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Tea Leaves

Life lessons from anime and martial arts

Japanese intuitive learning teaches that relying on experience is what counts

There is a scene in the hit Japanese anime TV series "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba " in which the demon slaying mentor, Sabito, tells the hero, Tanjiro, that he is failing to learn his craft properly because "your body doesn't understand anything."

Sabito's jibe echoes the Zen master D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966), who once said that "When the ultimate perfection is attained, the body and limbs perform by themselves what is assigned to them to do with no interference from the mind."

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