Dan Millman

Luis, I was born ready to launch.

Dan Millman

Well, for those who are familiar with Peaceful Warrior, who have read it or perhaps seen the movie based on it with Nick Nolte, then, this will make a little more sense.

For those who aren’t familiar with my book, I did write it in 1980, and it’s still being passed generation to generation today, and the book seems complete. It certainly does, and yet it wasn’t.

Dan Millman

Just before the final chapter of that book where I confront death, rebirth, and awakening of sorts and the reader with me, I referred to a time that my old mentor, Socrates, played by Nolte in the film. He sends me away out into the world to learn the lessons of my life experience and attain strength through adversity.

I married. We parent a child. I coached gymnastics at Stanford University. Four years later, I go on to become a college professor at Oberlin. I get a grant to travel around the world, and I refer to those travels in about one page. It was a significant time of finding strength through adversity.

Eight years went by from that whole experience. I had to complete the book even though it seemed complete.

Dan Millman

I didn’t write another book for ten years after Way of the Peaceful Warrior. I felt I’d said what needs to be said about strength through adversity, and I felt complete too. But then, many new experiences and insights entered my life, and I was excited sharing about my experiences on finding strength through adversity, and so I wrote a second book and the trilogy, and that was ten years later.

I wrote Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior. It’s about the adventures in a Hawaiian rainforest, where he found strength through adversity, with a Hawaiian teacher, a kahuna.

I had to wait 37 years. This was my 17th book. I wrote various books on different topics, some self-help guides like the Four Purposes of Life and those kinds of titles to inspire strength through adversity.

Thirty-seven years after writing the first book, I was finally ready to articulate and complete the Way of the Peaceful Warrior to inspire strength through adversity.

Dan Millman

In other words, those two books, Sacred Journey, and the Hidden School aren’t sequels. They don’t happen after that. They are an essential part of Way of the Peaceful Warrior because they explained what prepared me for that awakening, and marked my transition from a young adolescent type student at Berkeley in the first book to someone who was a teacher and became a writer over the years.

The Hidden School is an adventure on finding strength through adversity like my first book. It’s a narrative, and story has to be king, and I hope it’s a compelling story that people find engaging and funny in parts. That puts it in context.

The new book, the Hidden School, completes the Way of the Peaceful Warrior revealing what happened on all of those travels around the world.

Dan Millman

We think we learned things. We read something or take a class or a seminar, and we go, “Oh, I got it. It’s in my notes. I understand it intellectually.” And yet, then, we can be hard on ourselves because we don’t embody it right away.

Dan Millman

We learn in different layers. We learn deeper and then deeper, and then deeper. If we realize that and start to find strength through adversity, we’re a bit more patient with our self until it penetrates us. And then our actions change, our perspectives change.

As you probably know, the subtitle of Way of the Peaceful Warrior is “A Book That Changes Lives.” It’s because many people said, “This book changed my life.”

I always want to ask, what do you mean by that when you say it?

Dan Millman

I think what I’ve come to is it helps open people’s perspectives about expanded views, about the possibilities and potential of all our lives.

Peaceful Warrior touched upon the transcendent because most of us spend appropriately. We spend 99% or more of our everyday life on the conventional level and that’s not letting us find strength through adversity.

Dan Millman

We are dealing with our kids or school or work, challenges in relationships, finances, decision making, or about our next steps. This is the conventional world, and we ought to be in touch with that.

And yet, there’s a yearning I believe in each person to understand life’s bigger picture which leads people to religious worship, spiritual practices or studying of the cosmos.

Dan Millman

What are we doing here? What are we here to do as human beings? What’s going on? Are we just stuck in a TV drama like The Truman Show?

Is there something going on that’s maybe deeper and more profound? That is what I need to write The Hidden School to convey that we can find strength through adversity.

Dan Millman

Well, thanks, Kamala. Yeah, I agree, and I think you did use the right terms. I believe that they’re related closely because in the Buddhist terminology, “thusness” or suchness is reality simply as it is.

Dan Millman

Barbara Rasp, a writer, said, “The lesson is simple, but the student is complicated.” And as Mark Twain put it, “I’ve had many troubles in my life, most of which never happened.”

Most of our troubles are subjective in our whirling mind, and we don’t see reality as it is. We perceive it as we are through a filter of our perceptions, beliefs, associations, and projections. We complicate reality.

Dan Millman

Reality rises without problems. It just changes.

Something I often remind my students and my readers is that life comes at us in waves of change, sometimes frequent and sometimes rare. We can’t predict or control these changes, but we can learn to surf these waves and face our lives with more resilience, perspective, and grace.

Dan Millman

Accepting reality as it is, is part of our reality. Whether we happened to like it or not, we roll up our sleeves, and we make the best of it, and that is a life skill that sometimes takes a lifetime to develop.

Rather than resisting, wondering, and feeling self-pity, and so on, just face the changes. Sometimes we like them; sometimes we don’t.

Dan Millman

But you’re referring to something of a more numinous or transcendent nature that they did very well in the film to show that the doors of perception opening wide when attention is free, and I convey that in the book, of course, as well. That’s something a bit different. It’s about free attention rather than subliminally muttering to ourselves, “What am I going to do about my relationship? What am I going to do about this problem or that?”

If someone said, “What is the main thing you wanted to give readers who complete The Hidden School?” It is just what you’ve raised astutely which is for us to refresh our appreciation at the incredible opportunity just to be born a human being on planet earth.

Dan Millman

I convey near the end of the book through a journey through death. I experienced a meditation near the end of the book, and I’m going to be teaching that at my various seminars and retreats. It’s a four-minute meditation in the process of dying. It has several powerful and positive uses. It’s not a morbid activity.

In fact, I do this meditation on the subways here in New York City. It’s one of my favorite places to meditate because of the challenges involved.

This meditation reminds us of all that we relinquish, and let go of as we go through the process of dying.

Dan Millman

And then, after the meditation, all of it floods back, and we realized all we’re given because it’s easy to take that for granted. But every day, what an opportunity it is.

I don’t mean to sound like Pollyanna or Rara-type person but it’s penetrated me, and I hope my readers get a taste of that.

As you say, with all our issues in physical or otherwise, it’s just appreciating the gift of being here in this lifetime and this moment.

Dan Millman

Sure, Kamala. Yeah, especially for people who aren’t familiar with my work, the term peaceful warrior can seem like an oxymoron, like a contradiction or a paradox, and I discuss mystery a lot in The Hidden School, and it’s a key to understanding and building a bridge between worlds. The term is about all of us.

I’ll share a personal anecdote of how I came up with that term.

Dan Millman

I was a big fan of the old Kung Fu TV series. You may be both too young to appreciate it.

Dan Millman

Kwai Chang Caine, David Carradine played this peaceful Shaolin monk searching for his half-brother in the early American West. He was a man of peace, but he was trained in Kung Fu or Shaolin temple boxing. I guess it was in his contract to kick some butt ones a week because that was part of the show, how he avoided conflict whenever possible, and he was healer.

I used to watch that show when I was professor at Oberlin College. I’d have to break away from a seminar I was teaching, a symposium and say, “Look, I’ve got to get home for Kung Fu.” That was the old days where if you’ve missed it, you missed it until reruns.

Dan Millman

I was teaching a martial arts class. It was aikido and tai chi, and the basics of these internal arts. I was going to call the class the Way of the Warrior, which makes sense but I said, “That doesn’t quite fit.”

Then, the idea pop into my mind, “How about the way of the peaceful warrior?” and when I finally wrote the book some years later, I named it that. That’s how the term came about.

Dan Millman

What it means and the reason it applies to all of us is that every single one of us, every day is seeking ways to live with a more peaceful heart, more serenity, less stress. But at the same time, we all acknowledge that there are times we need a warrior’s spirit. Not to fight necessarily, except those inner demons of self-doubt, insecurity, and second guessing ourselves all the time.

There is a battle internally, but what it’s about is marching into life and facing the natural challenges we meet every day, small, and sometimes very large. That’s why we need a warrior’s spirit.

Dan Millman

We’ve all been through challenges, but we can look back and go “Yeah. I’m a little stronger and a little wiser now.”

Every adversity has hidden gifts. In fact, it is daily life as I see it and reality or being very realistic.

Dan Millman

I occasionally give tips, but it’s a more matter of reminders and perspectives.

Here’s a tip since you asked for it Kamala.

Dan Millman

I recommend to people, by all means, dream big but start small, and then connect the dots.

Dan Millman

Most of us over reach.

Dan Millman

When I was little, my parents and I would go to a cafeteria, and I’d take too much food. I could never eat it. They’d say this old saying, “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.” and I was over reaching, and most of us do that.

We resolve to go the gym an hour and half a day or do some heavy-duty weight training or an hour and a half yoga class three times a week, but often, we don’t maintain that for an extended period.

A little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing.

Dan Millman

That is why for over 30 years, I begin my day with a four-minute peaceful warrior workout. That’s four minutes of gentle movement, deep breathing, and stretching. It gets every part of the body, balance, strength, flexibility, relaxation, coordination, and rhythm timing.

I’ve taught this workout. Anybody can go to my website and click on online courses, and learn this four-minute workout. I’m also going to be teaching a four-minute meditation based on what I write in The Hidden School. This is a meditation on death, which helps us to live truly.

Dan Millman

This is I think a key tip I would give if you want to call it that about dream big, but start small. We’re more likely to work it into our lives. Get our foot in the door of self-discipline rather than over reach.

But regarding perspectives, all of us intuitively appreciate that we grow through adversity.

I would love to start a whole new school of spiritual growth based on watching our favorite videos and eating ice cream, but I haven’t found that to be terribly useful in the long run. It’s more through a challenge that life develops what it demands.

Dan Millman

There’s a term that maybe I invented or coined called “voluntary adversity.”

I ask people at some of my seminars “How many of you have engaged in a sport or fitness training or learn a musical instrument or learn a new language or how to play chess or those sorts of things? The fact is those are all forms of voluntary adversity.

Life is easier if we don’t take on those challenges. Life is easier if we don’t form any intimate relationships. Life is easier if we don’t take any responsibility for anything. But I don’t think we’re here ultimately just to live easy.

Dan Millman

We, human beings and peaceful warriors in training are here to get a grip on our lives, and take on the challenges willingly even though we don’t pretend always to like it.

Exertion is hard sometimes. Get a good rest, and then play hard, work hard.

Intimate relationships and raising children are voluntary adversities.

I’ve been married for 43 years. My wife Joana is my guardian angel and best friend, but we bump heads sometimes. You know about relationships.

Dan Millman

Raising kids is not easy. We love our daughters and grandkids, but not easy.

Dan Millman

Being engaged in the world of business and striving to thrive are forms of voluntary adversity that are going to build strength and wisdom.

That’s why we’re all peaceful warriors.

Dan Millman

In brief, yes.

It just worked out four minutes. I don’t know why I did, but that’s how long the workout takes generally. It could be three for somebody and five for someone else, and the meditation ended up about four minutes. It wasn’t deliberate. I didn’t have to try to make that happen.

Dan Millman

As far as the loop goes, people have written to me saying “I’m sad after reading peaceful warrior. I wished I’d had a teacher like Socrates.” I write them back and say, “You do have a teacher like Socrates. That’s why I wrote the book, so my teacher could become yours.” and our teachers are everywhere.

Dan Millman

Exactly. You’ve realized that, and not everyone has.

Dan Millman

You know that old saying “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” But, many people are waiting for that teacher like Socrates to appear, but I think there’s a deeper meaning in that saying.

The teacher appears everywhere every day when we’re paying attention.

That’s the key to notice that.

There’s a video clip at my website or will be by tomorrow in which I relate the story.

True story, I was working as an administrator in a small school. I could feel I was getting tensed. It was a Friday afternoon.  I wanted to finish all these things. I had to make phone calls, fill out some forms, and the time was ticking by.

Dan Millman

I happen to look out the window for a moment, and I took a deep breath because I saw this cloud drifting by the window. It wasn’t racing the wind. It was just going with the flow. Somehow, that cloud at that moment became my teacher.

I took a deep breath, relaxed, made the calls, and finished the paper work and got everything done without all that stress and tension. That cloud was my teacher at the moment I was paying attention.