The Path of the (Woman) Warrior
I am going to talk about what it means to be a warrior in the context of meditation and choosing the path of compassion and self-love.
What do you see in your mind when I say the word “Warrior”? Did you see a man or a woman?
When I envision a warrior, I first see a person that has been in combat. A person that may be bloodied, beaten, a person who has seen violent things. My mind also envisions a male first and a female second. I see these as conditions of the society I was raised in, influenced from family and culture. Men stronger than women. Men the warriors.
As I work to unpack that a bit more, I find that these stories are deeply embedded from my childhood; prince and princess stories like Cinderella, Snow White, ... Gilligan's Island (Maryann, Ginger and Mrs. Howell were far from warriors/savers of the day in far too many episodes). As a child of the 70’s I grew up in a time where things had started shifting for women but not fast enough for me to truly believe that women could be warriors. Sure, there was Wonder Woman, Isis (the TV show from 1975-1976- “Oh Mighty Isis”) and at times Mrs. Brady could be called a warrior (6 KIDS, an architect husband and a maid/live-in nanny, that was a lot to juggle), AND where was I in that? Was I a drop dead gorgeous brunette, like Wonder Woman with a curvy figure, size D breasts and a golden lasso? Nope, not even near it. What I was was an extroverted, flat chested tween with early surging hormones that needed guidance and direction from some warrior women who could teach me self-love.
See, I thought love was not something that I could give myself. All around me I saw women being loved by men. Women being completed by men and searching for love to fulfill them. Songs about it, movies about it, again the 70’s, The Bee Gees, “If I can’t have you I don’t want nobody baby…” and the lyrics to Emotion “But if you don't come back
Come home to me, darling. You know that there'll be nobody left in this world to hold me tight. Nobody left in this world to kiss goodnight”. Fear grew deep inside of me. I would be alone! I would never be loved!
The idea of the Buddhist warrior, of self-love and compassion (the person who you yourself already are), is a person who, in the words of Pema Chodron is; “totally open, touched by anything, daring, fearless. Someone who works with difficulties in an openhearted, humorous way.” When someone cultivates her bravery, people respond...we know we can do that too. To have this example, of cultivating warriorship with clarity and a gentle heart, was an idea that was so foreign to me growing up.
In other cultures there are rights of passage that people go through. A ceremony for youth who are coming of age. In America, this is typically done through religion or using A religion as the framework for the ceremony. Somes examples are: in the Jewish tradition, a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, in the Catholic Latinex tradition, La Quinceanera. Both, for part of the passage, are held in a building of worship, a synagogue or in a church. Today, not everyone in America gets this. Being part Latina and part of Irish/German decent, I didn’t receive it. It depended on your upbringing, the religious or cultural beliefs of your family. Your life could be, up to now, without a formal right of passage into adulthood.
Yet, the Buddha calls on the warrior in all of us, wherever you are in your life and whatever you received as a child. Whatever your conditioning was, and whether you were formally introduced into society as an adult or not, YOU ARE HERE and welcome to your adult life. And (HEY - SURPRISE!) this life IS filled with suffering (the First Noble Truth) because of our attachment (the Second Noble Truth) AND the cessation of suffering is attainable (the Third Noble Truth). In the present moment, as Pema says, “we can realize that the ground is to develop loving-kindness towards ourselves.” THAT is our practice through zazen. We get the opportunity to cultivate our warrior, this basic aliveness and goodness, this Buddha that resides in all of us. The love that my teen to 20-something-self thought was outside of me, I find that all along I AM that love and through zazen, through the practice and this path, I create this place where I see everything that arises. I get to love and nurture each and every piece of myself. When we sit in zazen we nurture our courage, nurture our confidence, nurture our playfulness, nurture our strength, nurture our resilience, nurture our dependability, nurture our innocence. We nurture these as if we were given a ceremony of passage into adulthood or given what we needed by our parent or the person that raised us. WE can be that person. And then we sit with ALL the pieces, the parts that we may want to push away and the parts that we wish to hold on to and keep reliving, we see those pieces through the eyes of the warrior, through basic goodness. As one of the great teachers here, Bussho says, “I see you, sweetie.” We see our anger, we see our fear, we see our insecurity, we see our anxiety. We let them in. We feel the sensations in our body we stay with it because we are the warrior.
In Zen, our focus is zazen (daily life practice). The instructions for zazen by Koun Franz and edited by Bussho Lahn say, “We are the Buddha’s robe. The robe manifests the shape of a Buddha. Even if there is no robe, just wear it.” We come to each moment in our life and to our cushion as Buddha, as the warrior, going forth into the unknown to meet whatever arises. This means moments of conflict, moments that you might wish to recoil, moments you would rather turn away from and not say anything. But the warrior, she stands up to conflict, she meets this wearing the Buddha’s robe. Just wear it. It is yours when you come to zazen. Each and every time.
The instructions to zazen continue...“Remember that this body is the Buddha’s body. Do not harm it. Also, do not underestimate it.” How many harmful things do we say to ourselves in our mind on a regular basis? How many times have you looked into the mirror and said something not so nice about your appearance, about your character, about the should-of, would-of, could-ofs of your life? “Remember this is Buddha’s body…” why would you harm it with the words in your head? Sometimes the things we say to ourselves our more horrible than the words we would say to anyone else….”do not harm it.”
“Also, do not underestimate it.” You are the warrior, goodness and aliveness. The body tells us things. In zazen we listen with an open and compassionate ear. We are present and available to the sensations that arise. We breath, we feel, we have a distracting thought and we return to the body. That is the practice. That is the path. The Fourth Noble Truth...there is a path to enlightenment that can be reached by leading a balanced life, a life of goodness and aliveness. The way to the 8-fold path is ZEN.
8 Fold Path-
Right view
Right intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
In our Soto Zen practice (Mahayana Buddhism) we vow to embody the ideal of the Bodhisattva, whose vow is to alleviate all beings from suffering. We recite this every time we sit when we chant the “The Four Bodhisattva Vows”. The very first vow says,
Beings are numberless; vowing to free them.
Our vow is one of compassion and loving-kindness, not only for ourselves but for every one of the numberless of beings on this planet and beyond! In order to do this we return to the practice of being with everything, creating intimacy with the warrior and, as teacher Ben Connelly states in his book Mindfulness and Intimacy, “a life of intimate engagement.” Because the truth is that we are not separate. When I was young, continuing to look outside myself for someone to complete me, for someone to love me, did not alleviate my suffering. No, it only caused confusion, angst, and a desire for things to be different. Buddhist teachings tell us that we are NOT separate. We are interconnected. I love the image that was given to me years ago (I can’t remember from who or where)... an image of a woven blanket, and each one of us, a thread in that blanket. If one thread is removed, it affects the other, it affects the weave, it affects the function and use of the blanket. I used to visualize those white, cotton hospital blankets that my mom had when I was a child and would lay on me in the summer when I was ill. They were extremely soft, warm and yet cool and light. In the hospital, they warm them and lay them on you when you are cold. I have always had cold feet and I can see myself wrapping my feet in that white, cotton blanket at many points in my life and I can see all the threads in that blanket, how they were connected.
What we do in this moment has an affect. We never actually know all the consequences of our actions. Some we can see immediately, and some it may take years to see. Some we may never see in our lifetime. Living a life in compassion and loving-kindness, in basic goodness and aliveness, in intimacy with ourselves and others is the path of the the Warrior. It is a path that is available to us all.
I’d like to end with a paragraph written by Dainin Katagiri Roshi that was used in one of the Sitting with the Sutra classes I took here at MZMC some years ago.
“What a mystery a “human” is!
As to this mystery:
Clarifying,
Knowing how to live,
Knowing how to talk with people,
Demonstrating and teaching,
This is the Buddha.
From my human eyes,
I feel it’s really impossible to become Buddha.
But this “I”, regarding what the Buddha does,
Vows to practice,
To aspire,
To be resolute,
And tells myself, “Yes, I will.”
Just practice right here now,
And achieve continuity,
Endlessly,
Forever.
This is the living vow.
Herein is one’s peaceful life found.”