The Human Experience · Episode
Episode 96 – Daniele Bolelli – on Discipline, Surviving Challenges & Martial Arts
A conversation with Daniele Bolelli
Daniele Bolelli may have initially gravitated toward the martial arts for the discipline created between mind and body. He excelled to earn a 5th-degree black belt in Kung Foo San Soo, while he built that…
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Daniele Bolelli may have initially gravitated toward the martial arts for the discipline created between mind and body. He excelled to earn a 5th-degree black belt in Kung Foo San Soo, while he built that strong warrior prowess. Little did he know is that one day he would have to call upon all he’d learned to rise to overcome a barrage of major life challenges, and save his soul in the process.
Born in 1974 in Milan, Italy, to a modern philosopher father and an author/journalist mother, Bolelli was steeped in an inquisitive upbringing. After graduating high school, he left Milan for Los Angeles, and attended Santa Monica College, where he now teaches. He earned his BA in anthropology at UCLA, and continued there to earn his Ph.D. in American Indian Studies, and another in history from California State University – Long Beach (CSULB), where, in both, he also taught. Additionally, he did more graduate work in history at Cardiff University.
Bolelli co-authored his first book at age 20, and then made the leap to solo publishing at age 22. La Tenera Arte del Guerriero, a philosophical exploration of the martial arts, grew popular within and beyond martial artists because the philosophy could be applied to everyday life. He translated the book to English, added three new chapters, and released it in the US in 2003 as, On the Warrior’s Path: Philosophy, Fighting, and the Martial Arts. In 2008, he added two more chapters and released a new US edition. In 2011, the book was translated and released in Russia.
Also, in 2011, Bolelli released 50 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know: Religion, in the US. In the same year he released iGod in Italian. In 2013 he released the US version, Create Your Own Religion: A How-To Book Without Instructions, and then a Finnish version in 2014.
In 2014, Bolelli and friend, pro-skateboarder and musician, Mike Vallely, co-penned, Fist Fight. (He and Vallely would later collaborate on the 2015 podcast, The Mike V Show. In December 2015, he released his latest book, Not Afraid: On Fear, Heartbreak, Raising A Baby Girl, and Cage Fighting.
Between the writing, teaching, martial arts, and MMA (mix martial arts) fighting, Bolelli was featured in a few video productions, including the highly acclaimed, highly rated Spike-TV documentary, I am Bruce Lee. His introduction into the podcasting world led him to produce his own, The Drunken Taoist, named “The Best of iTunes 2012” in philosophy about a month after it hit the free market airwaves. The podcast’s namesake is Bolelli’s hero, Ikkyu Sojun, an iconoclastic Japanese Buddhist Monk, and poet, known to frequently over-imbibe. Sojun eventually became a vagabond. (Bolelli also released a series of martial arts instructional videos accompanying The Drunken Taoist podcast). After his brief podcast venture with Vallely, he went on to produce his own History On Fire. The podcast combines his love of history, the martial arts, and heroic characters — “a place where history and epic collide.”
The Warrior’s Path Is Paved With Tears
The first thing that greets you upon entering Bolelli’s official website, is him with a black eye, flipping the bird in an MMA-gloved hand, while carrying a stack of books in the other. The sentence, “Answering defiance with a defiant smile and raised middle finger,” makes the bold proclomation above his picture. He has earned the right to wear that defiant smile — and to flip that bird! He wrote Not Afraid about that humbling, life-changing experience.
Things were going well for the Bolelli’s until 2011, when his wife, Elizabeth, 36, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She discontinued treatment to spend her last days at home with her family. Her husband’s main priority was making her as comfortable as possible until she took her last breath. She did, one day, in his arms, leaving him with their 19-month-old daughter to care for on his own. Shortly thereafter, he was passed by for tenure at UCLA, and after fighting tooth and nail with his loan company, finally lost his house. He sums it up in an excerpt from Not Afraid.
“Hell was like a ninja who entered my house without being seen. … Little did I know that the experiences of the next five months would rip me apart and kill me. They would re-forge me into a different man. On that day, I became an unwilling traveler on a journey through the heart of fear. Every step along the way has forced me to face my fears time and time again.”
In an October 2015 Daily Mail UK interview, Bolelli recounted that five month period with its “surreal overtone.”
“ … There was so much drama, so much tragedy, that I had to take it in stride in order to avoid shooting myself. I was enraged, but I also felt a defiant surge energize me.”
The experience changed the way Bolelli approached life, though he still suffers from bouts of PTSD. He became the warrior. Despite all, he could take pride in knowing that he was still standing, and still able to care for his daughter, he said in the Daily Mail interview. He dives into things with less hesitation. “Ultimately, I had been sensitised [sic] to the fact that I’d lose everything regardless of how careful I’d be, so I decided to enjoy life in the meantime.”
Bolelli’s martial arts philosophy helped him navigate the challenges and remain standing. No matter how skilled a fighter you are, he told the Daily Mail interview, “There’s always someone who is luckier or stronger or better than you on a particular day. So, everyone eventually gets beat up.
“And yet, learning how to stay in the fight, even when it’s hopeless, can teach you a special kind of fortitude.”
Shootin’ At the Walls of Hearthache …
“Bang, bang, I am the warrior.” So says Patty Smyth in her 1984 hit, The Warrior. For millennia, the warrior spirit has gotten a few brave souls through some brutal and unfathomable life challenges. Most others go through life avoiding facing those challenges, but that’s like living in a sort of invisible prison, where they’ll always be trapped if they don’t work through and past those challenges. You don’t have to be a student of the martial arts to benefit from reading On the Warrior’s Path. The attitude can be applied in all arenas of life. The martial arts is a tool to “forge our spirits,” Bolelli said in a 2008 Bluesnake martial arts blog interview.
“The warrior ideal is about developing a certain spirit — an attitude toward life. Some people will develop this without ever doing martial arts, while others will spend a lifetime training without ever getting there.”
Bolelli has another tool in his black belt — a sense of humor, noted by his friends and students. Sometimes, looking back after a particularly harrowing challenge, one may laugh about how Chumbawamba’s 1997 song, Tubthumping being their battle cry through the ordeal, and marveling, perhaps, at how deeply pertinent the lyrics were. If one can laugh, they’ve made it, unshaken. To embrace your warrior is not to be taken lightly. He explained more in the Bluesnake interview.
“In my mind, being a warrior is a choice to take full responsibility for everything in your experience, and to constantly do battle against your weaknesses. It’s about developing the qualities necessary standing in the way of a more fulfilling life.
“Most people are constantly busy looking for excuses, searching for someone to blame for whatever is wrong in their lives. Being a warrior means acknowledging the impact of external events, but not letting them determine the direction of our lives. … Just making this choice and doing one’s best to live up to it on a daily basis, is what makes one a warrior.”
Imagine if every person on our big, beautiful planet chose to be a warrior? There would be more compassion, maybe some empathy, and definitely a higher moral code and a mutual respect for all whom you encounter. But how do we gain these qualities when, globally, we seem so far away from it now? How do we build enthusiasm to give it a go and fight the good fight?
In Create Your Own Religion, Bolelli says:
“We need new rituals to awaken us to the fact that we are not separate from the land, water, and sky. We need ceremonies putting us back in touch, and urging us to conserve the resources that give life to everything in existence.
“We need to once again think as part of something greater, to view reality from a place higher than the narrow confines of a short-sighted ego. Empathy toward other living things should be one of the very first lessons instilled by all religions.” …
As Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, of the USS Enterprise, says, “Engage. Make it so.”
Isabella, Bolelli and MMA fighter girlfriend, Savannah Em. Happy again.
~The 411~:
History On Fire podcast
I Am Bruce Leefull documentary
The Meaning of Mt Rushmore for the Lakota People, by DB
Daily Mail UK 10/20/15 interview
Goodread rating–On the Warrior’s Path
The Warrior, Patty Smyth, 1984
Tubthumping,/em>, Chumbawamba, 1997
Order On the Warrior’s Path or Not Afraid, or Bolelli’s other books on Amazon.
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Ideas worth returning to
Quotes
Five substantial excerpts from the published transcript, lightly edited for clarity without changing their meaning.
“Martial arts should not be confined to one or two hours in an enclosed room. The real question is how what happens on the mat translates into everything else you do. Technique matters, but its broader value lies in carrying discipline, attention, and a way of meeting difficulty into ordinary life.”
From the conversation“Being present means recognizing real limits without treating them as an excuse to give up. I may not get the outcome I want, but that does not release me from responding as well as I can. Martial arts offers a ritualized context for practicing that lesson; life itself is where the lesson ultimately matters.”
From the conversation“Whenever we have something good, we fear losing it because we want love and happiness to last. Yet we live in an impermanent universe, and everything we love will eventually be taken from us. That gives fear an understandable basis, whether it concerns mortality, loss, or the more ordinary anxiety of being judged by other people.”
From the conversation“Anxiously anticipating the future does not repair the present; it only makes us experience the feared event before it arrives. The wiser response is to enjoy the ride, relax, and breathe into the uncertainty. That is much easier to say than to practice, but worrying in advance does not give us greater control.”
From the conversation“When fear appears, part of me says, ‘So what? Let’s find out.’ I do not claim that this is easy or that I always overcome fear. There are as many times when it stops me as when I move through it. The practice begins with refusing to hide the fear and honestly studying how it works.”
From the conversation
About the guest
Daniele Bolelli –
Daniele Bolelli may have initially gravitated toward the martial arts for the discipline created between mind and body. He excelled to earn a 5th-degree black belt in Kung Foo San Soo, while he built that strong warrior prowess. Little did he know is that one day he would have to call upon all he’d learned to rise to overcome a barrage of major life challenges, and save his soul in the process.
Beyond the conversation
Selected work
Official sites, books, research, and institutional pages verified for this guest.
The complete conversation
Transcript
Archival transcript · Published on the canonical episode page
This archival source does not include reliable passage timestamps or consistent speaker attribution. The wording and any labels below are preserved from the original transcript page; no speakers or timing have been inferred.
welcome to the human experience podcast the only podcast designed to fuse your left and right brain hemispheres and feed it the most entertaining and mentally engaging topics on the planet as we approach our ascent please make sure your frontal temporal and occipital loads are in their full upright position as you take your seat of consciousness relax your senses and allow us to take you on a journey we are the intimate strangers thank you for listening
[Music]so what interests me in the mindset that it creates is how do you stay into a losing fight and so the trick for me was how do I figure out a way to in a completely hopeless scenario how do I conquer this one second you know the next minute the universe will crush you in the end but until then just a fun
[Music]what’s up guys Xavier katana here and you are listening to the human experience we had Daniele but lately on the show who is a really interesting person he run his own podcast called the drunken Taoists and we get into martial arts he’s written a few books we get into those so very interesting material very interesting conversation here with mr. Daniela bolelli which you should enjoy thank you guys so much for listening the human experiences
in session my guest for today is mr. Daniele bolelli Daniele it’s a pleasure welcome to hxp thanks so much for having me on so Daniel II you are a martial artist you are a philosopher you run the is it the Taoists podcast Branca Paris those Taoism is nice but how is me with wine is even better okay so you how does what is the drunken how is the danke part it’s kind of a joke is because I think he started out in martial art because my
style wasn’t pulled that impressive in terms of you know I’m now like the most super athletic guy I’m okay you know I’m averaged in that department but oddly enough nobody could figure out why but now my game was very good in a way that I could sometime beat people who were much better than at least they look a lot better than me and so the standard comment was you know you look like the old guy from the Chinese movie you know
the old drunken Taoist master was just you don’t think much of him and somehow he wins and nobody figure out how it happened so that’s how the whole drunken Tao is name came up and of like it’s a tribute to the power of being unorthodox very interesting so Daniel if you could just you know kind of give us an idea to any of our listeners that may not know who you are how would you summarize your existence on this planet that’s a tall order right there I grew
up in Italy I lived there until I was 18 years old I moved to Los Angeles California at that time I’ve been living here ever since that was 1992 so it’s been quite a while despite that somehow my Italian accent never leaves me despite the fact that we’ve now more time in worse than in Italy but still and eventually let’s see what do I do in life I ended up each College in a I teach at Cal State Long Beach and Santa Monica College I teach mainly history I
ran a couple of podcast I write books you know lots of different sayings I think oh I don’t like speaking in one field only yeah that shows you know you’ve had a long interest in martial arts when we opened the conversation with martial arts what sparked this interest in martial art you’re involved in judo right or sure how did you get into this practice it was the discipline of martial art the image of martial arts is that it’s a path to empowerment you
know you got this sense that there’s a concrete way to become physically and mentally more empowered now granted the some of that is high some of that is not some of that they’re actually sent into it where it does deliver on the promise so you know my initial ideas were probably highly romanticized and so in that sense like most people who are attracted to something when you don’t know yet what the real deal is you probably romanticize a little bit but
wholly know like well yeah that the path that spoke to me you know even in fighting even in martial arts you’re there’s no way it doesn’t matter how good you got you’re not always going to win and there is always somebody who’s gonna be better and bigger and meaner than you so despite that martial art does give you this feeling that there’s a way to work on bettering yourself and you find out real quick through sparring through grappling through testing it you
know it’s not that kind of self perfection path that you can apply to yourself because it’s more theoretical than the martial arts there’s a very immediate back and I sort of dig that it prevents me from getting lost in my head and bring me back to the present moment yeah yeah I agree a hundred percent you know there’s there’s something very primitive and very visceral about you know just kind of watching two people bang their heads against each other and
you know it’s this raw sort of instinctual nature I think that we have as humans why do you think this is such an interesting study you know I’ve studied martial arts for a while and one of the kind of ongoing sayings was that if you found yourself in a fight you’ve already you’ve already in a way you’ve already lost right yeah I think the beauty of martial art is that it really is somewhat of a theatrical representation of what
conflict is all about now that one is conflicting the most in the lowest possible way you know it’s physical complet to human beings no weapons just go but really in some sense is a metaphor for all the other conflicts that we face in life in the kind of conflicts that every single person ever will deal with you know conflicts between your desires and reality conflict between who you wanna be and your own limitations conflict between
you know our whole life is made of conflict so something that strips down conflict with basic element and presented to you in a more ritualized fashion of course is appealing to human beings yeah you wrote a book on this you wrote on the Warriors path philosophy fighting and martial arts mythology what does that cover what did you what were you covering that book that one is is the first book I have written and it was kind of like at the time when I was
really getting heavy into martial arts spending so much of my waking time thinking about it was way to sort of answer this idea why do we do it you know what’s the big deal about a why martial arts why not mates or Iran which by the way have nothing against those things but you know like what is that special about martial arts I endow more importantly how does it translate to life so that it’s not just what you do for an hour two hours in in an enclosed
space but how does what you do on the mat translates to every girls you doing life for sure and you know how let’s let’s continue on that how do we apply these things that we learn in martial arts to to life I think there are a bunch of different things the one can get from it one theme that I explored particularly in a different book the latest one I wrote called not afraid is the idea of dealing with failure of dealing with getting your ass
kicked the with you know we all like the fight that we are going to win nobody likes to lose particularly while you are in the middle of me there’s nothing fun about getting squashed by somebody who’s bigger and badder than you and it’s very easy when you realize that no matter what you try you wanna check out and you want this to be over it’s very easy to want out but the reality is the fight is still ongoing so what interests me in
the mindset that it creates is how do you stay into a losing fight you know we can all stay in a winning fight but were we’re having fun with it is great it feels good it’s an ego boost but how do you face what seemed like hopeless circumstances in this case is just fighting it’s not the end of the world but still how do you keep fighting when you realize that your efforts are really not going to change the outcome that me is interesting because it it toughen you
up it makes you monstrously stronger if you’re able to keep going even when you’re not gonna get the results you want that’s a practice that it’s kind of hard on our ego because our ego Drive some results on outcome on the part of the back at the end you know the result is not gonna come out well so how do you keep going when you don’t get what you want yeah that’s so fundamental to kind of living a balanced lifestyle living it
you know just in harmony with everything that’s going on just because you know most of the time I think we face that sense of failure more than we face that sense of success right I mean it’s more like there’s more times that you’re gonna fail then you’re going to succeed but when you eventually do succeed you remember those failures you remember how I got there I mean you were writing not afraid there was an event in your life that was
happening your wife was ill and she eventually passed yep I’m so sorry to hear that so you were dealing with this directly you had this happening to you while you were writing this I mean how did this occur and how did this affect you I mean that was sort of the prime example of what I’m talking about beside what you got on the mat in the rest of life they’re gonna be in the lives of all of us there are gonna be a million occasions where you got kicked
in the teeth and there’s not a whole lot that you can do about the outcome you know in this case my wife got sicker rather suddenly and the progression was very fast and dramatic and the whole thing was just you know there was nothing I could do you know there was nothing I did I couldn’t save her I couldn’t do something you know was terminal brain tumor super aggressive very fast inoperable there really nothing for me to do and
yet at the same time there’s a million things for me to do because in the meantime you know why she was still alive she needs attention she needs comfort physically she needs comfort emotionally she needs a lot of things precisely because things are going so bad and so the trick for me was out do I figure out the way in a completely hopeless scenario how do I conquer this one second you know the next me note how do I make the next me know it’s good I
know I’m not gonna make the ultimate outcome of this situation good there is no getting out alive here but how do I make this next hour a good one how do I make this day a good one you know that kind of thing forcing me to go back to the present moment and understanding that there are some obvious limitations to what I can do but at the same time just because I’m not gonna get what I want doesn’t mean that I should just give up at all over and say okay bye you
deal with it you know that’s um you know martial arts again is a is a ritualized context where you can learn some stuff but then of course the real but the real big deal is life itself is not what you do on the ending or or on the mat it’s very true very in in the same book and not afraid you refer to fear as being like a ninja it’s often able to hurt us without ever showing its face and this I find this very accurate I find this very you
nailed it with this can you talk about that please yeah because we’re all nobody’s born completely fearless you know some people are braver than others about some specific scenes holding half the same person who may be really brave in one context may be a big wimp in the next contest so fear is kind of a strange creature but everybody deals with peers on one level or another you know everybody some people are ruled by fear a lot more than others but
everybody has to face because when you have son if you don’t want to lose it there’s that fear that whatever good thing you have or happen to you in life you want it to last you want to be able to keep it to conserve it and the reality is that because we live in an impermanent universe everything we love that to be taken away from us so of course there are very good reasons to be afraid there’s people then also have other more normal peers rather than just
existential ones there’s the fear of other people judging you is a big one most people are concerned regarding what other people think about them and they will act sometime without even realizing it and that’s where the ninja element comes in fear made certain choices there are no really the choices you wanna make but you’re afraid of what everybody else is going to say if I were to try this what if I feel are they all gonna laugh
at me kind of feeling you know that type of stuff will influence the way people behave what if what if things were wrong or what if my worst fear materialized and so I’ll play it safe and in many cases play it safe means play to a lower level not to our full potential and ultimately not only living you know I was I was on an airplane last night and that’s enough reason to be afraid right now I mean oh yeah what’s going on in the news but there was this moment where
there was you know more turbulence than normal and the plane was shaking especially hard everyone on the plane was a little bit alert and I think if it would have went like a second past that you know there would have been – panic but I was just thinking okay the person sitting next to me I’m would die next to this person so I don’t mean have I taken a moment to talk to this person sitting next to me no I hadn’t you know I was too lazy as too tired didn’t feel
like it whatever my excuses were just kind of woke me up – I mean it might sound kind of stupid but no it just kind of made me realize that you know any moment this can happen in life ends so quickly sure if you’re not doing the most that you can with your life in every moment light and kind of like you said you know you were reducing things down to minute by minute and hour upon hour that’s such a huge huge thing to kind of realize especially when you’re in the
middle of a crisis yeah absolutely because otherwise you got overwhelmed by it and it crushes you you know a lot of the positive thinking that you got and before Husan you know you can materialize the life you want if you just think it the right way there’s nothing to be scared of everything is gonna be fine and my thing is like no sometime not everything is gonna be fine and there are very good reasons to be scared because the very worst things you expect
may happen so what you know you still have to those are the cards you’re given are you gonna play them you know just because the sinks don’t turn now your weight doesn’t mean that the game is over so how are you gonna deal with that stuff like sorry to tell you but no not everything is for the best not everything is amazing and wonderful I find both approaches they’re trying to avoid the reality of how things are it requires us to stay and of walk this
tightrope when were in a balance between these beautiful act as you’re living and the horror of it all and the two go hand-in-hand do you feel that sometimes people play it too safe to avoid all of those outcomes to avoid being in a place where they’re afraid to avoid being sharp a place where they’re uncomfortable you know there’s a very common statement of growth happens outside of your comfort zone so I do people say this well cuz I mean the thing is there’s a
very good reason for being afraid and wanting to avoid this issues is because it’s scale it doesn’t feel good it’s by definition that means you know getting kicked around is not a fun feeling when the reality is crushing you is not a fun feeling at the same time you know that fear of oh I don’t want things to turn bad so I’m just gonna kind of hide my head under the sand hoping that it just goes away debt not a solution either
because ultimately whatever little weapon is gonna happen anyway and on top of it you will have been living ruled by fear this entire time rather than accepting that you really can do anything about the ultimate outcome but you can have the life you want in the meantime the universe will crush you in the end but until then response yeah it’s kind of like enjoying the ride just I mean if you’re worried about the future and if you have this anticipation about the
future you’re just gonna delay this sort of inevitable thing and it doesn’t fix anything in the moment you just kind of relax and breathe into it which is easier it’s much more simple to say than what is actually like ooh yeah has there been a moment where you have been afraid and kind of pushed through that moment I’m not by nature the super hardcore brave person so I completely sympathize with the reason why people are afraid
why people want to play it safe by gannett completely I feel the same way especially when things are going well that’s when you’re close the highest because then we really have reasons we have a lot to lose when you have nothing to lose you really don’t have as much to be afraid of you know it’s when it’s when we have stuff to lose we have stuff that we care about that ear goes up because now we have a more skin in the game I mean even martial arts or
whatever reason fight you really scared the hell out of me mean I don’t mean practice practice is no big deal but you know actual competition fight in that we will put me on edge like I wouldn’t sleep well before I would get my muscle tighten up our get all shaky with all of that kind of stuff so I tried for quite a while to just keep stepping up seeing ok this is scaring the living hell out of me let’s try again ok let’s do that again
let’s do it again let’s do that again and of course when you do something over and over you start at least partially maybe you’ll never fully conquered that fear by you’re gonna get a little bit better handling it in the rest of life you tend to become a little more adventures you tend to be willing to try new things because you don’t let that initial oh but it’s difficult to but it’s scary oh but what if I feel kind of thoth in the back of
your head you don’t like that rule you say well so what let’s go play let’s find out I love them again a lot easier said than done I’m not coming from the point of view of saying just do this and it’s all gonna be great it’s I get it it’s art and there are just as many times when tears stop me in my tracks as there are times when I overcome them it’s not that I’m the master of defeating fear far from it I tend not to hide so I’m pretty upfront
about my fear and I’m trying to figure out ways to deal with them that’s about the best I do you know is being really upfront about not pretending that they are not they’re not looking the other way you know it’s like okay if this is scary let’s deal with it yeah and I think that’s a very brave move to be able to you know kind of to your perspective into just facing whatever is going on with you I think most people are more prone to running
away you also wrote a book on religion how are you going in all these different directions and do these connect somewhere yeah I think to me is like what I’m interested is now martial arts or religion or history or any of the 10,000 things that I play with they that’s not really what interests me what he interests me is life life is interesting in all of its forms and to me wherever there’s intensity wherever there’s passion doesn’t really matter
what the starting point is it’s all life it’s all part of the same thing to me those are just excuses to get the ball roll and you know but even when I teach if I’m teaching about the history of religions or I’m teaching about Native American history or US or it doesn’t really matter and these are all like the specific examples vary but the basic thing the the key teams don’t change they are they’re always the same they’re always life is one it’s we may
speak many languages but at the roots of it all is one thing yeah it’s very true I mean you teach human history so is there a pattern that you see in human history that we are kind of repeating now I think there are but there’s I mean humans are humans and so it’s kind of like in Game of Thrones – the dragons in the sand no it’s that kind of power struggle between human beings constantly at each other’s throat to grab power and
that’s basically half of human history right there you know it’s I think that’s why we’re fascinated with like mafia movies or something because the history of humanity is one big mafia fairy tale you know it just kings and queens are glorified Mafia bosses essentially and you know did that game of the struggle for power that most human beings are engaged in is a classic thing that really is not any different whether you’re looking at caveman or you’re
looking at big empires or today it’s kind of the same game being played over and over what’s up guys you have been listening to the human experience and we thank you so much for tuning in if you would like to hear the rest of this episode please get to the human xpm slash members you can become a whisper there and you help support the show you help support we’re doing and it gives us the room to expand and continue to do this we really do
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