Warrior's Way: American

## Warrior's Way: American THE COMPASSIONATE WARRIOR The spiritual warrior dispels the monster-demons of the world that impede harmony and natural order. The Navajo have their warrior gods, and the Tibetans, their warrior kings. Both are born to the mother earth persona who had been impregnated by the power of the sky. Warrior divinities are envisioned in a vast number of forms (two or four for the Navajo, and extensive pantheons for the Tibetans). They are called upon in ritual to dispel externally created as well as self-generated obstacles to ordinary life and cosmic balance. For the Navajo, the compassionate warrior is exemplified in the Warrior Twins, heroic sons of the great goddess, Changing Woman. The search of these "two-in-one" beings for their father, the Sun Bearer, was a quest to gain the spiritual empowerment necessary to vanquish the many psychic monsters ravaging their mother's perfect Fifth World. These monsters are known by such evocative names as Crushing Rocks, Monster-Who-Kicks-People-Off-Cliffs, Shifting Sands, Great Winged One, Tracking Bear, and Big Monster. They were created either by the Sun Bearer's promiscuous dalliance or by masturbatory acts by the first women during the separation of the sexes in the previous world-reality. The monsters are aberrations of body and mind. They are terrifying powers of the natural world with which the Navajo's ancestors had to become reconciled, so that the ideal world and the real world might coincide. In order to reach their father's home, the twins had to vanquish or evade several such monsters. According to the Navajo warrior-rite narrative, the twins eventually arrived at their father's House of Dawn, situated on an island in the far eastern ocean where the white-light mist of the east glows at the horizon. His glorious hoghan was guarded by fierce protector animals of the four directions. The twins suceeded in pacifying them with the help of certain supernatural tutelaries such as Spider Grandmother. Once inside Sun Bearer's home, they met his wife and (according to some accounts) his daughter. Both were beautiful and kind, unlike their father, who was at first quite wrathful. True to his nature, he subjected the adolescent boys to harrowing tests of their authenticity. They survived by the strength of their motivation and with the help of Sun Bearer's wife/daughter (as well as through the aid of other supernatural beings and objects). The tests completed, Sun Bearer recognized the boys as his true sons, and they were transformed by him and the thunderers into full-fledged spiritual warriors. Now empowered, the Twins were renamed Monster Slayer and Child born for Water. They returned to the Navajos' sacred land and to their mother, White Shell/Changing Woman, along a rainbow pathway. They then went about ridding the fifth world-reality of its most terrifying monsters. As expressions of Changing Woman's spectrum of powers (her dark and light energies), the unit that is the Warrior Twins comprises the qualities of the "compassionate warrior." Their combined qualities of fearless protection and generous cooperation are the essence of the ideal Navajo personality. This balance of warrior qualities is reinforced in the exploits of heros and heroines of the Navajos' grand healing rites. The sacred histories reenacted in the rites first describe the hero(in)es dispelling obstacles in order to attain spiritual medicine and knowledge. Their protective work completed, they ensure that the sacred teachings are returned and established among the People. - "Navajo & Tibetan Sacred Wisdom: The Circle of the Spirit" by Peter Gold In 1984, Chogyam Trungpa had an extraordinary meeting with Gerald Red Elk, an Oglala Sioux shaman-chief, another man of great compassion and authentic presence. Gerald Red Elk's adopted American nephew Roger La Borde wrote: At one time he was a very angry man. He hated the white man and all that the white man had done to his people. He was lost in alcoholism. But nearly twenty years ago, as he was near death, he prayed to the Great Spirit to be spared. He promised that if he was allowed to live he would change his life and help his people.... Gerald did keep his promise. He helped his people, and his people included everyone. He told me one day that he realized that after the Great Spirit had let him live there was only one race of people on this earth - the human race. Gerald was deeply concerned that the bad state of mind of the present civilization was causing tremendous turmoil on the earth and that much worse was to come. Every four years, he would meet with other native elders at a special place in the Rocky Mountains near Denver, Colorado, to read messages from the gods - the Star People, as he called them - etched on the rocks. The recent messages had depicted the gods weeping - warning of the terrible suffering of the earth itself. "They're telling us, for the future," he said. "Some things are going to happen, and people will have to be in a very good state of mind, so they could be strong, so they could reason without panicking, and at the same time they could learn what all those grasses and trees and (they call them weeds) what those plants are all about, because all of them are medicine and are edible." Gerald Red Elk visited the Denver area in 1980 to read the medicine rocks, and when he was there, he asked to meet Chogyam Trungpa. "I wanted to meet a Tibetan Lama," he said later, "because we understand the heart of what they are. We call anybody in that state of mind a 'common man of the earth' because they live the laws of the earth, they understand, and we could communicate without talking." Since Chogyam Trungpa was not available to meet Red Elk, Jeremy was asked to do so. He came into Jeremy's office one late afternoon. Tall and stooped, he wore baggy polyester pants and a short-sleeved shirt with a row of ball-point pens in the breast pocket, clipped onto a plastic pocket guard. He looked a little like an aging truck driver. Jeremy relates: We sat down against opposite walls in my small office. Red Elk began by saying that he believed that the Tibetans had knowledge about the Star People that complemented the knowledge his people had of them. Together, he felt, the two peoples could help the world in the coming bad times. Red Elk's voice was very soft and low; I could hardly understand what he was saying. I had not then heard of the Star People, though they sounded somewhat like the dralas, to whom Chogyam Trungpa had very recently introduced us. Yet I was completely transfixed by his presence. The room seemed filled with kindness and generosity and an almost magical enchantment. I felt, as we sat there, that he was pouring love out toward me, even as he spoke about almost incomprehensible things. As the sun set, the room grew dark, but I did not want to get out of my chair and turn on the light for fear of breaking the spell. Chogyam Trungpa was still unavailable that night, and Red Elk left town early the next morning. It was four years before their paths finally crossed, when Gerald Red Elk was again in Colorado to read the medicine rocks. The meeting with Chogyam Trungpa took place only a few months before Red Elk died. It was on a bright summer afternoon in the Rocky Mountains at an encampment for training in the Shambhala warriorship practice. At the beginning of their meeting, Chogyam Trungpa and Gerald Red Elk talked briefly about the weather. Trungpa looked at the sky and said, "I think it is going to rain tomorrow." Red Elk replied, "I think it will probably rain in a few hours." Trungpa responded, "I think it will rain tomorrow morning." Red Elk said, "I think it will rain soon." Throughout the meeting, thunder rumbled. Red Elk presented Chogyam Trungpa with a turquoise stone, which represented the nature of the universe; a red stone, the nature of the gods; a green stone, the earth; and a purple stone, medicine. They spoke together for about forty minutes, Red Elk showing Chogyam Trungpa drawings of the rock messages. Both commented on the similarity of the drawings to the animals portrayed on Chogyam Trungpa's Shambhala standard: the tiger, snow lion, garuda, and dragon. "I think we can work together," Trungpa said. "It is very magical." He gave Red Elk a copy of 'Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior', which had just been published. Red Elk exclaimed, "The sacred path of the warrior, this is what we believe in. The honor is there. The honor is there." Later, Chogyam Trungpa said, "He understood the whole book just from the cover," while Gerald Red Elk commented, "We understood each other completely without needing to say anything." The two sat quietly together for almost an hour. At the end of the meeting, they embraced, and Chogyam Trungpa said, "I think something extraordinary will come out of this." As Gerald Red Elk walked slowly back down the valley, a slight rain began to fall. As they walked away, Roger La Borde says: Huge raindrops began to fall, the biggest I think I have ever seen, and I grew up where thunderstorms were common. A large electric-blue bolt of lightning struck the ground several hundred yards away. I actually saw the spot where it hit the ground. As we drove away a monsoon (or so it seemed) commenced. I said to Gerald as we were driving out to the main highway that I knew that sparks would fly during the meeting, but I didn't expect it to be lightning! Gerald's response was that the night before he had a dream of rain and lightning during the meeting, which he took to be the gods' approval of the meeting. As they walked away, meanwhile, Chogyam Trungpa remained seated outside his tent, saying, "It's so sad, so sad." The rain fell more heavily as Red Elk continued down the road. The attendents tried to encourage Chogyam Trungpa to go inside his tent, but he continued to sit outside, under the tent flap. the rain seemed to let up, and Trungpa picked up his stick and said, "Well, I guess that's enough." The rain stopped for a minute. Then Trungpa began to shake, and he started crying, sobbing. He picked up his stick again and slammed it on his knee. At that point, a torrential downpour - the heaviest rain anyone had ever experienced - flooded the valley. Our nephew Carl told us, "We were standing in the center of the campground getting ready to take down the flag for the evening. It had been a beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon. Suddenly, a big, black cloud moved across the valley and seemed to stop over us. We were told to go to our tents - just forty or fifty feet away - to get our raincoats, but it started to pour, and before we could even get to the tents, we were soaked. The cloud just emptied on the camp and then moved away." During this time, Gerald Red Elk was being driven away from the property by Roger La Borde. A few miles down the road, Gerald Red Elk had Roger stop the car. He walked out into the middle of a field and gazed toward the encampment grounds, over which the storm cloud could be seen. After many minutes, he turned and silently returned to the car. Chogyam Trungpa still wouldn't go into his tent. Attendants inside and outside the tent pushed up the roof with poles to try to keep the rain from collapsing it. As the downpour increased to a formidable deluge, the grounds were no longer visible, and a curtain of water completely surrounded him. His attendants were yelling pleas that he come inside the tent. But he shook his head. As he continued to sit, finally a rainbow formed in the valley. It was as if, in the play of the rain and hail, the lightning and sunshine, the elements had sealed a magical connection between two true master warriors. Gerald Red Elk became ill with cancer shortly after this meeting and died a few months later. When Roger went to visit Red Elk in his hospital room just before he died, the first thing Red Elk said was, "How's Rinpoche?" He and Chogyam Trungpa never met again. - "Sacred World: The Shambhala Way to Gentleness, Bravery and Power", by Jeremy & Karen Hayward The Warrior's Prayer I am what I am. In having faith in the beauty within me, I develop trust. In softness I have strength. In silence I walk with the gods. In peace I understand myself and the world. In conflict I walk away. In detachment I am free. In respecting all living things, I respect myself. In dedication I honor the courage within me. In eternity I have compassion for the nature of all things. In love I unconditionally accept the evolution of others. In freedom I have power. In my individuality, I express the God-Force within me. In service I give of what I have become. I am what I am: Eternal, immortal, universal, and infinite. And so be it. - "Affirmations", by Stuart Wilde

Participant Comments follow below

If anyone would like to see pictures of Gerald Red Elk and a picture taken of Gerald and Trungpa during the meeting at RMDC go to my website and then to the photo gallery. shamansdoor.com Roger La Borde Roger La Borde shamansdoor@shamansdoor.com 10/19/04 18:26:59 GMT