Bushi no Nasake (The Warrior's Compassion)

The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human. — Victor Hugo

NOTE: This is a slight re-editing of the 21st Chapter from my book, Dueling With O-sensei: Grappling With The Myth Of The Warrior-Sage. Portions of the dialogue were also adapted to fit a different story into my novel, Lost Boy. The story that follows is true, but I have changed identifying details and some of the circumstances to protect the privacy of people described here.

My career as a writer really started, at least beyond the bounds of martial arts publications, through my essay, Setsunintō—Katsujinken. I was at a conference on intervention in child abuse situations, and the keynote speaker was Andrew Vachss, a charismatic lawyer and best-selling novelist, whose career has centered around the protection of children. After his talk, I introduced myself, we talked a bit about martial arts, and then, in the worst cliché possible, one all established writers dread, I asked him to read my essay, handing him a creased print-out . At the expression in his eyes, I thought, “That’s going in the trashcan the moment he leaves the hall.”

A month later, I got a note that he would like to publish it on his website. The story has engendered a fair amount of discussion over the years—I’ve corresponded with a number of people about it, first from those who read it in Vachss’ website, and others who have read it in Dueling With O-sensei. Other writing of mine, however, has evoked a lot more correspondence. I think Setsunintō—Katsujinken is so bleak, so awful, our choices so stark, that most people who read it are simply left with their own thoughts, otherwise silenced.

But sometimes, even in the worst of circumstances, there is something we can do. There is a sword that preserves life. One must not forget this, just because sometimes it is hard to find, difficult even to define. There is a phrase that may, perhaps, make things clearer—bushi no nasake (“a warrior’s compassion”). Compassion is a word well mucked up in American society: for most people, it simply means to “feel sorry” for someone, followed by doing something that makes us feel good because we did something, all the while making things worse. For something to be compassionate, it must actually help—or at least offer the best chance of doing so. Bushi no nasake is doing what has to be done: something that may require steel in your spine or steel in your hand.

Here is a conversation with my wife, when we were just getting to know each other, about bushi no nasake and katsujinken (and yes, I know that I talk like a bad novel sometimes).

“Hey baby, would you pour me another shot of that mescal?”

“I don’t know what you see in that stuff. It’s so raw!”

“Naw, not really. Yeah, it’s strong, but it’s the smoky flavor that I like.”

“Doesn’t the worm gross you out?”

“It’s pickled in alcohol. I don’t eat it. I just like the taste. The worm is supposed to prove it’s from real blue agave, but hell, you could pick up the worms and drop them in Laphroaig or Armagnac – it’s got nothing to do with making the stuff.”

“. . . . Anyway, how was your day?”

“Baby, just you asking that question makes it a good day. It was a long time when I had no one asking me that question. You asking me that question makes it a good day.”

“You aren’t answering my question, though.”

“Yeah, let me have a little more of this. OK. It was a good day. A real good day. I went to the post office and there was this letter. See, about four-five years ago, I got asked to evaluate this girl. She was in detention. She almost killed this woman by shoving pepper spray down her throat and putting her in a nearly fatal asthma attack. No, no, don’t trip on me. Listen. See, the kid was a gangbanger, fourteen years old, and she’s sitting at a bus stop next to this old lady and she crowded her and the old woman says, ‘Young lady, stop pushing me,’ and the girl says and I quote, ‘shut up, beeyotch,’ and pulls out this bear spray, grabs her head . . . . Hey, hey, you know what I do! You asked – I’m telling you, this was a good day! Listen to me.

“So the old woman, she has asthma and if it hadn’t been for a bystander calling 9-1-1, she would have died. So the court wants to know the mental status of this kid. I go into Dubois Hall, you know, the detention place for kids, and meet with her, and she chilled my blood. She’s got this manic edge, a glee to her: no remorse, no guilt. I ask her if she feels bad about it, I mean, she was an old lady and all, and she looks at me and says, ‘She dissed me,’ and I’m like, ‘How can she diss you, she’s an old lady,. . ?’ And she starts laughing and says, “She pissed me off. It was so funny, she looked like some kinda fish or something and when she fell over, her head went, like, KLONK, and there was all this spit coming out of her mouth, man I was laughing so hard. . .’ I had to sit and listen to one and one-half hours of that. So I get some family history, a little from her, a little from elsewhere, and her mom, she’d been using drugs a long time, clean now, she says, but she’s got a history, she’d hooked up with one guy after another, probably one of them, maybe more, hit on the kid or worse, so I write all this up and say to the judge, not in these words, but essentially: ‘This young lady exhibits no remorse, no regret, no sense of caring for the pain she caused. Rather, she was delighted in it. Her family, what little there is of it, has been a drug using – baby, c’mon, be patient. I mean it! You chose me and this is what I do. I know some of this stuff is ugly, but wait. You’ll see. Anyway, I write this up and say, in effect, ‘I see no hope for this kid, no sign that she has a conscience or any other of the finer human qualities we call values, and I expect she will cause pain and misery whenever she gets a chance for the rest of her days. We can speculate why she is the way she is – no doubt her family didn’t help – but that’s who she is now, and whom I expect she will be until the day she dies.’

“So I send it in and about three weeks later, I get a call from her mother. Yes, I did! I bet you can imagine how those calls usually go. Well, that’s the way that one started, too. I hear, ‘Are you Mr. Amdur? You are? Well let’s start with this – I hate you, you motherfucker, more than any human being walking. I’m Desiree’s mother, you know that? I read what you wrote about me, about this whole thing maybe being my fault! My fault!!??? I hate you, you motherfucking cocksucker because everything you wrote about me is true.’ Yes! Really! She said those exact words. So I’m just sitting there silently with my jaw open and then she says, ‘It is my fault. What can I do to help my kid?’

“I said, ‘I honestly do not think there is anything you can do to help her.’

“There was a silence, then she says, ‘Do you have kids?’

“I don’t usually answer that question, I don’t want to give people anything – not a whisper of information they could use as leverage, or maybe even to try to hurt me – hurt us – but sometimes, a question requires an answer, and this was one of them. I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ and she says, ‘Would you give up on yours?’ And I just sat there and really thought about it and finally said, ‘No I would not. I would hold them to what they did. I would turn them in to the police myself if they did what your daughter did. But I would never give up on them.’

And then she says, ‘Well, me neither. What can I do?’

“So I gave her the standard – well, my standard on what it takes to be a good parent, you know, being stand-up, having values and rules and respect, that you are not your kid’s friend, they need at least one adult in their lives, blah, blah, blah. . . and she listens and then says, ‘The judge says she’ll get out in two years. She’s going to come home. Everything you say makes sense, but she won’t obey me, no matter what I do. She stopped obeying me when she was four years old.’

“‘I know,’ I say. ‘But you still make sure she knows those are your rules and these are your consequences. But you are right – that’s not the important thing. I’ll tell you the important thing. You are never allowed to make another mistake for the rest of your life.’

‘?’

“Yeah, there was pure silence, a huge question mark coming down the phone line just like the one you just gave me, so I let her have it. ‘Why should your daughter ever change unless she sees that change is possible? For someone like her, change has to be one hundred percent. She shoved pepper spray down an old woman’s throat and emptied the can! What’s half of that? She has to totally remake herself, and if that’s even possible, you are the only person alive who can prove it. If you can’t do it, why should she even try?

“So, you can never have another drug again. Never drink again. I don’t CARE what other people can do. You can never drink or drug again. You smoke? You do? You stop today. No, today! And you don’t bring any man home – ever again – unless you are married. I don’t care if that’s not the way the world is today. And it doesn’t matter if she’s in lock-up and would never know. She’ll know anyway. Here’s the way it’s going to be. You get tired, think one drink wouldn’t be too bad, one cigarette, you’ve been lonely, one hookup with one nice guy . . .go ahead, do it. Do it! . . . . DO IT! And after you are finished, walk up to a mirror, look yourself in the eyes and say, ‘I just killed my daughter.’”

“There was dead silence on the phone, and then I hear a sob and then a click. Didn’t get another call, didn’t hear a thing – until today. I opened this envelope, and all that was inside was this picture. There’s the girl in a cap-and-gown, community college grad, that means in four years, she finished high school and community college, she had to have done at least half of that in lock-up, and there’s her mother, hugging her, and they are both smiling and holding up the diploma and on the back of the photo, it says, ‘I did exactly what you said. Thank you from both of us.’

“See what I mean? You tell me that was not a good day!”

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