Recently, I got to join Jaredd Wilson of the Martial Thoughts Podcast in a discussion about martial arts themes in film.  Today, we look at Star Wars: A New Hope wherein we discuss a variety of themes ranging from verbal deescalation to the hero's journey as a symbolic theme across many stories and how the Star Wars films were in many ways inspired by the samurai films of the 1950s.

In this episode we take a look at a new translation of the Heiho Kadensho, translated and annotated by Jack Hathway. In it we draw a few lessons about the why, what and how of our training through the eyes of a Yagyu Shinkage-ryu practitioner. Written in the early 17th century for the shogun of Japan. This work is a unique treatise on strategy and philosophy that can be applied on both a personal level as a martial artists on in a much more public way in our daily lives. 

You can find the book here.

Mr. Hathway's school can be found here: https://kobudo-renbukan.wixsite.com/arakido

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WI.Yagyu

To sign up for new episode notifications and to receive the "Very Brief Introduction to Philosophy for Martial Artists" PDF go to: walkingtengu.wix.com/tengu and scroll to the bottom to enter your email.

In this episode we look at what ethics is and how it relates to self-defense. We also spend some time talking about how to articulate force, how to define a threat, how to understand scaling force and the intersection of all this with our personal ethic of violence.

To sign up for new episode notifications and to receive the "Very Brief Introduction to Philosophy for Martial Artists" PDF go to: walkingtengu.wix.com/tengu and scroll to the bottom to enter your email.

In this episode we rush through an overview of the traditional philosophical division known as metaphysics wherein we attempt to answer the question: What is real? We then think about some basic questions on how to apply this field to our martial arts.

To sign up for new episode notifications and to receive the "Very Brief Introduction to Philosophy for Martial Artists" PDF go to: walkingtengu.wix.com/tengu and scroll to the bottom to enter your email.

In this introductory episode we look at one of the three traditional divisions of philosophy. Epistemology, which is the study of knowledge. How do we know anything and how can we trust that what we know is accurate. A very important question for anyone studying the martial arts.

To sign up for new episode notifications and to receive the "Very Brief Introduction to Philosophy for Martial Artists" PDF go to: walkingtengu.wix.com/tengu and scroll to the bottom to enter your email.

In this introductory episode we look at a classic allegory used to teach philosophical principles. We then take a stab at interpreting it through the lens of martial arts training.

To sign up for new episode notifications and to receive the "Very Brief Introduction to Philosophy for Martial Artists" PDF go to: walkingtengu.wix.com/tengu and scroll to the bottom to enter your email.

In this episode we build off the foundations of the last two episodes about the Greeks and take a detailed look at the Battle of Thermopylae (as well as a battle that comes afterwards) as a lens into the classical Greek views of which was more important. Displaying bravery or obeying orders.

We then take a look at how to apply this in our own daily martial arts practice.

To sign up for new episode notifications and to receive the "Very Brief Introduction to Philosophy for Martial Artists" PDF go to: walkingtengu.wix.com/tengu and scroll to the bottom to enter your email.

Today we look at the question "What is courage?" through the lens of the Greek hoplite. We build off what we learned in the last episode about the standards and beliefs rooted in the Homeric epics in Classical Greece.

patreon.com/walkingtengu

In our longest episode to date. We turn to a new, perhaps surprising, source for martial philosophy. The Greeks. Specifically Homer's Iliad. Where we explore this idea of "No Man Left Behind." 

What makes us care about retrieving the bodies of dead soldiers at significant cost and risk to the still living?  The blurry echoes of these ideas may be found in the shattered remnants of the distant past . 

Referenced in this episode:

“The Data That Is Killing The Self Defense Industry” - https://anchor.fm/high-percentage/episodes/The-Data-That-Is-Killing-The-Self-Defense-Industry-e4rivv

Today we try to provide a very basic framework by which you can answer this question. As usual I'm not going to tell you an answer but we'll spend a little time talking about how we can think about this problem and come up with a reasonably well-thought out response.

You can read today's quote in context here: https://ctext.org/mozi/anti-fatalism-i