Spiritual warrior
Encyclopedia
A spiritual warrior is a person who bravely battles with the universal enemy, self-ignorance (avidya
), the ultimate source of suffering according to dharmic philosophies. The term is applied in religious and metaphysical
writing. There are self-described spiritual warriors. The spiritual warrior can be described as an archetype
character on a journey of self-discovery
to benefit others. Different from other paths, which focus on individual salvation
, the spiritual warrior's only complete and right practice is that which compassionately helps other beings with wisdom. This is the Bodhisattva
ideal (the "Buddha
-in-waiting"), the spiritual warrior who resolves to attain buddhahood in order to liberate others.
elaborates a history of the world in which the Buddha’s monk
s and nuns, and the warrior caste from which the Buddha came, are superior to brahmins, who where known for class discrimination. The Buddha’s Shakyan clan context was for warrior-like assembly for brahmins-bashing at that time.
The Shakyans maybe considered a warrior-dominated republic
an federation, called the "sangha
", with an aristocratic democratic tradition comparable to the Greeks
. The Buddha's father was the Speaker of their Congress. In the Buddha's day, this government system was being culturally displaced by the brahminic caste
and their religious ideology
. Spreading imperial monarchies were destroying the Shakyans with their military power.
The Buddha pioneered the establishment of democratic procedures for the monastic sangha, such as regular meetings with secret ballot
s, subcommittees and minority group
rights to schism
. He attempted to preserve his Shakyan clan's tradition, which was ideal for human liberation achievement. In the Agganna, the Buddha says that the monks and nuns have become "children of the Shakyans", the Enlightened One's sons and daughters, and children of the truth. The monastic Sangha was a spiritual warriors society, within a historic conflict of the brahmins struggle. They were heirs to the Buddha's warrior caste’s aristocratic virtues which are related democratic progress.
teaches the way of the spiritual warrior. In 1976, Trungpa established the Shambhala Training program on spiritual warrior-ship grounded in sitting meditation practice. The Sacred Path of the Warrior is Trungpa's book which embodies the practice.
The spiritual warrior archetype helps to constructively answer questions about aggression and competition with a healthy direction. Unlike the soldier character, the spiritual warrior is in touch with the joy, the sadness, the expansiveness in their heart; able to share and give it to others. The warrior knows about death and seizes the day. They have learned to let go with forgiveness and avoids chasing others in revenge. The warrior commits to growing the heart and soul in becoming a creative being. The warrior serves in love of strangers and gives generously while giving to themselves. The spiritual warrior seeks to change others with rational and compassionate decision-making in service of a higher goal.
an monastic rule derived from a feudal warrior clan society, which was transformed into a spiritual warrior society. While the rest of the world followed feudalistic warrior development during the medieval period throughout Europe and Asia, Tibet uniquely established Lamaism. This was centered around a Buddhist social revolution originating distinctly from India's Hinduism
and finding root in Tibet. The Lama (teacher) is a living Buddha for Tibetans who provides a powerful bridge between real and imaginary conciseness worlds, where the self is methodically dissolved into the whole's benefit by tantra practice.
Tibetans imported this order to help change their society to one based on education, social welfare, peaceful progress, with a self renouncing monastic class of rulers. The monastic sanga (community) were supported and organized like a military; however, they were set on a self-discovery yogic mission for reconnaissance to perfect and develop methods in eliminating ego suffering.
Tibetan Buddhists advanced a form of non-hereditary succession of title and land based on reincarnation
, which presented living proof that their methods succeeded by extraordinary means. It also ensured that young leaders were well-trained in the monastic cannon and it avoided deadly heir feuds seen in the heritable practices within feudalism
. Tibetan monastics eschewed materialistic and economic progress for want of virtual visualizations. Monastic warriors were focused on accepting and perpetuating life in contrast to defending or attacking it.
In a highly celebrated and unique victory, Tibetan monastic warriors overcame the native Bon practices which then encompassed services for all of life's needs (birth, marriage, healthcare, death and spirit exorcism
) by incorporating them into their own practices. New Buddhist spiritual technology was integrated with the existing Bon methods, as contrasted with oppression methods seen in other warrior techniques. Transformation and re-purposing of military-warrior symbolism and strategy into new codified tactics within Buddhist practice was a recurring metaphor
ical theme.
The society flourished to produce one of the best assemblies of peaceful enlightened self-knowledge known to human kind. When modern Chinese communist military economic industrial forces swept into dismantle and uproot it based on monarchic upheaval, this caused a spread of the seeds of this spiritual warrior way throughout the rest of world, which are now taking root in new democratic forms. Displaced Tibetans remain loyal to their exiled leaders and lineage of teachers.
is a book by Matthew Bortolin
. The book is a primer for basic Buddhist philosophy with an analysis of the fictional Jedi warriors in the Star Wars
saga set within the context of their spiritual conflict with the dark side
. The author also examines the Zen Buddhist concepts of suffering, mindfulness and karma in the context of the film. For example, the author compares nirvana
to "The Force" by clarifying that nirvana is "the very absence of ideas and conceptualization." Jedi meditation examples are described as a parallel Buddhist discipline where Jedi knights "get in touch with reality as it truly is," by observing their minds with calm compassion and wisdom for the present moment. Bortolin provides the reader with humorous pop culture analogues to timeless wisdom about a spiritual warrior's monomyth
ic journey.
Avidya (Buddhism)
Avidyā or avijjā means "ignorance" or "delusion" and is the opposite of 'vidyā' and 'rig pa'...
), the ultimate source of suffering according to dharmic philosophies. The term is applied in religious and metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
writing. There are self-described spiritual warriors. The spiritual warrior can be described as an archetype
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
character on a journey of self-discovery
Journey of self-discovery
The term "journey of self-discovery" refers to a travel, pilgrimage, or series of events whereby a person attempts to determine how they feel, personally, about spiritual issues...
to benefit others. Different from other paths, which focus on individual salvation
Salvation
Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or...
, the spiritual warrior's only complete and right practice is that which compassionately helps other beings with wisdom. This is the Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva
In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is either an enlightened existence or an enlightenment-being or, given the variant Sanskrit spelling satva rather than sattva, "heroic-minded one for enlightenment ." The Pali term has sometimes been translated as "wisdom-being," although in modern publications, and...
ideal (the "Buddha
Buddha
In Buddhism, buddhahood is the state of perfect enlightenment attained by a buddha .In Buddhism, the term buddha usually refers to one who has become enlightened...
-in-waiting"), the spiritual warrior who resolves to attain buddhahood in order to liberate others.
Shakyamuni Buddha
The Agganna SuttaAggañña Sutta
Aggañña Sutta is the 27th Sutta of Digha Nikaya collections. The sutta describes a discourse imparted from the Buddha to two brahmins, Bharadvaja and Vasettha, who left their family and caste to become monks. The two brahmins are insulted and maligned by their own caste for their intention to...
elaborates a history of the world in which the Buddha’s monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
s and nuns, and the warrior caste from which the Buddha came, are superior to brahmins, who where known for class discrimination. The Buddha’s Shakyan clan context was for warrior-like assembly for brahmins-bashing at that time.
The Shakyans maybe considered a warrior-dominated republic
Republic
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of...
an federation, called the "sangha
Sangha
Sangha is a word in Pali or Sanskrit that can be translated roughly as "association" or "assembly," "company" or "community" with common goal, vision or purpose...
", with an aristocratic democratic tradition comparable to the Greeks
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
. The Buddha's father was the Speaker of their Congress. In the Buddha's day, this government system was being culturally displaced by the brahminic caste
Caste
Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
and their religious ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
. Spreading imperial monarchies were destroying the Shakyans with their military power.
The Buddha pioneered the establishment of democratic procedures for the monastic sangha, such as regular meetings with secret ballot
Secret ballot
The secret ballot is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous. The key aim is to ensure the voter records a sincere choice by forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery. The system is one means of achieving the goal of...
s, subcommittees and minority group
Minority group
A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...
rights to schism
Schism
- Religion :* Schism , a division or a split, usually between people belonging to an organization or movement, most frequently applied to a break of communion between two sections of Christianity that were previously a single body...
. He attempted to preserve his Shakyan clan's tradition, which was ideal for human liberation achievement. In the Agganna, the Buddha says that the monks and nuns have become "children of the Shakyans", the Enlightened One's sons and daughters, and children of the truth. The monastic Sangha was a spiritual warriors society, within a historic conflict of the brahmins struggle. They were heirs to the Buddha's warrior caste’s aristocratic virtues which are related democratic progress.
Trungpa's way
Chogyam TrungpaChögyam Trungpa
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the eleventh Trungpa tülku, a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of a radical re-presentation of Shambhala vision.Recognized...
teaches the way of the spiritual warrior. In 1976, Trungpa established the Shambhala Training program on spiritual warrior-ship grounded in sitting meditation practice. The Sacred Path of the Warrior is Trungpa's book which embodies the practice.
The spiritual warrior archetype helps to constructively answer questions about aggression and competition with a healthy direction. Unlike the soldier character, the spiritual warrior is in touch with the joy, the sadness, the expansiveness in their heart; able to share and give it to others. The warrior knows about death and seizes the day. They have learned to let go with forgiveness and avoids chasing others in revenge. The warrior commits to growing the heart and soul in becoming a creative being. The warrior serves in love of strangers and gives generously while giving to themselves. The spiritual warrior seeks to change others with rational and compassionate decision-making in service of a higher goal.
Tibetan origins
TibetTibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
an monastic rule derived from a feudal warrior clan society, which was transformed into a spiritual warrior society. While the rest of the world followed feudalistic warrior development during the medieval period throughout Europe and Asia, Tibet uniquely established Lamaism. This was centered around a Buddhist social revolution originating distinctly from India's Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
and finding root in Tibet. The Lama (teacher) is a living Buddha for Tibetans who provides a powerful bridge between real and imaginary conciseness worlds, where the self is methodically dissolved into the whole's benefit by tantra practice.
Tibetans imported this order to help change their society to one based on education, social welfare, peaceful progress, with a self renouncing monastic class of rulers. The monastic sanga (community) were supported and organized like a military; however, they were set on a self-discovery yogic mission for reconnaissance to perfect and develop methods in eliminating ego suffering.
Tibetan Buddhists advanced a form of non-hereditary succession of title and land based on reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
, which presented living proof that their methods succeeded by extraordinary means. It also ensured that young leaders were well-trained in the monastic cannon and it avoided deadly heir feuds seen in the heritable practices within feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
. Tibetan monastics eschewed materialistic and economic progress for want of virtual visualizations. Monastic warriors were focused on accepting and perpetuating life in contrast to defending or attacking it.
In a highly celebrated and unique victory, Tibetan monastic warriors overcame the native Bon practices which then encompassed services for all of life's needs (birth, marriage, healthcare, death and spirit exorcism
Exorcism
Exorcism is the religious practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or place which they are believed to have possessed...
) by incorporating them into their own practices. New Buddhist spiritual technology was integrated with the existing Bon methods, as contrasted with oppression methods seen in other warrior techniques. Transformation and re-purposing of military-warrior symbolism and strategy into new codified tactics within Buddhist practice was a recurring metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
ical theme.
The society flourished to produce one of the best assemblies of peaceful enlightened self-knowledge known to human kind. When modern Chinese communist military economic industrial forces swept into dismantle and uproot it based on monarchic upheaval, this caused a spread of the seeds of this spiritual warrior way throughout the rest of world, which are now taking root in new democratic forms. Displaced Tibetans remain loyal to their exiled leaders and lineage of teachers.
The Dharma of Star Wars
The Dharma of Star WarsThe Dharma of Star Wars
The Dharma of Star Wars is a book by Matthew Bortolin. The book is a primer for basic Buddhist philosophy using the fictional characters and events of the Star Wars saga to explicate the Buddha's teachings....
is a book by Matthew Bortolin
Matthew Bortolin
Matthew Bortolin is the author of The Dharma of Star Wars, a book that serves as an introduction to Buddhist philosophy using the fictional characters and events of the Star Wars saga to explicate the Buddha's teachings.- External links :* *...
. The book is a primer for basic Buddhist philosophy with an analysis of the fictional Jedi warriors in the Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
saga set within the context of their spiritual conflict with the dark side
Dark side (Star Wars)
The dark side of the Force is a prominent moral, philosophical, and psychic concept in the Star Wars universe. It is introduced in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and appears in all subsequent Star Wars fiction...
. The author also examines the Zen Buddhist concepts of suffering, mindfulness and karma in the context of the film. For example, the author compares nirvana
Nirvana
Nirvāṇa ; ) is a central concept in Indian religions. In sramanic thought, it is the state of being free from suffering. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme being through moksha...
to "The Force" by clarifying that nirvana is "the very absence of ideas and conceptualization." Jedi meditation examples are described as a parallel Buddhist discipline where Jedi knights "get in touch with reality as it truly is," by observing their minds with calm compassion and wisdom for the present moment. Bortolin provides the reader with humorous pop culture analogues to timeless wisdom about a spiritual warrior's monomyth
Monomyth
Joseph Campbell's term monomyth, also referred to as the hero's journey, is a basic pattern that its proponents argue is found in many narratives from around the world. This widely distributed pattern was described by Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces...
ic journey.
Further reading
- "Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior" by Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala, March 12, 1988, ISBN 0877732647
- "The Spiritual Warrior: An Interdimensional Technique Manual" by Shakura Rei, Rodney Charles, Sunstar Publishing Ltd., August 1, 1998, ISBN 188747228
- "Spiritual Warrior: The Art of Spiritual Living" by John-Roger, Mandeville Press, December 1, 1997, ISBN 091482936X
- "Everyday Enlightenment: How to Be a Spiritual Warrior at the Kitchen Sink" by Venerable Yeshe Chodron, Harper Collins Publishers PTY Limited, September 1, 2006, ISBN 0732276071