Four Dignities of the Warrior's Path
Courtesy of Rob Brezny:
"In Tibetan Buddhism's "Four Dignities of the Warrior's Path," courage and ferocity are absent. In fact, the qualities regarded as essential have nothing in common with the training regimens of football players or Marines or lobbyists.
The first dignity is literally translated in English as meekness, but that word doesn't convey its full meaning. "Relaxed confidence" is a more precise formulation. A humble feeling of being at home in one's body.
Perkiness, or hard-earned, unabashed joy, is the second dignity. To develop it, the warrior diligently drives out the self-indulgence of cynicism.
The third is outrageousness. It combines a delight in daring experiments with a passionate objectivity that is free of both hope and fear.
The fourth dignity is inscrutability, which demands a supple willingness to be unpredictable in carrying out one's moral vision."
Notes:
This path actually come from Shambhala buddhism, a branch of Tibetan Buddhism. However, certain attributes of form in Shambhala Buddhism are derived from Zen rather than Tibetan Buddhism. It also incorporates apects of Bön, Taoism, Confucianism, and Shinto into the practice.
Still, how wonderful is this? I am thrilled to have discovered such an amazing and unconventional juxtoposition of spiritual practices.
Further elaboration of the dignities provided by Kimberly Snow, Professor at the College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of In Buddha's Kitchen.
"The first dignity is called Meek, and it is symbolized by a tiger who walks confidently through his jungle terrain, observing whatever happens around her. The tiger, in this image is well fed and composed, confident, dignified, and curious about her domain, simply paying attention to whatever is happening. The dignity of Meek, as concrete practice, has the quality of fearlessness, confidence, openness and unbiased observation Take for example a business meeting where certain problems are being discussed and solutions sought. Working from the dignity of Meek would indicate non-judgmental listening to the different points of view. It would mean that we could hear the original data independent of our own fixed, habitual ideas. With all of our attention focused on listening, we are not trying to adjust the information to fit what we already believe, nor do we sit there formulating our answer in rebuttal to someone else’s presentation. However, the first dignity, Meek, is not simply a matter of being willing to listen to someone, which is how it usually appears in the various problem-solving modes of management theories. We realize that it is very difficult to suppress our automatic reactions to ideas different from those we believe in. So will power is not enough. Rather, developing Meek as a quality of mind is a matter of repeated practice in openness based on mindfulness/awareness.
The second dignity is called Perky, and it is symbolized by the snow lion. The snow lion is a very energetic image, since it is often portrayed as leaping from peak to peak in the Tibetan mountains. The individual who is working with Meek, might at some moment find his interest in the situation is attracted by some elements that seem to have possibilities. Some spark of intelligence in the situation is glimpsed, not because it matches his or her preconceptions, but because it genuinely is part of the actual situation itself. In other words, as we were saying about the warrior, he or she finds the situation to contain its own intelligence and possibilities for action. Thus, instead of working from an attitude of fixed ideas, he or she would be open to new, possibly unforeseen possibilities. This interest might lead to further inquiries. So Perky is connected with the intelligence of insight.
The third stage is known as Outrageous, which is not, as the term may sound, aggressive from the standpoint of ego. Rather, like the Garuda, or Tibetan eagle, which is said to command space, the individual is able to act freely in the open space to achieve some particular solution to the problem. The mindful individual at this point has a confidence and accuracy of perception that makes very penetrating and insightful action possible. The action, because it contains awareness of the whole situation, is not aggressive so that it might try to achieve a result in one direction while causing harm elsewhere. I think we are all used to that blind side to our usual ways of doing things. We dam a river to store water and then causes floods, or we build highways into the countryside and build subdivisions which gradually destroy the green spaces.
Finally, in the fourth stage, we have Inscrutable, symbolized by the dragon. Once again , we could invoke the warrior image. The dragon carries an image of the dynamic qualities of the natural world, the sequence of weather and seasons. It identifies with mind beyond ego, and not the petty grasping and clinging that mark our ordinary life in the world. The individual as warrior lets the consequences of his or her action be as they are. In one sense we could call it “letting go.” This fourth stage was often a problem when we taught a version of this view in a business course recently. After proposing an idea to the group, instead of letting go, several students wanted to hang on to their idea and fight for it, turning the seminar into another partisan struggle for a winner."