Banzai!

We had our final team training on Tuesday, March 14th, and decided to go a little "devotional" for the final time that we spent together before meeting on Monday morning to head to the field. The topic? Well, one of the "metaphors" that i have consistently utilized in my walk with Christ is that of the Feudal Japanese Samurai (not surprising for those of you who know me). I have long admired their extreme dedication and discipline to excellence, their undying committment to honor, compassion and other values that i find attractive, and have found as well that many of the "Bushido" (Way of the Warrior) philosophies overlap with Biblical ideology of the same vein. As a result, we posited 3 specific actions as metaphors for our "dying to" one way of life and our readiness to engage another: a toast, wearing of the traditional "white headband", and the symbolic "breaking of the bokken". These things are described in greater detail below, but the "point" to all of it is this: we will be changed in India. We will not return home the same people who left, and so, in that knowledge, approach the field with a sobriety and hopefulness for what will happen there. Here is what we did!

"Losing One's Life" for Christ: A Toast to Life...
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. - Mark 8: 34 - 35

“One who is supposed to be a warrior considers it his foremost concern to keep death in mind at all times, every day and every night, from the morning of New Year’s Day through the night of New Year’s Eve.” (The Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke). As a Westerner, we view this as a rather morbid statement. However, within the confines of Bushido, one begins to understand that what Shigesuke is purporting here is not a macabre fascination with death, but rather an “accustomization” to it. As a warrior in a martial culture, the reality was that death could come at any time. Therefore, to live life in ignorance or denial of the possibility was foolish. Rather, one should live life as though every moment “counted” for something of value with the sincerest belief that it could indeed be the last. So then, rather than a cynical view of life which simply accepted death as an inevitability that should just be “waited upon”, the samurai rather attempted to experience life to the fullest with the greatest attention to their own collective growth, recognizing that if death could come at any moment, they wanted to be “ready for it” when it came rather than be found wanting in some area.

The same is true of this team in relation to wanting to be “ready” for whatever presents itself in India. And just as samurai in Japan would have commemorated with Sake (i.e. rice wine) the eve before a historic battle in which they would throw themselves with full abandon into the fray, so we broke out white sparkling grape-juice and drank to the shouts of “Banzai!” (a derivative of the frequently heard shout of “Tennouheika Banzai!” which means “Long live the Emperor!”, and was shouted as soldiers charged into battle) which is an exclamation of invocation to glory, long life and victory. It wasn’t Sake… but it worked just fine.

Absolute Commitment: Wearing the White Headband
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20

Did you know that “white is the color of mourning in Japan, and was often used significantly to indicate that the wearer of a suit of armor (Gusoku) laced with cords of that color was engaged in a battle from which he did not expect to emerge alive.” (Ratti and Westbrook, p.191) Having resigned himself to the inevitability of death, a samurai warrior was a fearsome opponent. No longer fearing to preserve his life, he was “free” to pursue the accomplishment of his mission details without being fettered by the constraints of attachment to his mortal life. As a result, since in their own minds such men were “already dead”, they no longer feared the consequences of any action that posed threat or danger to them physically, and while that meant that they would most certainly have been happy to have found themselves incorrect in their assumptions and returned alive from the battlefield, the accomplishing of the mission before them became the primary objective rather than merely their survival of it.

Now, for everyone who is reading this, don’t panic. We’re not expecting to engage any danger or risk to our safety on this trip. That’s not what we’re talking about. Rob laughed when I told him what we were going to do because he said that everyone would panic that I was sending the team to their deaths :-)… so fear not. The point of the principle is that when we live as though our lives belong to Christ and not to ourselves, we gain the freedom to do whatever is necessary to accomplish the mission we have been given.

In ancient times in Japan, as stated above, a samurai with this mentality already in mind would demonstrate it outwardly by wearing a white “headband” (I have heard of this referred to as a “dochi”, but am unsure if this is the correct term or not) under his Kabuto (helmet), or by weaving cords of white thread through the ironwork and leather of his Gosuko armor. Well, since most of us do not own a full set of Gosuko armor, we settled on the headband.

A "Shinken" Mindset: Breaking the Bokken
However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. - Acts 20:24

In Thomas Cleary’s forward to Miyamoto Musashi’s classic Book of Five Rings, he states that the Japanese word Shinken literally means “real sword” (Shin = “real”, Ken = “sword”), the extension of which means “to do [something] with a real sword” in modern understanding. This phrase was originally understood within the context of samurai warriors who practiced ardently day to day to become better swordsmen, but who used traditional wooden bokken (i.e. wooden swords) to prevent themselves from inadvertently maiming or killing their training partners during sparring. To do something “with a real sword”, however, meaning an unsheathed, razor-sharp Katana (samurai long sword), meant that you were intent on either defeating an opponent or losing your own life in the process. Such immediately required a level of concentration, earnestness and intensity that can be slackened slightly when only training with wooden blades. I can find no better analogy for how I intend to live my life for Christ, believing Him to be worthy of a mindset that is truly “in deadly earnest” about all that I do for Him, than to attempt to live it with a Shinken mindset.

To commemorate this movement into a "real sword" mentality, we broke our wooden ones. Okay... well... we didn't really have wooden swords, but we DID have wooden toothpicks, and so broke them to demonstrate the principle.

Finally, we spent some significant time praying for the people we will have an opportunity to serve, for our families back here at home while we are away, and for the work that we will be doing over the next several days.

We're ready!

Shinken!

-samurai jack