Essays From The Master

Being a warrior is about accepting responsibility for one’s self, one’s actions and for one’s missions and the results of one’s actions. To be an effective warrior one must be aware of what one can do as to causing or repairing harm; the warrior first learns to repair harm to themselves and then to others. In martial arts often one reads of the foe or the enemy and it is a simple if general idea but it can be misleading. To have an enemy or a foe a warrior must have a personal or emotional investment in dealing with that individual. Attachments personal or emotional cloud judgment and make the warrior open to being attacked, making the warrior less effective. Martial action is a tactic, a tool to be used when it is needed to get the job done. The job or the mission in modern times is most often self protection so actual martial action is not always the tool needed. Indeed for self protection awareness of threat, awareness of one’s weaknesses along with taking steps to negate them can do more for the warrior than overt martial action can. Nations can afford to have foes and enemies but for a warrior to declare a person such is to create a weakness in the warrior.

Aggressive action can be useful; it serves a purpose allowing one to act out one’s logic by negating disharmony. Anger on the other hand slows the body by making the body tense and poisons it by releasing toxins into the body. Hatred is a step beyond anger and is far more dangerous to the one that harbors it than it is to the one or ones that it is directed at. Others do not feel a feeling directed at them so it does no good to harbor a feeling like hatred; one should feel and release it, admit it and move on. Others can pick up on the effect of harboring hatred on the person that has said hatred, so that having hatred robs a warrior of the stealth needed to do his task. This can easily be seen in animals often picking up on those that would harm them and those that would not. Anger and hatred reflect personal feeling and sensibility they are not an awareness of threat, indeed things that anger a person say more about the angry person than it does about the person or thing that angers them. Anger and hatred happen and no warrior should deny them it is what the warrior does with them that matters. Anger and hate can be alerts to a weakness that must be admitted to, understood and overcome making weakness a door to strength or ugliness transformed into beauty through power.

By setting aside anger and hate the warrior is able to do what it takes to reach the goal with predatory ruthlessness and resolve. Without the desire to harm if no one attacks the warrior the warrior need not attack and other options as to achieving the warrior’s goal will emerge. It has been claimed by some that the rights of others stop where they intersect with the feelings of others; this is a way of avoiding responsibility for what one feels and how one allows it to affect them. When anger and hatred are set aside the energy that goes into the attachment and ego they represent is freed to flow into more thought, creativity and better performance as a warrior and as a sentient being. Anger and hate are passion turned against the one that feels said passion, the same energy when released can be used to fuel the will of the warrior toward his goal. I do not speak of the warrior being passive or “peaceful” rather I speak of using fuel where it would do the most good.