Warrior's Way: Asian

## Warrior's Way: Asian The compassionate warrior also figures prominently in the Tibetan psyche. In the Tibetan heroic public vision, King Gesar of Ling takes center stage. His cycle of stories comprises the national epics of Tibet and Mongolia. His origins are so cloaked in the mists of time that the nomadic bards who still recite his exploits by heart present them through the combined cultural and perceptual filters of the paleolithic shaman, the bonpo, and the Buddhist. The Gesar epic presents, mythically, the battle between the powers of illumination and the forces of darkness. It is the story of a spiritual warrior's quest for order - not of some totalitarian kind - but one that is in synchrony with the cosmos (tashi). Gesar bards sing of a time on earth when all was in disorder. So a sky divinity sent one of his sons to earth by means of a rainbow mu cord. He became the leader of the people. Since the father divinity was associated with a sacred mountain's summit and the mother was a queen of the serpentine lu powers, this made Gesar (according to this pre-Buddhist version) the son of earth waters and sky's ethereal light - much like the Navajo unit that is Monster Slayer (conceived of a sunbeam) and Child Born for Water (conceived by a streamlet from a waterfall). Gesar encountered numerous hazards in the world at large and from within his own family. But, like the Navajo twins, he received assistance on his quest; in his case it was from a powerful flying horse. With the animal's help he won a fiercely contested horse race and became ruler of the Kingdom of Ling in the Kham region of eastern Tibet. On becoming king of Ling, Gesar was clothed in a magical helmet and armor. Mounted on his turquoise-colored windhorse, he led his fellow spiritual warriors on campaigns to dispel demons and giant monsters haunting the people and their world. With their work completed, Gesar and his spiritual warriors were said to have taken divine rebirth in Shambhala. There, they presently await the command of the king of Shambhala to venture forth through a door in a rock on the eastern shore of the soul-lake of Shambhala. Gesar, who (according to the Buddhist view) is now an emanation of the bodhisattva Boundless Love, will lead his army against barbarian hordes who will have destroyed Buddhism outside the pure land of Shambhala. According to this prophecy, they will vanquish the enemies of righteousness and other demonic powers, to usher in an eon of peace and light in the world. Trungpa Rinpoche illuminates the importance of the concept of warriorship on the spiritual path of life in his guidebook: Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. The book, in fact, is dedicated to Gesar of Ling. In it, Trungpa unveils the deep essence of spiritual warriorship. He writes that "warriorship ... refers to realizing the power, dignity and wakefulness that is inherent in all of us human beings. It is awakening our basic human confidence which allows us to cheer up, develop a sense of vision and succeed in what we are doing." By heroically realizing the wisdom of the world, one discovers the magic of reality: "the primordial wisdom of the world as it is," concludes Trungpa Rinpoche. Trungpa Rinpoche calls this natural wisdom and pure awareness drala, meaning "above or beyond the enemy." The la particle (related to the words for the consciousness principle and mountain pass) signifies "existing above something," while dra refers to an enemy or obstacle. Trungpa Rinpoche likens the drala principle to "wisdom beyond aggression," saying: "the drala principle is realizing that your own wisdom as a human being is not separate from the powers of things, as they are." So, by understanding one's connection with the font of reality and power, and using the motivation of selfless compassion, one becomes empowered to confront the demons and obstacles in life. One gains drala - one stands above the enemy. Tibetans and Navajos recognize that the cosmos is replete with entities with which one must become reconciled. This is accomplished through realizing a balance of powers within one's own bodymind and immediate environment. In Trungpa's drala teachings, the spiritual warrior creates a sacred (geomantic) space out of the immediate environment (outer drala), then relaizes the unity of his or her inner, bodily reality with the natural architecture of of things (inner drala). Eventually, and most important, one arrives at what Trungpa calls that "tremendous wakefulness, tremendous nowness in your state of mind." He calls this "secret drala." The pursuit of secret drala is undoubedtly connected with the unique Tibetan custom of stringing up lines of prayer flags, known colloquially by the name of the windhorse printed at the center. Secret drala is, according to Trungpa Rinpoche, "the experience of raising windhorse, raising a wind of delight and power, and riding on, or conquering, that energy." In raising the cloth versions of the windhorse, one ritually begins to cut through the enemy obstacles of life and bodymind with the principle of drala. In calling upon the peaceful protector gods by means of the offering rite of which the flags are a part, one wields the elemental powers of earth, water, fire, air, and space (as indicated in the flags' five colors). One is borne along by the energy of the windhorse, like a mounted warrior of Shambhala, heroically re-creating one's ordinary reality in the manner of a sacred world. To accomplish this mission, the spiritual warrior must possess a compassionate heart, must have seen reality with the clear light of awakened mind (illuminated, as if by the clear, first rays of dawn's light), and act appropriately to dispel the veils (the enemies or obstacles) that block one from experiencing reality as a "sacred world." - "Navajo & Tibetan Sacred Wisdom: The Circle of the Spirit" by Peter Gold "My enemy is my best teacher." - Tenzin Gyatso, The XIV Dalai Lama Chögyam Trungpa was recognized and trained in Tibet as a terton, a person who has the ability to discover terma, which are teachings left in the safekeeping of protector dralas by great teachers of the past. They are discovered or revealed, somewhat like taking dictation (rather than authored), by great teachers like Chögyam Trungpa, who have been thoroughly trained to do so. Tulku Thondup Rinpoche describes the terma tradition in Hidden Teachings of Tibet: "The tradition has two aspects. First, appropriate teachings can be discovered by realized beings, or they will appear for them from the sky, mountains, lakes, trees, and beings, spontaneously according to their wishes and mental abilities. Second, [realized beings] can conceal teachings in books and other forms and entrust them to gods ... to protect and hand over to the right person at the right time." The terton process is a form of shamanism that probably derived from the ancient Bon tradition of Tibet. However, it was adopted into the Buddhist tradition by Padmasambhava, the great saint who introduced Buddhism to Tibet in the ninth century AD. Thereafter, the terma tradition became a way for a fresh perspective, and fresh teachings appropriate to the time, to enter into the stream of Tibetan Buddhist teachings and enliven the more systematic teachings passed down from teacher to student in the usual way in the formal monastic schools. Shortly before his year-long retreat in 1977, Chögyam Trungpa had discovered the first Shambhala texts as terma, and it was based on these Shambhala terma that Chögyam Trungpa taught the Shambhala path of sacred warriorship after his retreat. His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one of Chögyam Trungpa's first teachers and himself recognized as one of the great tertons of Tibet, later confirmed the Shambhala texts as genuine terma... In his ability, as a terton, to journey between the mundane world, the earth dimension, and the more subtle dimension of the dralas, Chögyam Trungpa showed the characteristics of a shaman as well as being as great teacher and leader in the Buddhist tradition. However, there are some differences between Chögyam Trungpa's shamanism and the shamanism of older, more local cultures. Generally, in the past, shamans have arisen within a particular tribal culture and provide teachings and healing within that tribal family. Chögyam Trungpa, on the other hand, opened up the teachings and powerful warrior practices and ceremonies of Shambhala for anyone who cared to journey on that path. He was proud of the fact that his family name was Mukpo, the same tribe in Tibet from which the great warrior Gesar came, and he would often say to Shambhala students, "You are all the Mukpo family," By this, he did not mean to be exclusive, nor that students should reject their own family heritage, but that the Shambhala teachings are open to the whole world, whatever one's racial background or family creed. Whoever wants to practice these teachings is welcomed into the great Mukpo clan and introduced to the Mukpo dralas and the dralas of the ancestral Shambhala lineage of warriors. These drala of Shambhala have the particular pwoer to protect and help propagate the teachings of spiritual warriorship... - "Sacred World: The Shambhala Way to Gentleness, Bravery and Power", by Jeremy & Karen Hayward By warriorship we are not particularly talking about the skills necessary to wage war in the conventional sense. We are not talking about learning how to handle lethal weapons and crank up our aggression and territoriality so that we can burst forth and conquer all our enemies. Warriorship here refers to realizing the power, dignity and wakefulness that is inherent in all of us as human beings. It is awakening our basic human confidence which allows us to cheer up, develop a sense of vision and succeed in what we are doing. Because warriorship is innate in human beings, the way to become a warrior - or the warrior's path - is to see who and what we are as human beings and cultivate that. If we look at ourselves directly, without hesitation or embarrassment, we find that we have a lot of strength and a lot of resources available constantly. From that point of view, if we feel we are without resources, if we feel incompetent or as if we were running out of ideas, it is said that we are being attacked by the enemy of warriorship: our own cowardice. The idea of warriorship is that because of our human potential we can go beyond that, step over the enemy of cowardly mind and discover further banks of resources and inspiration within ourselves. Cowardly mind is based on the fear of death. Ordinarily we try to ward off any reminders that we are going to die. We constantly produce artificial environments to shield ourselves from any harsh edges. We weave ourselves warm cocoons in which we can live and feel comfortable and sleepy all the time. We try to keep everything under control so that nothing unexpected will pop up and give us a nasty shock, reminding us of our impermanence, our mortality. By doing this we are trying to defend ourselves from death, which we could say is the opposite of celebrating life. By maintaining our defensive attitude we keep ourselves surrounded by a familiar fog. We wind up breeding depression and general unhappiness. In fact, that unceasing atmosphere of depression is what makes our little created environment feel so familiar and nestlike. But because it is based on struggle, this cowardly approach of ours is very far from the sense of real joy and playfulness that is associated with warriorship. Becoming a warrior means that we can look directly at ourselves, see the nature of our cowardly mind, and step out of it. We can trade our small-minded struggle for security for a much vaster vision, one of fearlessness, openness and genuine heroism. This doesn't happen all at once but is a gradual process. Our first inkling of that possibility comes when we begin to sense the claustrophobia and stuffiness of our self-imposed cocoon. At that point our safe home begins to feel like a trap and we begin to sense that an alternative is possible. We begin to have tremendous longing for some kind of ventilation, and finally we actually experience a delightful breath of fresh air coming into our stale nest. At this point we realize that it has been our choice all along to live in this restrictive, and by now somewhat revolting, mentality of defensiveness and cowardice. Simultaneously we realize that we could just as easily switch our allegiance. We could break out of our dark, stuffy prison into the fresh air where it is possible for us to stretch our legs, to walk, run, or even dance and play. We realize that we could drop the oppressive struggle it takes to maintain our cowardice, and relax instead in the greater space of confidence. It is important to understand what we mean by confidence of the warrior. The warrior is not developing confidence 'in' anything. He is not simply learning one skill, such as swordsmanship, in which he feels he could always take refuge. Nor is he falling back on some mentality of choicelessness, a sense that if only he can hold out long enough and keep a stiff upper lip, then he is bound to come out all right. Those conventional ideas of confidence would simply be further cocoons, based once again on yet further styles of defensiveness and fundamental aggression. In this case we say the warrior has self-existing confidence. This means that he remains in a 'state' of confidence free from competition and any notion of stuggle. The warrior's confidence is unconditional. In other words, because he is undistracted by any cowardly thoughts the warrior can rest in an unwavering and wakeful state of mind, which needs no reference points whatsoever. On the other hand we do not mean to say that once the warrior has uncovered his innate confidence there is nothing left for him to do. In many ways the path of the warrior is very similar to the Buddhist notion of the bodhisattva path of selfless action. The bodhisattva is a practitioner who isn't satisfied with the possibility of liberating himself from the pain of samsara, but heroically commits himself not to rest until he has helped saved all sentient beings. In the same way the confident warrior does not simply feel proud of having seen the nature of his cocoon and stepped out of it. He cannot rest in any sense of smugness at his achievement, or even in the sense of freedom and relief itself. Rather his understanding and personal experience of the claustrophobia of cowardly mind serve as an inspiration for the warrior to free others as well as himself. He actually cannot ignore the suffering and depression he sees in those around him. So from his unconditional confidence, spontaneous compassion naturally arises. The warrior's compassion manifests in different qualities, which all arise from the nature of his basic confidence. Because the warrior's confident state of mind is self-existing, unmanufactured by aggression, he is not bloated or arrogant. Instead he is humble, kind and self-contained in relating with others. The warrior is not captured by doubts, therefore he is humorous, uplifted and perky in his dealings. He is not trapped by the pettiness of hope and fear, so his vision becomes vast and he is not afraid of making mistakes. Finally his mind itself becomes as fathomless as space, so he attains complete mastery over the phenomenal world. With all of these qualities the warrior has a tremendous sense of forward vision. In other words, he is not deterred or depressed by obstacles, but with genuine inquisitiveness and cheerfulness he includes all of them as part of his path. The confident warrior conducts himself with gentleness, fearlessness and intelligence. Gentleness it the warm quality of the human heart. Because of the warmth of his heart the warrior's confidence is not too hard or brittle. Rather it has a vulnerable, open and soft quality. It is our gentleness which allows us to feel warmth and kindness and to fall in love. But at the same time we are not completely tender. We are tough as well as soft. We are fearless as well as gentle. The warrior meets the world with a slight sense of detachment, a sense of distance and precision. This aspect of confidence is the natural instinct of fearlessness which allows the warrior to meet challenges without losing his integrity. Finally our confidence expresses itself as innate intelligence, which raise ordinary gentleness and fearlessness to the level of warriorship. In other words, it is intellegence that prevents gentleness from becoming purely macho. Intelligence is our sense of wakeful inquisitiveness towards the world. It is what allows us to appreciate and take delight in the vivid qualities of the world around us. - Chögyam Trungpa, in his introduction to Alexandra David-Neel's translation of the classic asian tale "The Superhuman Life of Gesar of Ling"

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Warriorship is not within the ken of selfish people. Arun Singh a_Singh@bigfoot.com