‘Immortality has to be earned’

One of the myths of living in the twenty first century is that we can strive less and less, to obtain more and more. The factories built by our forefathers spawned this expectation. But there are many fruits of labour and only one is the comfortable life styles that accompany industrialisation. Another is spiritual fulfilment as a human being, involving a strenuous process of self development, unaided by quick fixes.

The industrialised society has brought people from the fields and housed them in cities where they are fed, entertained and provided with work. In a profane society, this is the deal. There is nothing else we are told, and yet when humans are presented with the bleakness of city life, they tend to aspire to the sacred, non-tangible and unobtainable.

The wrapper on a pack of butter boasts a picture of a rural idyll, the horn of cornucopia from which all goodness flows. In the background is a snow capped mountain, the place we might dream where we can find some sort of spiritual cornucopia as well.

But ascending spiritual mountains is not for the faint hearted. Stories of spiritual aspirants abound in all cultures and they usually go one of three ways. Either they become ascetic and turn to skin and bones, or they indulge and become addicted to luxury, or they find a central way – what Guatama Buddha called ‘the Middle Way’. Whichever track you are start, it is a commitment to struggle every minute of the day. Like the ‘dead man’s handle’ on a train, when pressure is released the journey comes to a sudden halt.

picture credit alamy.com

The individual on a spiritual path is perilously under constant threat of rolling backwards, should they falter in their attention. They therefore need the concentration of a cat watching a mouse hole.

The path of a soldier is something few get the opportunity to experience and perhaps few would want to. The price of failure for warriors is extinction by either bad luck, bad planning or an invincible enemy. The click of a twig in a wood at night, the faint glow of a cigarette or a moment of inattention might trigger what they call, shock and awe.

Soldiers sign up to take such fatal risks. They train constantly to achieve a high level of physical and psychological advantage over their foes. Soldiers can stand still on parade for extended periods because they are centred in their attention, not their dreams. They are standing to ‘attention’, that is alert.

This level of concentration is also fundamental for those on any spiritual path. The difference is that the spiritual strive to attain an inner peace, not an outer war. They do this by mounting an ‘inner war’ – the true meaning of ‘jihad’.

In Japan and China there have long been traditions of ‘warrior monks’ who use martial training to hone their spiritual and warrior skills. There is no contradiction because being at peace and being at war are just two extremes of the same experience. The experience of total concentration and control manifests as being centred in one place and in this moment transcendence can take over. The archer hits the bulls eye with the eyes closed – read ‘Zen and the Art of Archery’.

When our emotional, physical and psychological states experience synchronicity, we approach the highest state of being and it approaches us with even greater clarity.

Every second of every day, a martial artist is fully aware, even in sleep. Senses become heightened to the degree that even an ant walking on the path of a warrior is circuited and blessed with a prayer. By occupying the space in the ‘centre of the storm’, the peaceful warrior is immutable.

There is a story of a Zen monk sitting in a tall building in Japan as an earth quake shakes the city. The other people in the room run for the door in a state of high panic. Their instincts and emotions have taken control of their actions. The monk however continues to sit motionless. For him the danger and panic are states that will pass. For the other people the danger is something to be countered as best they are able, carried along in a state of uncontrolled terror.

If the building was about to collapse, they would all die, including the monk, but who would have died with the dignity of being in perfect control?

With this example we can see that life is not about achieving old age, or how sociable you have been. Animal families do this and in most cases do it better.

Although gifted with extraordinary skills, animals thrive through good fortune and persistence in acquiring food, a mate and a place to sleep. Being concentrated on these becomes their fatal flaw. Habitual actions that are learnt and used by their predators to trap them. If you have learnt to fly, the spider is already spinning her web for you.

In Zen and many martial arts, there are higher levels of skill than physical prowess. The skill of the Zen master or Sensei in a Dojo, is to out think the thinker, to perform a challenge that is outside the normal. The patterns which ordinary humans follow are the traps which spiritual teachers use to shift consciousness.

This is the mechanism of the Koan which poses an impossible question. To the casual mind, a question begs an answer. That is the way the intellect has been trained. That is the sticky web. This is how it feels…

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

In peace and in war, success demands we take the path ‘least expected’. It may make us look foolish or in other ways, unwise. Gaining criticism causes much the same inner confusion as gaining praise. Thinking and moving or not-thinking and not-moving should be juggled at the highest strategic level. The guidance of the peaceful warrior comes from possibilities and opportunities which may or may not, reveal paradise in the distant future. Infinite possibles are considered and assessed simultaneously, as in the warriors game of multi-dimensional chess.

The two most important spiritual ‘powers’ (in the language of the superhero gods and goddesses) are the ‘iron grip’ and ‘unpredictability’. The earth is the perfect environment for a training ground for these qualities. For after death the soul needs both in as large a dose as possible to survive the experience in continuity between a life lived on earth and the afterlife. Without a physical body our invincible hold on our intention becomes the means of giving direction to our Soul, the eternal centre of our consciousness.

By being unpredictable in this world we give ourselves the means to counter the traps that await us…the traps that are described in such accounts as ‘Pilgrims Progress’ by John Bunyon. We must ready ourselves to be a joker, an iron man…all of those super heroes that haunt the popular comic books and the imagination of the young warriors about to engage in the eternal, yet ultimately, peaceful war.