Relaxing With Banzo's Sword

Excellence comes with total commitment, but so does burnout. Here is how the excellence happens, and the prescription for the downside of constant focus.

Think of somebody who is excellent at something. Not good. Excellent.

Ask what it cost them and you hear the same answer every time. Years of it. Most evenings. Most of a life.

Now put two of these people side by side. One is lit up by the thing they do. The other has been eaten by it and is looking for the exit. Same years. Same evenings. Same devotion.

What happened that left one lit up and the other burned out?

It is a useful question. We often hear two pieces of advice that do not seem to fit. One is that mastery demands everything. The other is to take care of yourself, and find your balance. It seems like a zero sum game. Mastery at the expense of wellness. Wellness at the expense of mastery. So we end up a little great and a little well.

But what if greatness and wellness fed each other? What if the trade was never necessary?

It does not come cheaply. What it costs is in the story.

Before I go further, answer something.

What project or passion or love would you still be doing in the third year with nothing to show for it?

That is something worth your attention and time.

Hold on to it. Here is a story about a man who knew his.

Story: The Taste of Banzo's Sword

Matajuro Yagyu was the son of a famous swordsman. His father, believing that his son's work was too mediocre to anticipate mastership, disowned him.

So Matajuro went to Mount Futara and there found the famous swordsman Banzo. But Banzo confirmed the father's judgment. "You wish to learn swordsmanship under my guidance?" asked Banzo. "You cannot fulfill the requirements."

"But if I work hard, how many years will it take me to become a master?" persisted the youth.

"The rest of your life," replied Banzo.

"I cannot wait that long," explained Matajuro. "I am willing to pass through any hardship if only you will teach me. If I become your devoted servant, how long might it be?"

"Oh, maybe ten years," Banzo relented.

"My father is getting old, and soon I must take care of him," continued Matajuro. "If I work far more intensively, how long would it take me?"

"Oh, maybe thirty years," said Banzo.

"Why is that?" asked Matajuro. "First you say ten and now thirty years. I will undergo any hardship to master this art in the shortest time!"

"Well," said Banzo, "in that case you will have to remain with me for seventy years. A man in such a hurry as you are to get results seldom learns quickly."

"Very well," declared the youth, understanding at last that he was being rebuked for impatience, "I agree."

Matajuro was told never to speak of fencing and never to touch a sword. He cooked for his master, washed the dishes, made his bed, cleaned the yard, cared for the garden, all without a word of swordsmanship.

Three years passed. Still Matajuro labored on. Thinking of his future, he was sad. He had not even begun to learn the art to which he had devoted his life.

But one day Banzo crept up behind him and gave him a terrific blow with a wooden sword.

The following day, when Matajuro was cooking rice, Banzo again sprang upon him unexpectedly.

After that, day and night, Matajuro had to defend himself from unexpected thrusts. Not a moment passed in any day that he did not have to think of the taste of Banzo's sword.

He learned so rapidly he brought smiles to the face of his master. Matajuro became the greatest swordsman in the land.
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"The Taste of Banzo's Sword," story 91 of 101 Zen Stories, transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps, collected in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.

Nobody gave Matajuro a reason to keep going, but himself.

Look at what this young man is handed.

His own father throws him out for not being good enough. He walks to a mountain to find the greatest swordsman alive and hears it a second time: you cannot do this. He is told it will take the rest of his life. He pushes, and is told seventy years. Then he is handed a broom.

Three years of dishes and not one word of instruction.

Nobody encouraged him. Not once. Nothing in that situation supplied meaning and Banzo offered none. Matajuro brought his own and paid it out, year after year, from his own pocket.

That is the first thing, and everything else stands on it. Whatever you give your life to, the reason has to come from you, because there will be long stretches when nothing else supplies one. Nobody claps. Nothing improves. That is normal. It is not a sign you chose wrong.

You do not fight forces. You use them.

Teachers of my kind of work will tell you that nothing needs to change first. That it is all okay as it is. True. I say it myself.

But a human being is built to strive. To go after things, to hunt, to protect what is ours. That is not a defect to be meditated away.

So we make the striving the practice. Matajuro's ambition is never taken from him. Banzo takes his schedule, his timeline and his dignity for a while. The wanting stays. He wants it as badly in year three as he did at the gate.

What gets used is the drive. What gets learned is everything else.

Your heart lives 7 days a week. Not just Saturdays at 10.

Nobody has to schedule their ambition. It runs Monday to Friday and most of Sunday without being asked. It is the other side that gets squeezed into a slot.

A Saturday morning, if the weekend stays quiet. An hour on a Tuesday evening. Ten minutes of sitting when things have got bad enough that we remember it helps. The rest of the week runs on its own terms and we come back when we can.

Matajuro cooked, washed dishes, made his teacher's bed, swept the yard and tended the garden. Three years of it. None of it was a slot in his week. It was the week.

Three years in, Matajuro was sure he hadn't even begun his training.

He thought about his future and he was sad. As far as he could tell, he had not begun the thing he had given his life to.

He had been doing it for three years.

Those three years built two things at once. He was acquiring patience, a steady hand, the ability to keep going without encouragement. And he was being purified of his hurry, his ideas about how this was meant to go, the compulsions that had walked up the mountain with him. Adding on one side. Taking away on the other.

Neither of them shows while it is happening. The adding stays invisible for years. The taking away feels like nothing, because what leaves you does not announce itself. You find out later what you no longer do.

But isn't this exhausting?

Says the skeptic, and the skeptic is right to ask.

We know what total commitment does to people. The driven career. The serious athlete. The person who builds the company. Give everything to one thing until there is nothing left over. Better to stay mediocre and keep your evenings. I have never blamed anybody for choosing that.

The second half of the story does nothing to help. Banzo starts attacking him without warning. At the stove. Day and night. There is no hour when Matajuro can put his guard down. Read it quickly and that is not an education. That is how you break a person.

Read it slowly and it is the opposite. The answer is in the order of events.

Matajuro surrendered his argument, but not his dream.

Go back three years, to the gate.

Ten years, says Banzo. Matajuro pushes for faster and is told thirty. He pushes again and is told seventy. And then something in him gives way, and he says: very well.

He kept the ambition. It carried him to the end and made him the greatest swordsman in the land. What gave way was his case against the situation.

We have an argument running all day long. The train should be on time. This queue should be shorter. My teacher should be teaching me the sword by now. It is tiring, and it has never once changed the thing it objects to.

What is left when the arguing stops is the thing itself. You meet what is in front of you as what it is, before deciding it is a problem. Matajuro still had three years of dishes ahead of him. The dishes did not get lighter. He was no longer doing two jobs at once.

Your striving gets you in the door. Your surrender keeps you in the room.

The blow lands, and turns out to be the teaching.

Look again at Matajuro as he walks up that mountain. A young man whose own father has thrown him out for not being good enough, told the same thing a second time by the only other person he has. Only after three years does Banzo pick up the wooden sword.

But it is not in a practice space that Matajuro is attacked. His practice is his whole life. Again and again, without warning, he is attacked, for as long as it takes.

And watch what happens. Matajuro learns to anticipate the attack, but not only this. He learns to relax and be aware at the same time. He gets comfortable being uncomfortable. Vigilant, and yet focused on what needs to be done. In this way, he learns so fast that he makes his teacher smile.

Why does this not destroy him? Because his vigilance has a companion. Relaxation. His focus gets razor sharp, moment by moment, but at the same time, those three years of patience building taught him to relax with what is. Consistent penetrating focus and relaxed spacious awareness together are unbeatable. His attention goes from being something he switches on for the lesson and off afterwards, to constant. He is learning all the time. But not burning out. He is relaxed.

That is directed focus. Attention that goes where it is needed, and how it is needed. Readiness for what life has in store for us is about focus and relaxation.

There is a Banzo coming for each of us.

Here is the part I would most like you to take away.

Life is coming for us, and make no mistake about that. The two practices, patience with what is, and directed focus, will carry you as they carried Matajuro. He did not choose the day the sword arrived. He was ready for it. Three years of dishes are what ready looks like from the outside, which is to say it looks like nothing.

Patience develops invisibly, and we only know patience when it is absent. When we react. Focus is something else. We work on it, and see results. But those results depend on our patient resilience and relaxation in the face of uncertainty. That is what put a smile on the face of the sword master.

This is where I am with it now

Moment after moment, we welcome what is uncomfortable. Our paths are filled with a million and one sighs. A million and one tiny surrenders, like Matajuro as he washed those dishes.

This is how I experience this path also. Lots of practice in the everyday, and lots of focus in the practice. Right now, I am here, focused on typing this to you and also listening to Karen Dalton on the stereo, and I am relaxed with all of it.

Focus and patience grow in every session.

Before the first sound, there is a short guided meditation. It is a directed focus practice and always has been. If you have ever been to a session, you have already done this. You just did not have a name for it.

Then you welcome all the feelings and the sensations for a full 90 minutes. Remember the words: it is all part of the gong bath. In this way your patience grows, though nobody sees it. Maybe not even you.

Which is more or less where Matajuro was for three years, certain he had not even begun.