Publisher's Synopsis
"The Courage of the Samurai"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. Not everyone suffers from them to the same degree, but epidemiological statistics on anxiety as a disorder associated with different illnesses show that this plague is spreading. Moreover, they warn of the difficulties in fighting it, since these are diffuse fears whose source or specific cause is very difficult to identify.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, Yuk, devoted to restoring fortresses. The wise Yuk 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 itselfThe value of the healing silenceThe value of objectivesThe value of primary loveThe value of griefThe value of self-knowledge/The value of freedomThe value of imaginationThe value of respect for NatureThe value of othernessThe value of creationIn conclusion, The Courage of the Samurai is a fable about courage and fear, specifically about the important role that courage still plays today in the struggle against the new fears of modern society. It defends the thesis that its is possible to defeat these new fears and explains how to do so in a way that is straightforward and accessible for the pubic at large.
