RZA on The Tao of Wu

by Gene Ching

The Abbot of the Wu-Tang Clan has just dropped his second book. Following up his 2005 work, The Wu-Tang Manual, RZA's latest book, The Tao of Wu, reveals a raw portrait of RZA's life - from his street-hardened upbringing in the Staten Island projects to his international superstardom as a hip hop pioneer. But make no mistake. The Tao of Wu is far more than just an autobiographical discourse. It also offers philosophical and spiritual guidance for today's youth, the underpinnings of RZA's creative genius and commercial success as they have related to his life's journey. Like so much of RZA's work, The Tao of Wu breaks new ground in hip hop and martial arts culture. RZA spoke at length with KungFuMagazine.com about The Tao of Wu in this recent interview.

GC: The motif of Bobby Digital was a mask. Now, in The Tao of Wu, you're dropping that mask?

RZA: This book is very revealing, but it's revealing with a purpose. And the purpose is so other people, especially young people in our community, could escape some of booby traps that are out there in the world. It's like if a superhero reveals his identity, it's always for the benefit of somebody else. You see BATMAN and Joker was like yo, he'd spare the whole city if Batman would reveal himself, you know what I mean? (laughs) And Batman had to contemplate that. So it's the same thing for me. For me to reveal the things I been through, for the sake of others, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to take. In The Tao of Wu, I do that.

GC : And in the center of your book, you drop the Heart Sutra. I chanted that when I took my disciple vows, so that's a deep one for me. What does it mean to you?

RZA : The Heart Sutra to me is one of the most important sutras in Buddhism. I always say it's one of the greatest lyrics ever written because it's profound in the sense of the vastness of the substance of the meaning. I actually was reading it again the other day. You know, "gone, gone, gone…gone, gone, gone, fully gone and awakened." I was contemplating that again last week and it came to me. Now what did you say there? Gone. Then you're gone, gone. How can you gone, gone? And then you're gone, gone, gone. So it's like you're being born, born and being born again, or you left, you left and you left again. And now you're fully awakened. I took it like that. We look at numbers and I look at the Cipher of old. And it says that the Cipher for the circle is 360 degrees. And it says that, in my lessons, we had to learn the 120 lessons.

GC : This is the basis of 5 Percent Nation of Islam.

RZA : Right. If you learn the 120 lessons, that means you "knowledge" them. You completed that Cipher. But that's still only 120. That's not 360. So after you "knowledge" them, you have to do what? You have to add wisdom. You got to speak it. You got to live it. It has to be in your actions. And then you're still only at 240. You haven't completed the circle. It's only the third time, when you've grasped the understanding of it, when you see it clearly. The martial arts would say first you learn the stances and the foundation. And then you learn the form and the technique and all the movements. But when you become a master, the form disappears. So that's gone, gone, fully gone. And now you're awakened.

I put that into myself last week. I was rereading it and pulling things out of this nature. That's what a good lyric does for you. You can hear it over and over. You can sing it over and over. And it gives you a new meaning every time.

GC : For a Muslim, you included a lot of Buddhism in this book. Does that conflict? How do you feel when you hear stuff like Islamists blowing up the Buddha at Bamiyan?

RZA : To me, Buddha taught Islam. Islam means peace. That's what he brought to the world. He brought peace. Peace is translated as the absence of confusion. So Buddha walked around this world confused, so confused that he left his wife and kid, left his riches and his family, to find himself. When he found himself, he found what? Peace. He was no longer confused. He became enlightened. He became awakened. Because peace is the absence of all confusion - that's what Islam is.

Now when you see the Islamic revolutionaries of Muhammad's time went and burnt down statues and blew up places - to this day - it's because of the images that they are trying to get rid of. And that goes back to the Bible taught us. It says "don't make any graven image." It ain't that that decides that the image is a problem to me. It's just that when the image stands there long enough, man forgets who made the image and starts worshiping the image.

It's like the Statue of Liberty. It sits there as a symbol of something and it remains there. But to some people, maybe a thousand years from now, it could be worshipped as some kind of god, as some kind of form or deity. But it was nothing but a statue that represented something. So the same thing goes with Jesus. Jesus says "don't make no images of that which is heaven or earth" because you don't want man to start worshiping the images. We got big pictures of him hanging on the cross and pictures of him hanging on our wall every day. So you got to remove the image because if you get stuck into the image, you're missing the message. And that's why my book, I got this line that says I study all these different religions and forms - I remove who the messenger was and I accept his message. If I go into who the messenger was, then I got to go into his character and his problems.

One of the greatest true stories I can give you on that is Malcolm X, a man whose life was changed by Elijah Muhammad. But when he learnt about Elijah Muhammad's personal life, it caused him to doubt the message. But the message is still true. Now look at Martin Luther King, a man who in this country we all revere as a great man. We revere him as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. Yet, years later, we find that he was a big fornicator, in hotel rooms cheating on his wife. But does his message change? No!

We live in history now where we see a president like Barack Obama. We see hip hop music in the homes of every kind of citizen. We see Asian America and Black America coming together, intermingling, having babies and neighborhoods and cultures together. We see that dream of what this man said. Are they going to take away his dream because of his personal thing? No. And that's why I said you don't make an image because the image is always going to lead you on.

So you look stuff like Shiva, right? Or one of the Indian Hindu gods. We see that, wow, this god got the face of an elephant or many arms. There's no man that walks with a face of an elephant, but it's symbolic to his intelligence - the memory of an elephant, the humbleness, to have so much strength and still be a vegetarian. That's the greatness. So therefore that man is symbolized with the face of an elephant or the man with many arms. Somebody looking at it and goes "oh yea, the god Shiva got a lotta arms." No. That's myth. All men have many arms. We have many tasks, many abilities that we all can do. I'm sure the people that built the statues built it like me as an artist painting a picture, writing a song or a lyric, with the intention of the lyric. But you can't take it literally sometimes because it's only meant to be spiritual.

GC : You discuss your vegetarianism in The Tao of Wu, but you make it clear that it wasn't about you following Buddhism or Hinduism. From the way you describe it, it remind I of Rastafarianism's Ital food.

RZA : To me, becoming vegetarian was more of an awakening thing. It was me looking at life and realizing that I'm alive. Why should I put a dead animal into my live body when this animal uses the same substances as I do to sustain himself? A bull is considered one of the strongest animals. But he just eats grass. He grows up to be 1500 pounds, full of muscle, enough to carry thousands of pounds of weight in labor, just eating grass. His teeth are flat like our teeth are flat. So vegetarianism is not only healthy for you, it's better for you mentally and physically because now you're not taking nothing dead in your body.

In the original days, there's a lesson that we learn called the Great Understanding where says that man didn't eat meat. Even animals didn't eat meat. There's the story of the Garden of Eden. This is why you can see all the animals living together in peace. You get the lion right next to the giraffe because they wasn't carnivorous. The earth provides food and shelter for all man and all kinds of animals. It's all provided for. So to kill each other for nourishment is not a natural law of nature. It's a result, but I don't see it as a natural law, especially for man who is the highest scale of nature. We don't have to stoop that low.

There's thousands of variations of seeds that give you the same protein, the same nourishment, and really, as a vegetarian, I got to admit, the same flavor. I just had a veggie burger, just before you called. My brother just had a hamburger. Now he ate as much of his hamburger that I ate of my veggie burger as far a bite capacity. He put ketchup and mayonnaise on his. I put ketchup and mayonnaise on mine. He had cheese. I had cheese. I'm sure that he didn't have no better experience with his than mine. The difference is what went into his body and what went into mine, and what's going to come out and how it's going to come out. (laughs)

Let me speak on vegetarianism as the great Bodhidharma said. I love this. I got it from a movie they made about his life called ZEN MASTER. I love this scene where he's talking to his first teacher. And the teacher is saying, "Wow, your wisdom is pretty strong, you know?" And so they're talking about light and he says, "What is the greatest light in the world?" and Tamo says, "Wisdom is the greatest light." And the teacher says, "You're correct. You're well on the path." And then, they sit down to have lunch and Tamo orders food like meat and stuff and the teacher only eats vegetables. And Tamo says, "How can a man not eat meat and expect to be strong?" So while he says that, the teacher takes a nut and cracks it with his fingers. Crack! He says to Tamo the same thing I said : "Look at the bull. Look how strong the bull is. And his teeth are flat and he still has great strength." And he also shows Tamo how strong he was. And Tamo says, "Yeah, but I think anything with its back facing the heavens can be eaten." And then a hunchback man walks in to bring more tea. His back is facing heaven, so the teacher's like, "Well, you might as well eat him." And then it hit Tamo in the head. The teacher said, "Your wisdom is not fully polished, but you want to learn more." And he left him with a piece of paper. But it hit him in the head and he's like, "Wow, he's right. This guy here, his back is facing the heavens, but I'm not going to eat a man, am I?" We don't have to eat dead animals to sustain our lives.

In the Biblical days, if you look at it, the smart man kept cattle. Their cattle was their richness. Why? Because from the cattle you get clothing from their fur. You get milk as well. And you get them to do the labor to help you plow your land. The only time they would eat the cattle back then was called a sacrificial lamb, a sacrificial cow. They would sacrifice it. Ok, maybe the harvest is bad and this one cow is going to feed the whole community, so his life is sacrificed for us. So I don't suggest that if I was in a life or death situation and it was time for me to eat a piece of meat or die, of course I'm going to eat meat. My life is worth more than that cow. Then that cow becomes the servant of my life, so I could live further and help raise more cows and plant more things. That's the only time I could see a man having to take that step - when his life is in danger. But in our lives everyday, our lives ain't in danger. So why do we have to kill to live?

GC : Give us an update on your film project, MAN WITH THE IRON FIST.

RZA : Aw man, I just got an email about that. Let me tell you everything is looking real positive. The producers are all on board. I don't want to say too many things, but it looks like February or March, it may happen. So everybody's excited. I just got an email from Eli Roth today. He's very excited. He's talking to all the people with the money. Everything is looking real positive. I don't want to talk it away from myself, you know what I mean? But I'll just say that the MAN WITH THE IRON FIST is looking very positive, and I'm very conscious of martial arts and Shaolin, there's some scenes in there, dialog-wise, that will be very helpful to the average person watching the movie. The same way that 36 Chambers was a great martial arts film, and also a great film that was a source of good philosophy. Keep the tradition going.

GC : Is this going to be a modern story or period piece?

RZA : It's written that it could go either way. It all depends on that end result - the budget. It could be post-apocalyptic, or it could be period.

GC : So I got to ask you - when Kanye West bum-rushed Taylor Swift at the VMA awards, did you get a flashback of Ol' Dirty Bastard's shot at Puff Daddy at the Grammies over a decade ago?

RZA : To me, Kanye had an O.D.B. moment in a sense. You go through a lot in life as an artist. You're also very confident about yourself, you know? You think that everybody is feeling and thinking what you thinking, because you're going through it. I like Kanye West a lot, but I still think that was an act of immaturity on his behalf. But that's something that every artist goes through. If you look at Tupac when he was getting big - you feel nervous when you get big, man. You feel extra powerful as well as extra vulnerable. Look a DMX when he got big. He was going through many different things like wondering if God is on your side or if God is against you, you know what I mean? You start having all these ideas because of all this power you seem to be having with yourself. And sometimes that power can be used wisely or it can be abused. And that was the case of Kanye abusing it. And he didn't mean no harm with it. But at the same time, his ego was that big. Why? Because he's looked upon by his fans as being that big of a man.

GC : What kept you centered when you attained superstar status?

RZA : I think for me, well, I wasn't always centered. I've got some foolish things that's undocumented, you know what I mean? (laughs) But I think being part of Wu-Tang Clan, it was cool for me not to be "the Man." You see, Method Man is the Man. I learned this later on. Dirty even said it to me. Method said it. They both said it. They was jealous of each other. I never knew when we was doing it, but years later, like five years ago, they both said it to me - how they was jealous of each other. I was "Y'all was jealous? Why? How?" Me never having no jealousy of my brothers is one thing, but also, me seeing the fans react to Method Man brings me joy. Me seeing the fans going crazy for Ghostface and Rae, saying they're the best they've ever seen, brings me joy. Even though I could be the one that taught them that - I could be the one that showed them the trick, but he's getting praised for the trick.

It's like the master seeing his student is great. It makes the master even greater. Having so many other brothers expressing a lot of my ideas, expressing a lot of my energy - they all got energy, I'm not saying they don't have their own energy - but seeing them express the Wu-Tang way I devised coming out of them, it kept me able to be the Abbot. You know, most kung fu movies, the Abbot, he never fights. He sits back and he got students to fight for him. I think that helped me from losing my head.

I kind of lost my head a little bit as Bobby Digital, but it was quiet enough that it didn't make the press like that.

GC : So what's next in the RZA's future?

RZA : The future? I'll see what it holds. I look forward to it. We all do, right?

But I'm really proud of the book, yo. It's not easy to do this book. It's not easy to talk about that time. I'm doing interviews now and people bring out certain things in the book, some things I wish I would have forgot because it's not all good times in my life. Some of that s**t, it's f**ked up. It's sad. And it's scary. But I think it's going to help a lot of people, yo. And that's going to be the joy of it - if it helps one or two kids, you know.

One of my brothers that hangs around with me read the book. He calls me up and says, "Yo, I just finished your book, man. And for me, this book is as important as Message to the Black Man." I was like, "Woah, Woah, WOAH!" That's a big statement. But this is a guy who read Message to the Black Man over and over and he said the reason why he felt that way was because the book is so real. It's so relate-able. It ain't just talking like some kind of philosophy of one man. It's like it's medication. I was real proud of him saying that about my book.

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	RZA´s Tao of Wu

About Gene Ching:
The Tao of Wu by RZA is published by Riverhead Books and is available wherever fine books are sold. For more of this exclusive interview with RZA, read RZA on The 36th Chamber of Shaolin in our upcoming January February issue of Kung Fu Tai Chi, on the newsstands in early December 2009.