10.16.09
The Tao of Wu - In Stores Now!
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We wanted to show a little love to our good friend The RZA since he's been such an integral part of
Afro Samurai. Always extremely passionate about his work, he has gone above and beyond to help us promote Afro Samurai. Heck, he even did personal
vlogs just to talk more about Afro. If you watch the videos, you'll see that The RZA's not only a talented musician, but a very deep, spiritual person. So, it's only fitting that he writes a book to explain his way of life.
The Tao of Wu (IN STORES NOW) describes itself as a book of wisdom and experience that reaches from the most violent slums of New York City to the highest planes of spiritual thought by the RZA, hip-hop's most exalted wise man.
Want to hear more?
RZA on
The Colbert Report and interview with
Time &
AllHipHop.com below.
One of the passages in your book talks about the anime movie Dragon Ball Z and how it represents the journey of the black man in America. And it struck me because in Inglourious Basterds, there's a scene about how King Kong represents the plight of the black man in America. Is there another movie or book or piece of art that you think represents what African Americans have had to go through?
Tarantino and I agree on
King Kong. I'll give you another movie: John Carpenter's
They Live. That's perfect for our times right now. That's where we're at. I saw that movie, and it really made me think. I started bugging out in the mall. I just felt like, wow, there was something about that movie that was real. I got locked up like two hours [after watching it]; I was drunk and acting crazy.
Also, here is an excerpt from
AllHipHop.com's interview with The RZA about his new book:
AllHipHop.com: The book posits 7 Pillars as a pathway to gain spiritual enlightenment and peace. How long did it take you to finalize these attributes into a set system?
RZA: The 7 Pillars was actually suggested to me by [co-author] Chris Norris. First we thought about 9, being we’re always dealing with 9: 9 chambers of the heart, 9 Wu members and everything like that. But then when we started going through it, we didn’t want to do 5 like it was the 5 Pillars of Islam and we were changing Islam. That’s impossible. The 7 does represent the body of work of the book and the steps that can be taken for a person to gain the wisdom that I’m trying to instill. And I still strongly advocate the 12 Jewels of the Nation of Gods and Earths. I’m not the author of those, but I’m a person that lives by them and they are 12 steps that every man should be able to obtain.
The last jewel is happiness. But there’s basically enlightenment, an awakening you gain that leads to freedom. The goal of life is to be happy.
AllHipHop.com: Personally, what would you say was the most difficult jewel for you to master?
RZA: I'll say this. To obtain the jewels you must have them mentally, spiritually, and physically. I ain’t going to go into the other planes because that'll take forever. Now mentally you gain them all in one night simply by memorizing them. Spiritually you can gain them by living it and making sure the next man you come across you don’t infringe on his jewels. But, physically? That’s a difficult task in our society, because you’re not given food, clothing and shelter. So that means I can get knowledge, wisdom, and understanding just from my own studies. But to get freedom, justice, and equality I have to turn to my government for that. And it may be hard to obtain that if they don’t offer it. You may find love in the realm of a woman or children, but if you don't have food, clothing, and shelter how are you going to find peace? You ain't going to be at peace or feel free. How are you going to be happy? So you can obtain some of the jewels but if you don’t have all of them, you liable to lack in more than one of them.
Deep.
