Mind Warrior

"Come here, I shall bless you within nonduality."
-- Thupten Jinpa, Translator to HH Dalai Lama

The essence of warriorship or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche on The Warrior Tradition, provocative and somewhat outrageous teaching.

"When we bring together the ancient spiritual traditions of the West with those of the Orient, we find a meeting point where the warrior tradition can be experienced and realized. The concept of being a warrior is applicable to the most basic situations in our lives-to the fundamental situation that exists before the notion of good or bad ever occurs. The term “warrior” relates to the basic situation of being a human being. The heart of the warrior is this basic aliveness or basic goodness. Such fearless goodness is free from doubt and overcomes any perverted attitudes towards reality...

Finally, renunciation is the willingness to work with real situations of aggression in the world. If someone interrupts your world with an attack of aggression, you have to respond to it. There is no other way. Renunciation is being willing to face that kind of situation, rather than covering it up. Everyone is afraid to talk about this. It may be shocking to mention it. Nonetheless, we have to learn to relate to those aspects of the world. We have never developed any response to attack-whether it is a verbal attack or actual physical aggression. People are very shy of this topic, although we have the answers to these challenges in our warrior disciplines, our exertion and our manifestation.

In the warrior tradition, fearlessness is connected with attaching your basic existence to greater vision or what we call the Great Eastern Sun. In order to experience such vast and demanding vision, you need a real connection to basic goodness. The key to that is overcoming doubt and wrong belief. Doubt is your own internal problem, which you have to work with. But then beyond that there may be an enemy, a challenge, that is outside of you. We can’t just pretend that those threats never exist. You might say that your laziness is some kind of enemy, but laziness is not actually an enemy. It would be better to call it an obstacle.

How are we going to respond to real opposition that arises in the world? As a warrior, how are you going to relate with that? You don’t need a party-line logic or a package deal response. They don’t really help. In my experience of how students usually relate with conflict, I find that they tend to freeze up when someone is very critical of them. They become non-communicative, which doesn’t help the situation. As warriors, we shouldn’t be uptight and uncommunicative. We find it easy to manifest basic goodness when somebody agrees with us. Even if they’re half agreeing with you, you can talk to them and have a great time. But if someone is edgy and negative, then you freeze, become defensive, and begin to attack them back. That’s the wrong end of the stick. You don’t kill an enemy before they become the enemy. You only slash the enemy when they become a 100% good enemy and present a real 100% challenge. If someone is interested in making love with you, you make love to them. But you don’t rape them. You don’t kill an enemy before they become the enemy. You only slash the enemy when they become a 100% good enemy and present a real 100% challenge. If someone is interested in making love with you, you make love to them. But you don’t rape them. You wait until the other person commits themselves to the situation. Working with your enemy is the same idea.

When a warrior has to kill his enemy, he has a very soft heart. He looks his enemy right in the face. The grip on your sword is quite strong and tough, and then with a tender heart, you cut your enemy into two pieces. At that point, slashing your enemy is equivalent to making love to them. That very strong, powerful stroke is also sympathetic. That fearless stroke is frightening, don’t you think? We don’t want to face that possibility.

On the other hand, if we are in touch with basic goodness, we are always relating to the world directly, choicelessly, whether the energy of the situation demands a destructive or a constructive response. The idea of renunciation is to relate with whatever arises with a sense of sadness and tenderness. We reject the aggressive, hardcore street fighter mentality. The neurotic upheavals created by conflicting emotions, or the kleshas, arise from ignorance, or avidya. Ignorance is very harsh and willing to stick with its own version of things. Therefore, it feels very righteous. Overcoming that is the essence of renunciation: we have no hard edges.

Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle. You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin. You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone and marrow to the world.

This whole discussion is not just metaphoric. We are talking about what you do if you actually have to slash the enemy, if you are in combat or having a sword fight with someone, as you see in Japanese samurai movies. We shouldn’t be too cowardly. A sword fight is real, as real as making love to another human being. We are talking about direct experience and we’re not psychologizing anything here. Before you slash the enemy, look into his or her eyes and feel that tenderness. Then you slash. When you slash your enemy, your compassionate heart becomes twice as big. It puffs up; it becomes a big heart; therefore you can slash the enemy. If you are small-hearted, you cannot do this properly.

Of course, many times conquering the enemy might not involve cutting them in two. You might just turn them upside down! But you have to be willing to face the possibilities.

When the warrior has thoroughly experienced his or her own basic rawness, there is no room to manipulate the situation. You just go forward and present the truth quite fearlessly. You can be what you are, in a very straightforward and basic way. So tenderness brings simplicity and naturalness, almost at the level of simple-mindedness.

We don’t want to become tricky warriors, with all kinds of tricks up our sleeves and ways to cut people’s logic down when we don’t agree with them. Then there is no cultivation of either ourselves or others. When that occurs, we destroy any possibilities of enlightened society. In fact, there will be no society; just a few people hanging out. Instead, the fearless warriors of Shambhala are very ordinary, simpleminded warriors. That is the starting point for developing true bravery...

The warrior is never amazed by anything. If someone comes up to you and says, “I’m going to kill you right now,” you are not amazed. If someone says that are going to give you a million dollars, you think, “So what?” Assuming your seat in the saddle at this level is achieving inscrutability, in the positive sense.

It is also taking your seat on the earth. Once you have a good seat on the earth, you don’t need witnesses to validate you. Someone once asked the Buddha, “How do we know that you are enlightened?” And he touched the earth in what is called the earth-touching mudra, or gesture, and said, “Earth is my witness.” That is the same concept as holding your seat in the saddle. Someone might ask, “How do we know you won’t overreact to this situation?” You can say, “Just watch my posture in the saddle.”

Fearlessness in the warrior tradition is not a training in ultimate paranoia. It is based on training in ultimate solidity-which is basic goodness. You have to learn how to be regal. Trust is like becoming a good citizen, celebrating the journey is like becoming a good minister in the government, but holding your seat in the saddle is finally assuming command. It is how to be a king or queen.

At the same time, conquering fear is not based on blocking your sensitivity. Otherwise, you become a deaf and dumb monarch, a jellyfish king. Sitting on the horse requires balance, and as you acquire that balance in the saddle, you have more awareness of the horse. So when you sit in the saddle on your fickle horse, you feel completely exposed and gentle. If you feel aggressive, you don’t have a good seat. In fact, you are probably not even riding the horse. You don’t put your saddle on a fence railing. You have to saddle a real horse.

In this case, riding the horse is riding somebody else’s mind. It requires a complete connection. In the Buddhist tradition, this is called compassion, or working with somebody else. You are completely exposed in this situation. Otherwise, it’s like a medieval knight encased in his armor. It’s so heavy that he has to be cranked up onto the horse. Then he rides off to battle and usually falls off. There’s something wrong with that technology.

Often, when someone tells us we should be fearless, we think they’re saying not to worry, that everything is going to be all right. But unconditional fearlessness is simply based on being awake. Once you have command of the situation, fearlessness is unconditional because you are neither on the side of success or failure. Success and failure are your journey.

Nevertheless, sometimes you become so petrified on your journey that your teeth, your eyes, your hands, and your legs are all vibrating. You are hardly sitting in your seat; you are practically levitating with fear. But even that is regarded as an expression of fearlessness if you have a fundamental connection with the earth of basic goodness-which is unconditional goodness at this point."

-- Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, https://www.lionsroar.com/conquering-fear/