies aren’t into them. I notice that the grifter’s administration referred to itself as “Goliath” in one of its communications to Canada, which gives me some indication that whoever wrote that line was not paying attention in Sunday School.

But the rest of us love them. The first three Star Wars movies were colossal hits because the resistance fighters were plucky underdogs who eventually won.

For me, part of what makes the original Star Wars movies so satisfying is that the plucky underdogs are the good guys and they win.

The winning is important. It’s not just that they’re plucky and right; they succeed.

When The Force Awakens, the first of the last Star Wars trilogy, came out (We will draw a veil over the second trilogy), my first reaction was “Wait a minute. The good guys won in Return of the Jedi. Why are they the plucky rebels again?”

Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the movie, even enjoyed the complexity of the good guys that got worked into that whole series. But my question stands.

Why weren’t the good guys fighting from a position of power? The implication is that even if the right people end up in charge, they can’t hold onto it.

Now there are certainly plenty of historical examples of the good guys winning only to be overthrown soon after. It happens. It happened here in the United States in November 2024 when the January 6, 2021, insurrection, which we all thought had failed, succeeded.

You can argue that we needed better good guys and that the United States needs some changes and I won’t disagree with you, but we are dealing with the destruction of our country right now, including a lot of the best parts of it. I come down on the side of clean air, equal opportunity, safety, antitrust enforcement, and retirement protection every time.

You can also tell me there was an election, but I will counter that the 14th Amendment bars insurrectionists from office. The failure of our institutions to protect us from this debacle will keep me angry forever.

Anyway, the plucky underdog story is a classic, whether the underdog wins or loses, and we the people of the United States do seem to be in the underdog spot right now. (I assume some of the people who voted for the grifter are still under the illusion that the leopards aren’t going to eat their faces, but they need their social security checks and their highway repairs, too.)

But unless the underdog wins and holds onto the win, it is so not the story I need right now! I need stories where the good people not only succeed, but figure out how to keep things going well. I want stories in which people develop a good society – if not a utopia, at least something on the path to one – and keep it going.

Continue reading “Not Just Plucky Underdogs”…

I discovered Anna Sanner’s book of teachings from Aikido and Zen master Katsuyuki Shimamoto, Dance With Heaven and Earth, after a Facebook friend posted a story from it on his page and I found I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Here’s the story that obsessed me:

Miyamoto Musashi was a famous Japanese swordsman who lived about 400 years ago. He did everything in order to win. When he sat in zazen meditation, he always had the possibility in mind that at any minute, somebody might attack him. He did zazen in order to clear his mind of distracting thoughts and always be ready to react to any kind of attack. His zazen was a kind of strategic weapon.

One day Musashi was sitting next to a professional monk in the mountains. Both of them were meditating, sitting in zazen, with correct leg position, good posture, and calm breathing. From the outside it looked like they were doing exactly the same thing. You couldn’t tell the difference.

As they were sitting there meditating, a snake came along. When the snake saw Musashi, it stopped dead in its tracks and pulled back its head in a startled swan neck pose. Even its constantly moving tongue got stuck in its mouth for a second. The snake caught itself, cautiously made a U-turn around Musashi and slithered swiftly across the monk’s legs to disappear back into the mountains.

So even though to us there seemed to be no difference between Musashi and the monk, the snake could not be fooled. It clearly felt that Musashi was ready to cut any attacker at any moment. The monk on the other hand, who was doing zazen in the sense of true Zen meditation, was in a state of 空ku (emptiness). To the snake he was the same as the grass, the stones and the earth it slithered across daily, and slithering across his legs did not make the slightest difference.

One of key elements of good training in martial arts is learning how to be aware of what is happening around you at all times. In Aikido, we emphasize this by reminding people to continue to be aware of their partner even when they have thrown or pinned them. When we train on a crowded mat, we must pay attention to everyone around us so that no one gets hurt.

Awareness is inherent in our practice.

When I teach self defense, I emphasize the importance of paying attention to everything going on around you. But the specifics of learning how to do that are more complex than just the barked words “pay attention,” which I’m sure all of us heard from parents or teachers or coaches at various parts of our lives.

In both cases, practice opens the door to awareness. Continue reading “Snaking a Path to Enlightenment”…