You can be born to the path of a warrior and never hurt anyone,
but to deny what's in you is wrong. -Scott Glenn
"You're in a dark mood today," Ben says while I sit with my tea in the dinning room basking in the morning light.
" Last night someone quite deliberately and maliciously smashed a glass insulator I had on the front porch." I say at last. Ben gasps.
"Any idea who did it?"
" I have my suspicions."
"Are you going go after him?" he says with some hesitation, knowing my terrible temper.
"No, it's just a hunch and besides I don't engage in cowardly retaliation," I say truthfully. He scoffs in disbelief.
I've had several bikes stolen and my property tampered with before and as much as I rail against the acts, my inner warrior will not permit petty revenge. I know how much people disrespect property or possessions but I don't stoop to skulking around and trespass. When I get even with someone, they know it's me.
"What happened to all that talk about being a warrior?" Ben seems confused by my sober reply. I explain that a true warrior is not concerned with power or personal vendettas.
For hundreds of years Japanese society had a rigid social class system one never strayed from. Bushido, the code samurai honored, applied to how they treated their equals, not the peasants or merchants beneath them. There was a dark side, where trampling a farmer with a horse or cutting down a villager who didn't bow quickly enough was acceptable.
That all changed in the late nineteenth century when the Shogun abdicated his power and disbanded the samurai. The class, weapons, and privilege were gone but the nobler ideals remained.
Kurosawa reimagined the myth furtherer with "The Seven Samurai" where a group of ronin or masterless samurai protected a village of poor farmers not some rich daimyo. A concept picked up in the Western where the lone gunman comes to rescue the town folk from baddies.
Honor, respect, and protection of all are concepts the modern martial artist must cultivate.
"This one seems like a no brainer," he says, the heat rising in his tone.
"You're awfully blood thirsty, what are you a Venus flytrap?" I say jokingly in a an attempt to cool the both of us.
Story time. A samurai's duty is to defend his master's honor. A local bad mouthed him so the samurai went looking for the poor guy to settle the matter. He found him in a noodle shop and approached, drawing his sword. The terrified guy, seeing he was cornered, spit in the samurai's face, who promptly stopped, sheathed his sword and left.
" I don't get it," Ben says after a long thoughtful pause.
"If he had killed the man at that moment it would have been personal, not duty. Choose your battles wisely," I say as I sip tea and contemplate the sunlight.
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