Background
Our culture is a culture of dichotomy, of one against the other, peace against war, calm against tension, and idleness against effort. Once, things were homogenize and harmonious; one within the other; the warrior was also an intellectual, the knight was also a gentleman, the warlord was also a philosopher (Marcus Aurelius). From the standpoint of this book, not only that warfare could be united with being, but that this two are Inseparable.
The existence of a precious thing gives birth to the inner need to protect it.
The stance of the being warrior is an inner stance of a tiger, a tiger in which a fire in burning.
Life of the inner being as a state of warfare
Much of the eastern teachings, in religion and philosophy lean on warfare theory, as writes Frifjof Capra in his book: “The Tao of physics”
“The image of the warrior plays an important role in the spiritual and cultural life of the East. The stage for India’s favourite religious text, the Bhagavad Cita, is a battlefield and martial arts constitute an important part in the traditional cultures of China and Japan. In Japan, the strong influence of Zen on the tradition of the samurai gave rise to what is known as bushido, ‘the way of the warrior’, an art of swordsmanship where the spiritual insight of the swordsman reaches its highest perfection. The Taoist Tai Chi Ch’uan, which was considered to be the supreme martial art in China, combines slow and rhythmical ‘yogic’ movements with the total alertness of the warrior’s mind in a unique way”.
In our day and age, not much is left from the original idea (that connects between a high level of consciousness and way of the warrior). What exists today is in fact a degeneration of the original idea, which relates to ‘awakened man’ – the one that woke up (consciously, and the Enlighted man, the one that his inner being (the soul) is filling the whole of himself, and have reached his brain – as a warrior in the arenas of life.
In everyday life, we, who forgot the inner reality, do everything to perpetuate sleep (and so not to be on guard).
The Indian warriors were sleeping with one eye open, enough for the most little rustle and they will be there. In similarity to this, in a connection to the inner being – the man should be able, any moment to leap.
The combination, or the meeting point, between people connected to their inner being and the condition of culture and society as they are today – is dictating to a person to have a warrior stance. He should stand in the frontier of his life, in order to protect his inner consolation from the societies’ lack of sensitivity.
We all live in a competitive achieving society, in which you either win or lose in the rate race of life. The name of the game is reaching the top and the one who does not know how to struggle, is being thrown to the sides.
And because no one wants to be a loser, we live in a constant power struggle. So, it seems that contrary to that it is reasonable to assume that a person who developed loyalty to the inner, spiritual cods – will adopt an opposite attitude and will abandon the struggle and the stance of a warrior. ButtTo my sorrow, in war like in war; you either kill or get killed, in other words, if you will not know how to defend of that which is in you, you will get defeated. In order for you to be able to defend what is you, you must first of all wake up and recognize what is in you and its value, only from this point you can become a warrior.
To wake up is to turn from a cat to a tiger, the little cat of our emotions needs to evacuate his place of the tiger of the being.
His stance should be the tiger’s stance, otherwise we would be taken over by the vagueness, the comfortability, routine and the stories we continue to tell ourselves.
A person who is connected to his being is a kind of commando warrior of life. He is alert all the time. Ready for what might happen next. An unawake person, who is deep in his own dreams, wakes up only when he gets emotionally hurt or offended.
For a person connected to his being, awareness is towards what is in him; he goes forward looking for clues, and checks: what happens in the emotions? What happens in the nerves? What happens in the stomach?
Out warrior is not aggressive, neither he is regressive, he is assertive. The aggressive is the shark, the regressive is the sardine, and the assertive is the dolphin.
The sardine runs away, the shark attacks, the dolphin stand on his own:
Conclusion; the only field of war is inside, only there can one really win, and if there would be a victory there, then the outside would have to receive it.
“They attack the one man with their hate and their shower of weapons. But he is like some rock which stretches into the vast sea and which, exposed to the fury of the winds
and beaten against by the waves, endures all the violence and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved”
Vergil (B.C. 70-19)
There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy
George Washington (1732-1799)
Gabriel