martyr banter

I see discussion around (example here), and have engaged in it myself, about atheism being or not being a belief, thus its falling into the same category that it denounces. Some (professed atheists) say No, No! Others (mostly christian) say Yes, Yes!

Silly. Why does it even matter. Except to reinforce the intolerance each group has for the other. You might say it is a little bit of spirited fun -- jousting with "the enemy" with great daring of conviction by all. Riding into each other's camp and counting coup. I don't think so. I think folk are deadly serious. Martyrs all.

Besides, everyone knows that it is only us folk, the free-rangers, who are absolutely correct and absolutely incorrect in our incorrect correctness of riding helmet-free!

harakido

In Japan, the arts are called do, the Japanese version of tao, or way. An art that one follows is not just a class that one takes, but is regarded as a way, a path, an opening to the mysteries of life. (Do is pronounced "dough.")

Each do is not something you do, as if it is somewhat removed from the "real" you, but is a way of life. What one learns in the dojo (training hall), one applies in all realms of life, in daily existence.

Though I have trained in some of the martial do's (primarily karatedo and judo) and follow the way of the warrior (budo), my primary practice has been and is harakido. Hara (centering). Ki (universal energy). Do (way or path).

Hara-ki-do: the way of centering while opening to universal energy. Condensing while expanding. At all times. Everywhere. No matter where. No matter what. Centering while opening. All of life is one's training hall.

This practice automatically makes one a cosmic citizen. Sensitive and aware while unmoved. Moving while immovable. Highly energized while calm. The inner infinity and the outer infinity are one.

This is the art I practice. This is my do, my path, my way. Harakido.

no-fault suffering

"Whether one attributes one's feeling vile to others or to oneself -- the Socialist does the former, the Christian, for example, the latter -- makes no essential difference. What is common to both, and unworthy in both, is that someone should be to blame for the fact that one suffers -- in short, that the sufferer prescribes for himself the honey of revenge as a medicine for his suffering . . ."
-- Nietzsche (his italics)

The suffering Nietzsche refers to here is the suffering of the soul, of the psyche, of the mind; the suffering that comes with being alive. He points to two blame scenarios.

Blame Scenario One: I suffer. Someone will pay for this. Someone out there is to blame for my suffering. It is (choose one or more): relatives, republicans, democrats, independents, the Devil, the God, society, capitalism, socialism, theism, pointy-headed intellectuals, the media, technology and its technicians, science and scientists, evolutionists, christians, jews, muslims, hindus, anarchists, radicals, atheists, the dumb bozos of the masses, free trade, global economy, women, men, permissive parenthood, and everyone who is not like me. I will get revenge. I will make them pay. At the least, I will hate them in my heart with every waking breath. Unless I am distracted. But my distraction won't last for long.

Blame Scenario Two: I suffer. Someone will pay for this. Someone is to blame. It is me. I am to blame. I am (choose one or more): weak, evil, stupid, ignorant, incapable, worthless, a duh-head, spineless, deserving of punishment, deserving of scorn, unthinking, blind, heedless, maker of wrong choices, not a good christian, not a good jew, not a good hindu, not a good taoist, not a good muslim, not a good buddhist, not a good citizen, not a good parent, not a good sibling, wavery, hesitant, and just not as good as everyone else. I will get revenge. I will make myself pay. I will hate myself in my heart with every waking breath. And while I sleep too.

Of course, both Blame Scenarios produce suffering, aggravate suffering, escalate suffering. It is like having an earache so you hit yourself in the head with a hammer.

The way out: no-fault suffering. Suffering is life itself unfolding, the continuous birthing of life. Have you ever listened to the birthing of your garden? Those splitting seeds in the cool dark ground gasp and sigh as they unfold into further life.

Life is suffering. So what? Get on with it. No fault. No blame.

"playing ball on running water"

Amongst humans, there are those who place and keep their faith in conventional and traditional cogno-emotive systems, such as the idea of "normality" or one of the many religions (including "secular humanism"). Then there are those who step outside all systems, placing no faith in human structure, always going beyond. Chaos is their muse: the ever-changing unpredictable boundless.

The first group looks to reduce everything to the comfortable and the familiar. The second looks to implode the familiar, revealing the new, the unexpected, the strange. The first finds security in giving up the search; the second finds security in insecurity.

equal and opposite reaction

Now that Man has condensed himself into an individual, exploiting or ignoring all "other" energies of the cosmos, he must burst open as a seed, birthing scarce foreseen newness.

the meek

In the preceding post, by "meek" I mean the stuporous (whether by choice or by default). Remember I speak of states of consciousness here.

Those who are willfully stuporous continue choosing to live in stupor because it is advantageous to their greed and hostility (greed: wanting what one does not have; hostility: not wanting what one does have; antidotes: generosity and lovingkindness).

Those who are stuporous by default never allow themselves to think outside conventional realms; are entranced by the superficial, by the cosmetic face. It does not "dawn" on them that there is anything different than what society presents.

The stuporous are meek because they do not dare; have no daring to move beyond the consciousness currently destroying the earth and its many species, including the one called human. But this consciousness change of which I speak is no Save The Whales phenomenon. It's much vaster in scope than that.

The meek are not warriors, but are predators (stupor via will) or zombies (stupor by default).

Evolution is ruthless. What does not make the shift goes down the drain. We are moving toward integral consciousness now, toward coherence. Meek consciousness, by definition, will never open to cosmic citizenry. It takes a warrior.

fire

I resonate deeply to these quotes from Nietzsche. If you interpret them as referring to the physical plane, you are way off the mark. He is referring to those moving into coherence, the next phase of human consciousness.

If you cannot be saints of knowledge, at least be its warriors. They are the companions and the forerunners of such sainthood.

I see many soldiers: would that I saw many warriors. 'Uniform' one calls what they wear: would that what they thus conceal were not uni-form.

Not to work do I call you but to combat. I call you not to peace but to victory. May your work be a fight, may your peace be a victory. War and courage have accomplished more things than love of one's neighbor. It was not your pity but your courage that so far saved the luckless.

Nietzsche's words remind me of these by Jesus:
I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!

We are undergoing a change of consciousness. What was once dismissed as "mystical" is becoming ordinary consciousness. The human species has already moved through four identifiable consciousness structures: archaic, magic, mythical, mental. Now we are opening into integral, which I call coherence.

Only those who are warriors can open and are opening to coherence, can assume their place as citizens of the cosmos. The sheep and the mild and the meek are being left behind, through rigidity and timidity. The maxim still rings true: Let the dead bury the dead!

The Marines have a battle cry: Gung Ho! Everything is thrown into the action, nothing held back. It is no less true for the Spiritual Marine, the Warrior of Spirit.

ronin

Walking in solitude,
weeping my lot,
I take the roads that come,
telling my urgent longings to my only one,
through whom the blessings of my soul increase.
--Garcilaso
(Quoted in
The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross)

Though this could be interpreted as "sad" or as "lonely," it is not so. Nor is "my only one" a human lover. This is the expression of one who walks with God, whose heart and soul are open, vulnerable to the "only one, through whom the blessings of (his) soul increase." Like Enoch of old, he "walks with God and is no more." God, in this case, is not a figment nor an image, but a living breathing reality, the cosmos itself which births us all and which we enliven in return.

In taking "the roads that come," the roads of the cosmos, not the societal highways walked only through rigid corpse-like convention, the ronin is infinitely malleable, shaped through merge with the will and flowing energy of the cosmos itself.

knight, death, and the devil: albrecht durer (1513)

"Riding steadfastly through a dark Nordic gorge, Dürer's knight rides past Death on a Pale Horse, who holds out an hourglass as a reminder of life's brevity, and is followed closely behind by a pig-snouted Devil. As the embodiment of moral virtue, the rider—modeled on the tradition of heroic equestrian portraits with which Dürer was familiar from Italy—is undistracted and true to his mission."

Warrior of Spirit.