The Dao of Dragonball Blog

I recently received a question from a visitor to the main Dao of Dragonball Book site.  He asked “What of Falun Dafa is similar to Dragon Ball?”  This post reveals the relationship between personal cultivation, Goku, and Falun Dafa.

As visitors to the site may know, Dragonball is what actually led me into the martial arts.  I started with Shaolin Gong Fu, progressed into Tai Qi, and then Qi Gong, and eventually Falun Dafa.

As I practice Falun Dafa I am able to gain a higher understanding of the three universal principles of Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance.  Looking through these three principles at Dragonball, and Goku especially, I see a lot to relate to in my own life.

If you look at Goku through this lense, for example, you can see all three principles.

He is a completely True person, and he is very honest and genuine.  His mind is simple and straightforward and he does what he feels is right.

Goku is a very Compassionate person even when he fights his opponents, because he does not fight to win… He fights so that he does not lose.  The only reason he fights at all is to protect those who cannot protect themselves, and to simultaneously raise his level and improve himself.  Training and sparring allow both himself and his training partner to improve, and he places more of the emphasis on his partner, so that in time he will also rise up.  He thinks of others first and is so sensitive and broad minded that he can fight for the salvation of the entire universe and all sentient beings.

He is also a very Forbearing and tolerant person who can go through the most extreme examples of pain and suffering and come out the other side a savior, and he always gives his opponents more chances to redeem themselves.  This tolerance to allow their redemption even while enduring blows is what turns TenShinHan, Piccolo, Vegeta, Majin Buu, and others, into his allies.  He looks past the character flaws and directly into their hearts, and gives them time to turn around and walk an upright path.

Throughout Goku’s life he always takes the road of personal cultivation.  During this process he struggles with his inherent Saiya-jin emotion, compassionate human upbringing, balances his personal aspirations with responsibilities, and fights against external interference.

At each stage of his journey he faces greater and more challenging opponents and trials, and each one causes him to look inward and rise up to meet the challenge.  Goku is able to quickly and consistently improve because he is always looking inward at how to better himself in response to the higher standards suddenly placed on him.

On the other hand, Vegeta is always looking outward.  He constantly strives to defeat Goku, his rival.

When Vegeta pushed harder and harder to attain Super Saiya-jin, in a jealous and competitive response to Goku’s progress, it is noteworthy that no matter what he did he was not able to reach that level.  It is only while on the asteroid, facing life and death, alone, that he gave up his attachment to this pursuit and finally focused inward.  When Vegeta let go, enlightenment followed.  The void within was filled with something greater.  He lost the attachment, and he gained first level enlightenment.

Falun Dafa is a complete cultivation system that helps practitioners focus on looking inward, let go of attachments, correct incorrect notions, and eliminate karma.  Practitioners do so in the midst of society and do not shy away from conflict.  It is an extremely quick way to improve one’s character because it focuses directly on the mind.

As I walked the path of cultivation and watched Dragonball at the same time, I could not help but notice the similarities, and that is where the idea for The Dao of Dragonball originated.

The difference of course is that Falun Dafa is a cultivation system to be practiced by real people, and Dragonball is a cartoon show.  Dragonball cannot be used as true spiritual guidance, only perhaps for reflection upon your own path.  It’s simply that Falun Dafa was so powerful in helping me better understand the show.

Falun Dafa also helps a person better understand East Asian culture, which allowed me to see Goku’s beginning as Son WuKong, and his alterations from an Indian deity, to Buddhist hero, to Japanese pop culture icon.  Furthermore it is a grand awareness of all spiritual cultivation paths, including those of the West.

The Dao of Dragonball is a vehicle for explaning higher level principles and the meaning of life, and it does so through the medium of Dragonball, a pop cultural phenomenon that millions can relate to.

The Dragon Ball Z Legend: The Quest Continues

The Dragonball Z Legend Book Cover

The Dragonball Z Legend: The Quest Continues says right on the cover “An essential source for every anime fan”. To that, book cover, I say you are wrong. Entertaining perhaps, but certainly not essential, even for Dragonball nuts.

The books design is a series of Q & A. Fifty-Four (54) questions related to series’ trivia are posed and then answered in a couple of pages each. Unfortunately while the answers tend to be fairly on target, more hardcore fans will recognize numerous errors, and this gets frustrating after a while. Luckily the questions are varied and the answers are comical.

Every few pages there are advertisements for Dragonball paraphernalia, such as action figures, statues, and collectibles. They are kind of nice to see as they shine the spotlight on Dragonball’s incredible marketability and success, but it begins to feel more like a toy catalog than a book about Dragonball.

The books layout is quite nice. The arrangement of the pages, the silhouettes of the dbz characters and the page art combine to make it feel unique and easy to read. It should be noted here that aside from the action figures and toys there are no pictures from the series itself, only silhouettes of the characters. I presume this is for legal reasons, as the book is not authorized by the owners of the Dragonball license.

The Quest Continues is filled with trivia, but after completing the book it just doesn’t feel complete. It’s not an easy task to create something that contains the entirety of Dragonball Trivia (thousands upon thousands of facts), so it’s not as if I expected it to be a tome, but it kind of let me down. However if you go in knowing that the book is just the tip of the iceberg than I think you’ll be satisfied.

The Dragonball Z Legend is written for casual fans of the series. It is not an essential Dragonball guide, and it is written more for insiders who already know this stuff, so it’s somewhat fan service-esque. It’s got just enough to keep you interested and reading but is filled with inconsistencies and trivial errors that will annoy you as you do, creating a weird situation where I wonder just who this book was written for.

For the pickier types of fan I say stay away, and read about the trivia elsewhere, but for casual fans it will prove to be entertaining and thought provoking.

DBZ Book Information:

By Satoshi Ikeda & Martin Foster
Published by Cocoro Books and DH Publishing
Price: $11.95
Pages: 188
ISBN: 0-9723124-9-8

Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide

Pojo's Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified Book Cover

The Dragonball Z Collectible Card Game (CCG) premiered in 2000 with the Saiyan Saga starter decks and booster packs. There are now over eighteen expansions and several rare and promotional cards to play around with. The CCG’s purpose is to play mock battles in Dragonball with your favorite DBZ characters and abilities, mixing and matching fighting styles and combat techniques to come out the victor. Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide details the origins of the game, the various cards, and strategies from winners of national tournaments.

The book starts off with a nice introduction to the Dragonball series and is a suitable primer for those unfamiliar with the topic. Of course there’s no substitute for watching the show or reading the comic book, but it sets you up for the rest of the contents. It follows with a description of the various card types, such as Physical Combat, Energy Combat, Non-Combat, Dragon Ball’s, Battle Grounds and Locations, and Mastery cards. It then breaks those down into different fighting styles, including Red, Blue, Black, Orange, Saiyan, and Namekian along with descriptions of what makes each one unique.

Overall it gives a pretty good idea of what the game contains, but it doesn’t actually include the rules, so you’re left trying to piece together how the game is played from the descriptions of cards and strategies therein. I suppose this is because the rules change frequently with each new release of cards, and it would have been difficult to summarize all of the rules into a few pages, but it would have made a lot more sense to me if they had tried.

Layout and graphic design of A Player’s Guide is excellent, with full color pictures of all the DBZ cast members, sections laid out in different colors, and an overall DBZ theme throughout. There are a few minor complaints, like the typesetting in certain places, but that doesn’t affect the content in any way. The large pages are pleasing to the eye and pull you in deeper.

Near the conclusion they list all of the cooler cards that were released over the three year period since the game started and the book’s release. It includes a top 10 list of each Saga (Box Set), and provides really great (and useful) information for any player of the game.

In the end I was really pleased with Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide, and it actually got me thinking about starting to play the CCG myself. There are probably tournaments still going on in the neighborhood hobby shop, and it might be fun to drop by and throw down a few Kahemameha’s.

DBZ Book Information:

Editor in Chief - Bill Gill, AKA “Pojo”
Published by Triumph Books
Price: $9.95
Pages: 96
ISBN: 1-57243-600-X

Dragonball Z: An Unauthorized Guide

Dragonball Z: An Unauthorized Guide Cover

Fair warning… This review is scathing, and it makes me feel bad to have written it, but it’s also very true and needed to be said. With that mentioned…

To paraphrase a seminal comedy of our time, Billy Madison, “Nowhere in this book’s incessant rambling and incoherent nonsense does it even come close to forming an intelligent thought. I am now dummer for having read it.”

Truly, Dragonball Z:An Unauthorized Guide should never be read, by anybody, including DBZ fans. I don’t even know where to begin with this book other than to say that it consists of over 200 pages of random observations, incorrect assumptions, little to no facts… and insights from a 10 year old.

This book was written by a mother and son team. Unfortunately the 10 year old appears to be the more intelligent of the two, and his comments are few and far between. I would have preferred if the whole book were written by him. Seriously, I cannot believe that this book was ever published. It’s like a bad blog post gone wild with stream of consciousness and then multiplied exponentially.

At this point I should mention that I am a hardcore Dragonball fan. I’m writing my own book about DBZ, you know? So when I read a book like this it makes me want to cry, throw the book into the opposite corner of the room, and then cry some more. Yet fate of fates has assigned me with the task of reading the whole thing so I could write this review. Bear that perspective in mind.

What’s so bad about it? For starters, it’s completely random and chaotic. The so-called chapters diverge from their own subject material so many times that even the author questions why we should listen to her anymore?

“You can’t pay attention to me, by the way, when I’m sitting here, making fun of Yamcha’s fork cuts. After all, why listen to me? I’m a grown woman who eats pizza for dinner every night and who talks to stuffed pigs when I think nobody’s around.”

Indeed Lois, indeed. And nowhere in the rest of the book does she give us reason to think otherwise. Sadly, this isn’t coming from a comedically inclined prologue or introduction; this is in Chapter 4, the main focus of the book.

Sometimes when children say unintelligent things it comes off as ‘Honest’, and “Innocent’, and it makes you gaze inside at your adult perspective cruelly honed over years of real world life and cause you to shockingly look at things with fresh eyes, dropping your preconceived notions. Bill Cosby created an entire series of television shows built on this premise. Unfortunately this book does not fall into that category, because when Danny’s comments, such as “This may be better than Pokemon, there is more action.” are used it feels like they’re solely so that Lois can somehow apply it to a random aspect of her life, which is only tangentially related to Dragonball or the quote, if at all. And her musings, while definitely unintelligent, are bereft of the benefits of simplicity often applied to such a lacking.

What about the actual content of the book, is it DBZ related? Yes, sort of, I’ll give it that. It does discuss each of the main characters, the basic plots, and why the Dragon World is entertaining and captivating: All of these things are expressed. But if you’re not familiar with Dragonball on an ‘all too familiar basis’ to begin with, you’ll be completely lost by the end of the first chapter. The book doesn’t explain anything particularly well.

The character analyses are one dimensional, looking at them as either “Good Guys vs. Scum and Filth”, and the descriptions of each are shallow and not even worth the time it takes to read the words. You can type any DBZ characters name into a search engine, pick the first link, and find out more about the character in a few seconds then you’d find in this entire book. Honestly, I just did it, and it worked.

The one saving grace is that this book provides a unique perspective that you don’t find in most others. The ‘mother and son duo’ that are actively interested in Dragonball and were so enamored by it they took the time to write an entire book. That’s not something easy to do, and not something you hear about on a daily basis, for this subject or anime in general. On that particular front I give them my respect.

But if you can base your whole approval of a book on the fact that it was merely written, I’d say you either need to go a bit deeper or prepare yourself to read every book in existence, because that’s the only way I could ever recommend Dragonball Z: An Unauthorized Guide.

DBZ Book Information:

By Lois and Danny Gresh

Published by St. Martin’s Paperbacks

Price:$5.99

Pages:211

Dragonball Z Extreme

Dragonball Z Extreme Book Cover

Dragonball Z Extreme is a fun and brain teasing activity book fit for young children and young adults, especially DBZ fans.

This book is licensed by FUNimation, the American owners of the DBZ anime brand, so it’s filled with images of characters from the series. This really pulls you into the Dragon World and makes all of the activities feel very engaging.

Crosswords, number games, mazes, and image questions fill up the majority of the book, and can be played by anyone. But some of the challenges are actually pretty tough, and if you’re not a seasoned fan and know the series’ lore you may feel a bit left in the dark. The 32 pages of content took around an hour for me to complete, and I’m a 24 year old university graduate, so young children should at least get an afternoon of fun out of it. Luckily all of the answers are in the back in case you’re befuddled.

The author of Dragonball Z Extreme appears to be a great admirer of the source material, and cleverly uses it to great advantage with some rather comical games. One question, “What design does Gohan have on his underwear?” is easy for anybody who’s in the know about how awesome Teddy Bear underwear really is. Another highlight is a game called “Going Ape” that has you solve a letter puzzle involving Goku, and references Goku’s monkey-like genetics and lineage with comedic results.

This book is rather inexpensive now (less than $1 in many cases), and is fit for children and adults alike. I recommend the book for any diehard DBZ fanatic, as they’ll definitely enjoy the activities and the completely Dragonball focused theme. Plus it has a glow in the dark sticker of Vegeta, and that’s just sweet.

DBZ Book Information:

By Jeff O’Hare

Published by Scholastic Inc.

Price: $5.99

Pages: 32 + 2 Sticker Pages

ISBN: 0-439-43722-9

Pojo’s Unofficial Total Dragonball Z

Pojo's Unofficial Total Dragonball Z Cover

At the time of its publication (2000) Pojo’s Unofficial Total Dragonball Z was the best DBZ book on the market. Even now, in 2007, it’s not so bad. It’s not quite a book so much as a glorified magazine, but it’s a worth a read if you need to read everything DBZ related. If not, I would recommend the newer version, Pojo’s Unofficial Absolute Dragonball Z, which came out three years later, simply because it’s the fresher fish in the market.

Aside from its own merits, this book serves as a walk down memory lane of the year 2000 in American anime and television based pop culture. It captures the influence that Dragonball had on the American telescape with its success on Cartoon Network’s Toonami and Adult Swim, the release of a Collectible Card Game, VHS and DVD obsessions, and video game imports all the rage.

It starts off with a basic synopsis of what DBZ is, along with the success found on Cartoon Network. In this section we find some actual interviews with CN staff, who agree quite proactively that DBZ is unstoppable and that they had no intention of taking it off the air at any point soon. Afterwards, quite inexplicably, they jump into a hypothetical ‘whom would play whom’ in movie casting, were a DBZ film to ever be developed in the Western world (aka Hollywood). This was par for the course on any self respecting DBZ website. At the time the runaway success of the series had prompted many rumors of a major motion picture, and I imagined it seemed quite fitting back then, or even now seven years later, as DBZ fans continue to wait for their beloved to reach the silver screen.

The rest of the book is quite literally titled ‘Dragonball 101’ and serves as such, consisting of episode listings, succinct summaries, an explanation of the GT series (unseen on TV at the time), some 3D randomness complete with 3D glasses, the basics of the card game and some typical strategies therein.

The main complaint to be found with this book is its lack of depth. It’s as if every page is standing knee deep in the shallow end of the pool and there just is no deep end. If you’re obsessed with DBZ then you’ll be providing your own depth by virtue of recollection to your yesteryears, but this book does not provide such on its own. As I said before, it’s basically a big magazine.

The one area it does excel is in the character bio section. There are 300 characters described in alphabetical order, and while the summaries are succinct they are also informative and trigger the great memories of each character that you had perhaps forgotten about (Bacterian, anybody?). Of course while the section is pretty big, it’s not something you can’t find elsewhere, such as Wikipedia.

Overall it’s a fairly decent book, and one of the better DBZ paperbacks in the American market. It’s nothing stupendous and certainly could be better in a lot of areas, but if you’re just looking to find out what this whole ‘DBZ Thing’ is all about, and prefer to read about it in book form rather than go straight to the source, than this might be right up your alley.

DBZ Book Information:

Editor in Chief – Bill Gill, AKA “Pojo”

Published by Triumph Entertainment (Triumph Books)

Price: $12.95

Pages: 128

ISBN: 1-57243-416-3

The Dao of Dragonball book site is now officially bi-lingual!  For all of the Japanese fans out there, the entire site has been translated into the native language of DBZ.  If you know some people in Japan, feel free to send them the link.

The martial arts in Dragonball Z are essential to the cultivation of the main cast. Goku’s style of martial arts begins with the Kame-Sennin (Turtle School) style of martial arts, as taught by Grandpa Gohan and Master Roshi. The turtle school emphasizes protection of others and oneself, and focuses on compassion.

In the martial arts there are two basic forms; soft, and hard. This can also be described as open and closed. An open hand or a closed hand signifies a great deal, as it is an expression of the artist who uses it. Many martial arts even use the closed fist as the symbol of their school. This is primarily done in the hard schools, such as Karate.

What is the main difference between open and closed? A soft martial art typically emphasizes morality and the building of character, or ‘heart-nature’. This is taught either specifically, or as it may be in the case of DBZ, through the process of physical training and enduring of hardships.

Picture your grandmother, for example. When she goes to give you a big hug, does she do it with her hands wide open, or closed? Is she open and caring, or closed off? It’s impossible to give somebody a hug with your hands and arms in front of your chest. They have to be open. The position of the hands is a manifestation of the inner spirit.

Buddhist monks who practice physical cultivation, such as the Shaolin, study Buddha Law to cultivate their heart in tandem with their physical practice. Unfortunately in more recent years the schools have strayed from their original methods and now emphasize only the practice. As a result their compassion has decreased and their school has been turned into a factory, spitting out students who have more technique than character.

But of course this all depends on the master (teacher). If the master is compassionate then even an inherently uncompassionate school can improve one’s character. But this is not to say that similar practices can’t lead to improved character through forbearing hardship, because it certainly can. It’s just much slower.

Hard schools on the other hand focus on being closed. Their energy is typically not compassionate, but at the higher levels of practice it can still be expressed. They use fists and hard strikes to down their opponents, and emphasize proper technique. Being kind to the enemy is not a priority in these schools, nor when borrowing applied techniques from these schools. The emphasis is on downing the opponent quickly.

What techniques are used in the Kame-Sennin style? Three primary techniques are employed. These are the rock (fist), paper (open hand), and scissors (mix of open and closed).

The rock is used when Goku or the others are trying to down their opponent or knock them out. The purpose is to end the fight. Hard techniques are also used for strength training and directing will power. Goku tends to prolong the fights for much longer than a practitioner of a hard school would allow, as he is always giving his opponent more chances to enlighten, but when push comes to shove, he brings out the fist.

Paper is employed primarily when blocking other attacks, chopping through weak points with the knife edge of the hand, or when using energy techniques. The openness of the hand allows more energy to flow from the central energy channels to his lao gong acu-point on the center of his hand. By doing this he can redirect the energy of his opponent, completely nullify the opponent’s attack, project energy into the bottom of his hand for cutting, or project it out completely as a straight line or sphere.

The scissors are used as a middle ground style of technique. He points his pointer and index fingers straight while closing the ring and pinky fingers. The thumb can either be open or closed. It is employed most often when trying to pierce the opponent’s defenses and strike at acu-points. It is not as commonly seen as the other two, but we see it a lot in the first series and the beginning DBZ movies. It can also be witnessed when Yamcha or other fighter’s direct hard energy with their minds after it has been projected.

There is a duality at play in all of this. The ebb and flow between soft and hard, open and closed, is in itself a method of opening and closing the energy channels. This is where physical cultivation can be employed in the martial arts. The repeated opening and closing can slowly open up and widen the energy channels, but it is an extremely slow process if done by its self. To quickly cultivate and open the energy channels it is necessary to cultivate the heart. The body will follow.

Through careful observation of our own energy we can see that each finger in the hand is connected to a particular energy channel. Opening our hands wide allows energy to flow completely, and closing our hands into a fist does not allow energy to flow much at all. A closed hand is rigid and hard, it does not circulate. Each finger of an open hand that is subsequently closed reduces the amount of energy that circulates through the body and ultimately through the hand.

A near endless combination of techniques can be developed and employed by manipulation of the hands. Hand techniques and their proper use are extremely important when dealing with an opponent.

There is a battle in school philosophies over which method is better. Better of course is a subjective term, and it all depends on expectations and goals. If your goal is spiritual cultivation and the raising of levels, then go with the open and soft. If your goal is effective techniques and expression of will power, go with the closed and hard.

In the end, if you truly master that school of cultivation, you will achieve an understanding of the other. When you’ve mastered the hard you will have the knowledge and wisdom not to use it, or to only use it when absolutely necessary. And when you have mastered the soft you’ll naturally be disinclined to use it, but if necessary you can apply what you know in an effective manner. Likewise you will be able to apply hard techniques with energy and soft techniques with effectiveness.

In his youth Goku was like many, matching rock with rock, but as he matured he also unlocked more of his divine powers. An example of mastering hard and soft is Goku’s Dragon Fist; a grand manifestation of a divine golden dragon that pours directly out of his spirit and is projected by his fist at the target.

Goku uses both methods with an emphasis on compassion and the soft. His Kamehameha wave technique is an open expression of hard energy, and he uses it to end many fights with the hope of saving others.

Let’s say you’re floating in the middle of the sea, all by yourself. You’re paddling vigorously to stay afloat but it’s such a constant part of your life that you’re used to it, and your muscles haven’t really fatigued yet. Occasionally another person comes floating by and you notice that they’re struggling just as hard to stay afloat. The two of you start talking about how much it sucks to struggle like this, and how life doesn’t make any sense. You both agree that life is extremely painful, and seems pointless, and you wish there were some kind of purpose, or there was less suffering involved. At the end of the conversation neither of your lives have improved, at all, you’re just more aware of how it’s not like you want.

That person then leaves, time goes by, and another shows up. You greet him and talk about how much life sucked for the other guy, and this new person agrees that it’s about the same for him. At the end of the conversation neither of your lives have improved, at all. He leaves.

A third person comes by, struggling and in intense pain. They appear very old and weary. You ask what’s wrong and they tell you their life story about how they’ve been floating for decades, and now their body is old and gray. As they finish their story they start to fall under the water’s surface, unable to keep up the effort. You help them stay afloat for a bit longer, and eventually you part once again.

You say to yourself, “I wish there was a way out. I want to get out!”

You somehow manage to float over to a rock that is jutting out of the sea floor, a small island in many ways. You’ve never really seen a rock like this before, and you’re not sure what to make of it. You start talking to it about how life is so bitter, and the rock doesn’t respond. You get angry with the rock, and hit it. The rock still doesn’t respond. Eventually you realize that the rock isn’t moving, it’s stuck there, solid, and when you touch it and hold on, you manage to stop floating as wildly. You get the idea to sit on the rock, and in doing so you pull yourself out of the water for the first time in your life.

Relief! You’re no longer floating…. You’re centered, on this rock, this foundation. The waves are still there, and you still get splashed occasionally, but life no longer seems so painful, and from on the higher position of the rock you can see other people in the sea, floating around aimlessly.

You wave to a few of the people to come over, and they see you. Some think it’s not real, and shrug it off as an illusion. They don’t believe that something like that could possibly exist, and so they continue to float around. Others swim over immediately and grab onto the rock. With a shake, the rock expands a little bit, and makes room for the new person that has joined you. Where you’re sitting rises up a tiny bit, and you’re now at an even higher level. From your new perspective you see even more people floating aimlessly out to sea.

The DBZ Blog is Live and Connected!

… That’s all I got so far.