Despite the enormous progress made by humanity, we still have not managed to eradicate fear from our lives. The old fears, such as the fear of dying or of suffering in a natural disaster, are now supplemented by others with newer origins, which take on obscure and phantasmal forms: fear of failure in life, fear of mental suffering, fear of madness, fear of social rejection, fear of emptiness, fear of horror, fear of one’s own thoughts, fear of fear. These fears are more difficult to conquer, because they are obscure and faceless, intangible and elusive, monstrously malignant.
In our day-to-day lives, when we lack the minimum of courage needed to face reality, we enter in crisis and we feel confused. We note how the fear of loss, the fear of death, the fear of other people, the fear of our thoughts is accentuated until we reach extremes of pure undiluted suffering. This is exactly what happens to the young executive Val, whose life is supposedly happy until it is invaded by an obscure and unassailable fear. A fear that rapidly makes itself at home and takes over his life.
Val has sufficient clarity of mind to look for help and finally finds it in the person of an old Japanese sage, Yūk, devoted to restoring fortresses. The wise Yūk tells him the story of a samurai who managed to overcome his fears with a new and powerful brand of courage.
As one of the characters in this delightful and initiatory story says by way of a summing up:
“The true antidote against fear is courage. Not courage drawn from physical strength and the ability to destroy one’s enemies, but courage drawn from love and the ability to build in companionship with others. True human courage does not mean charging into the battle without the fear of death, but in facing life with courage.”
This is the positive message contained in The Courage of the Samurai: courage can be rebuilt and to do so it is necessary to obtain (or retrieve) a series of “values”, in this case in the form of some strange old coins which the Samurai from the title must use to build some very special armor. These are the ten values of courage:
The value of life in itself
The value of the healing silence
The value of objectives
The value of primary love
The value of grief
The value of self-knowledge/The value of freedom
The value of imagination
The value of respect for Nature
The value of otherness
The value of creation
Genre: SELF-HELP / Motivational & InspirationalThis book was first published in Spanish, with good sales (near 10,000 ud sold). It has been translated to some languages and published in Chinese, German and Portuguese. I'd like to spread to other languages.
Can one start a new life with one s armor pierced and sword broken?
I don t know. I know only my story, which is one of millions. Just another story.
But if I am certain of anything it is that I am now going to try. I am determined to start to build on the devastated ground that was my life until just a few weeks ago, in other words, until I heard the story of Kyo and his determination to a conquer lost courage.
Perhaps it is presumptuous of me to believe that this story, which is no more than my story, might be of help to other men and women. But I suspect that deep down we are not so very different one from the other, and if that is so, a faint, unassuming light can be for some a shining beacon in the most terrifying darkness.
In fact, I think that we are all overwhelmingly alike, for our most basic fears make us equals.
That is the big issue: fear.
One cannot live in fear, which makes courage so vital. Perhaps you find this claim fatuous or off-hand, but that is not true. Not at all. It is a literal fact.
Fear is your friend when it warns you of danger, but it is no longer so when it settles in and takes over your life...
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Italian
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Already translated.
Translated by Laura Lucardini
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Amanda Kicke Basaia
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Spanish
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Already translated.
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