Warriorship (2007) by Joshin Althouse Roshi

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

We can never say that we are simply falling to pieces or that anyone else is, and we can never say that about the world either."

Chogyam Trungpa

When speaking of heros, we have every right to be cynical. The heroes we idolize, such as Rambo or John Wayne help perpetuate the illusion of our innocence. Real soldiers have lost any trace of innocence, so they often feel alienated and disoriented upon returning to the homeland they fought and risked their lives to protect.

Perhaps it would help if we could appreciate heroes in the context of warriorship. Such traditions are common in many traditional cultures; they are also common in Mahayana Buddhism, of which Zen is a part. In Zen we speak of such a warrior as a Bodhisattva which means "one with an awakened heart". Such Bodhisattva warriors have forged their sanity and generosity out of the crucible of their own misery and suffering. They have descended to confront their own fear and aggression. They emerge from this descent with an unconditional commitment to liberate and heal the suffering of all beings.

Zen training begins with a descent, touching what Chogyam Trungpa ofted referred to as our "sad and tender heart". This is spiritual work that requires rigor, discipline and commitment. It is done on a meditation cushion in the life of the Sangha community. Awareness of our own vulnerability is humbling but through such practice we learn, slowly to emerge from our darkness into the light of day with more openness, humor, inspiration and fearlessness. Until we have fully descended in this manner, any ascent is premature.

This is how we activate the inner warrior and take the enormous and heroic step or orienting our lives towards the liberation of all beings. The qualities displayed by Bodhisattvas are truly inspiring for those around them. A high degree of personal mastery and moral integrity is evident, along with generosity, fearlessness and loyalty. Bodhisattvas discover enormous resources within themselves. The world is workable. Obstacles are further opportunities for spiritual practice. They are brave because they have faced their own fears and have no need to project them onto others. They nurture and support life and their sanity is never on display or inflated with a sense of self-importance.

We are always in need of Bodhisattva warriors. This is why the traditions of warriorship are so sacred in other cultures. Such cultures had extensive rituals and rites of passage for transforming soldiers into warriors. We have very few of these rites of passage left in our culture. And what we see are the broken young men and women returning from war, many unable to find their way back home, in a civilian culture that is strange and foreign to them.

We spend enormous resources recruiting and sending them off to war, and almost none helping them once they return. Since we have little awareness of the importance of warriorship, our soldiers remain stuck in a dark, private world of war and violence that often manifests as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

In "War and the Soul", Edward Tick, a psychologist who has worked with veterans for several decades claims that PTSD is an identity disorder. He has found that many of the medications and treatments offered to veterans are of little help because they don't address the root cause of the problem. He suggests, that PTSD may not have been so prevalent in other cultures because they had rituals to integrate soldiers back into their society with new identities as warriors.

But modern war has increasingly made it more difficult to maintain such warrior traditions. Warriorship must be directed towards transcendent goals. When nations enter into war on false pretenses, a moral vacuum is created. Is it surprising that soldiers find it difficult to enter into battle whole heartedly? When the enemy is de-humanized, atrocities such as Mai Lai and Abu Ghraib happen. How can a warrior tradition survive in such a context, where modern technologies have depersonalized war making it possible to kill on a massive scale?

Japan had a samurai warrior tradition that reflected qualities of fearlessness, mastery and loyalty. So it is instructive to appreciate how this tradition was distorted by technologies of modern warfare and a strident nationalism. The Chinese were de-humanized by the Japanese and the brutal training that Japanese soldiers received helped to de-humanize them as well. As Japanese soldiers marched from Shanghai to Nanking in 1937 some of them sent reports back to their home towns of their sportsman-like competition to see who could behead the most Chinese. Once the Japanese reached Nanking, and overtook that city, they performed horrific acts of torture, rape and mass murder on innocent Chinese civilians. These actions hardly reflected the nobility of the samurai tradition.

The soul knows the difference between soldier and civilian. Because mass war does not easily distinguish the two, soldiers incur not only physical wounds, but spiritual wounds as well. If PTSD is an identity disorder, it may also well be a loss of soul. Edward Tick says "Ancient peoples and traditional societies recognized soul wounding and soul loss, as authentic conditions. Their shamans and spiritual leaders practiced many forms of soul healing and retrieval."

Whether we are a military veteran or civilian, Zen offers a spiritual training as rigorous as any military boot camp that awakens and activates the self mastery of warriorship. It is a path of descent and return. As shown in the tenth ox herding picture, the Bodhisattva returns to the market place with gift bestowing hands. His unconditional vow to contribute to the well being of all beings guides him step by step, and can guide us too. This is an old and ancient tradition, yet it is still up-to-date in our troubled times. As Lao Tso said, "Stay with the ancient. Move with the present."