Insurgent Heart: A Vipassana Manual for the Guerrilla Yogi — {13}
INTELLIGENCE:
Reporting / Education / International Support
Table of Contents
~ Preface
2. Indigenous Knowledge: Bhavana
3. Contact: Aim /Attack / Harass
4. Mobility: Bases / Fluidity / Agility
5. Distrust: Suspicion / Investigation
6. Medicine: Metta / Divine Abodes
7. Retreat: Encirclement / Escape
8. Diversion: Distraction / Misdirection
9. General Strike: Invisibility / Cessation
10. The Guerrilla Band: Camaraderie / Community
11. Independence: Responsibility/ Self-Retreat
12. Intelligence: Education / Reporting
13. The Revolutionary Spirit: Discipline / Determination / Faith
14. Protracted War: Land Reform / Regular Army / International Support
15. {Afterword} Mindfulness: A Balm or a Bomb for Babylon?
~ Chapter 13 ~
INTELLIGENCE:
Reporting / Education / International Support
Intelligence should compile all the information it can on all members of the guerrilla unit, all enemies, those indifferent to the movement; on the location of water, springs and rivers; on roads, highways, trails, bridges; on the conduct of the guerrilla members; on sympathizers who wish to join the unit; on soldiers, informers, spies, etc. At the same time it will obtain or make maps of the terrain and the principal targets in the sector assigned to the unit. It will conduct espionage and counterespionage activities, keep records on unit personnel regarding all combat performance whether outstanding or unimpressive; and carry on cryptographic work (coding and deciphering messages, documents of courts martial, etc.).
~Alberto Bayo Giroud, One Hundred Fifty Questions to a Guerrilla
One of the most essential and difficult aspects of the Guerrilla campaign is the process of amassing, discerning, and putting to use information from a variety of sources — public, experiential, clandestine, rumor, and theoretical. Understanding that the enemy will begin their own sophisticated disinformation campaign, it is vital for a rebel movement to be confident in its ability to get accurate reporting and to trust its sources — or at least have a sense of what degree and in regards to what spheres each can be trusted.
Being able to keep tabs on the enemy, get a sense of their movements, understand how they work often requires covert operations. For the guerrilla this means having a network and program of espionage and informants whose lives are embedded in the opposition camp or in the public domain where the enemy spends time — formally or casually. For the guerrilla yogi, this means that it is necessary to gather intelligence from within the fortress of delusion, by building networks of information and applying a careful and measured relationship with wholesome and unwholesome mental factors. First and foremost it means developing a program for both practical and theoretical knowledge.
In order to discern the truth about what we are learning from various sources the guerrilla yogi must rely on both experiential and theoretical tools. We try our best to observe all experience directly, internally and externally, from the most subtle to the most gross, but it is also important to have a theoretical framework — based on study and education — that helps us make sense of what we are seeing, to learn the lessons of what we observe, to interpret correctly, and make functional use of our observations. The flood of experience we are trying to observe can be so overwhelming that we need conceptual frameworks to translate our direct experience into knowledge of what would otherwise seem simply chaotic.
It is important to distinguish early-on the difference between direct and conceptual knowledge. Both kinds of knowledge have their place in our deepening ability to understand what we see. Primarily we are concerned with empirical reality, ultimate truths — paramattha sacca — as directly experienced through vipassana practice. Secondarily we uplift value and role of conceptual knowledge of conventional truths — samuti sacca — that we may encounter in the literature and logic of the tradition, as aspects of conventional reality still supportive of our training and development.
At first a few of us lived together in a house and we had to teach the young people how to handle a weapon. Men took to the weapons quickly, but for women it was harder and more alien, so we placed special emphasis on it. Then came the theoretical discussions about what defense is and how people can protect themselves. This process gave the families trust, and so more women came to us.
~Karaçox, YPJ fighter, Rojava, Syria
REPORTING
It is necessary for guerrillas to know how to make speedy and accurate reports. You must write clearly, using block letter if your handwriting is at all indistinct, and always printing clearly the names of places, persons, regiments and so on, also the words NO and NOT. Always use the 24-hour clock. Number every message you send back so that your commander will know if the previous one is missing. When you have put every known fact into you message — answer the questions: What? How many? Where? When? Going where? Doing what? What weapons?” — you can draw a line and then put your own comments as to what you think the event reported probably means. Do not mix your guess with the known facts.
~ Bert “Yank” Levy
One of the ways that we begin to subvert this tendency to live in the conceptual is through the process of mental noting, of labeling experience as it arises. This method is important as part of our momentary experience in practice, releasing us from concept and developing the mind’s ability to stay directly in relationship to actual arising and passing experience. It is also important to create a chart of our experience over time. By keeping track of our mental notings we are offered an important means of tracing our progress, creating a map of our inner terrain, developing appropriate strategies and tactics based on past experiences. This involves learning to formulate detailed and accurate reports of our experience — for our own review or for the review of a teacher who is supporting us. The Mahasi Sayadaw method of reporting is one such way that is invaluable to this process.[1]
When reporting to your teacher or simply taking notes for yourself, your observation of body and mind can be reported according to the following three-step procedure:
1. What is your primary target? i.e. the rising and falling movement of the abdomen, hands touching, the body, sound, etc.
2. What did you note / notice? i.e. what you became aware of in terms of qualities, sensations, textures, and characteristics.
3. What happened to the object when observed? i.e. what you noticed over time as the object persists, dissipates, increases in intensity, decreases, changes, etc.
For example,
I watched the abdomen rise (or fall).
I labeled it as “rising, rising” (or “falling, falling”).
I became aware of stretching, pressure, stiffness, tension, etc. and noted accordingly.
I felt pressure increase gradually (or, perhaps, when falling, I felt pressure decrease).
It is very important to describe your primary object in clear, simple and precise terms with all the accurate details you have observed. Only after that should you continue to report on the secondary objects.
On the air, keep your messages clear and to the point to guarantee speed and security in communication.
~ Alberto Bayo Giroud
Secondary Targets
The secondary targets can be (but are not limited to) the following:
Bodily sensations: pressure, throbbing, itching, etc.
Thoughts: ideas, planning, remembering, thinking, etc.
Emotions: anger, pride, joy, happiness, etc.
Other Sensations: Sounds (hearing), images (seeing), etc.
While mindfully pursuing the primary target, if any secondary targets become predominant, a yogi can turn the mind toward that target and mindfully observe it. After the reporting on the primary target, meditators also report the experience of the secondary targets according to the above three-step procedure. For example,
I noticed a painful sensation in the knee and I noted it as “pain, pain.”
I looked more closely and noticed warmth and a stabbing sensation. I noted as “stabbing, stabbing.”
After some time, I experienced it as slow pulsating hardness. I noted “hard, hard, hard”
I began to notice a decreased in intensity at the end of each pulse.
After a few more minutes it disappeared altogether.
Then I went back to the primary target which is the rising and falling movement of the abdomen.
Our initial recognition may be something conceptual like “hearing a car” or “feeling pain” but the yogi is always encouraged to look more deeply than the conceptual and investigate the non-conceptual experience that we still may find a label for. “A rumbling sound” or “intense pressure” might be better descriptions of our actual direct experience. When reporting different kinds of thoughts such as planning, imagining, judging, daydreaming, etc, or emotions such as anger, frustration, happiness, etc, meditators should report them objectively without mentioning whom or what they are thinking about or who or what makes them angry, etc.
I found myself lost in thoughts.
I noted as “thinking, thinking” or “planning, planning” or “remembering, remembering.”
I noticed frustration arise and I noted “frustration, frustration.”
After a while, it disappeared and I noticed warmth in the area of the heart.
These sensations were pleasant and so I noted “pleasant, pleasant”
Then I went back to the primary target.
A Sample of a Comprehensive Report:
I noted the rising and falling movement of the abdomen as a primary object of meditation. When I noted the rising, I experienced tension and pressure and noted them. Then I noted the falling motion as “falling, falling.” My experience of falling was not very clear. I found my mind wandered and noted it as “wandering, wandering,” and after a while it stopped. I then went back to the primary target of rising and falling movement of the abdomen.
A painful sensation arose in my back. I noted it as “pain, pain.” When I looked more closely, it intensified and I saw it as throbbing. I noted “throbbing, throbbing” then “warmth, warmth” and eventually it lessened and finally disappeared. I noticed a sense of mental relief and noted “relief, relief” and then returned to the rising and falling movement of the abdomen.
Suddenly, a sound occurred. I noted “hearing, hearing” and then an itching sensation arose in the face. I noted it as “itching, itching.” I noticed irritation and noted “aversion” and a strong desire to move my hand to scratch which I labeled “wanting, wanting.” At some point I found myself lost in thought which I noted as “thinking, thinking.” The itch had disappeared and I returned to the primary target of the rising and falling movement of the abdomen.
Your experience in the walking meditation can be reported using the same method,
In my walking meditation I began by noticing the sensations of lifting at the bottom of the foot. I noted “light, light” as the pressure got less intense. Then I noted “stretching, stretching” as I felt the foot move forward through the air, “placing, placing” or “dropping, dropping” and “heaviness” as the foot moved back to the ground. Finally I noted “light touch, pressure, hardness”, and coolness as the foot made contact with the ground…
The encouragement is toward a non-conceptual precision and as much detail as possible. When the mind is not so clear as to provide such intense detail, it is important to note that and to note the other factors of mind arising before and after any given experience. After all, we are not only learning to observe the body but eventually seek to observe the mind as well and then follow the process of unfolding experience as it relates to this dynamic. Walking meditation can be our most important entry point into the investigation into nama and rupa because we can more easily observe how the mental intention to move leads to the physical activity of the body, and then how the physical experience of the body leads to body consciousness in the mind. Observing this process profoundly is considered to be the beginning of our formal insight journey and can lead all the way to the end. But for most yogis their first experience of nibbana can be so fleeting as to seem unnoticeable and without this precise training of mind — impossible to see and understand fully.
1) Try to keep your report to your direct experience, not your interpretation or judgement of it.
2) A good report is a condensed snap-shot of a few minutes, or even just a few moments, of our most clear sitting or walking period.
3) Don’t feel too much pressure to be too precise or too perfect — just note what you observe!
Over time our reports may have more or less detail and may describe a range of experiences. Don’t expect this kind of reporting description to simply go in one direction of what we imagine “progress” to look like. We may notice more or less mental activity, more or less concentration, more or less anything and it may not mean what you think it does. A single report is best understood in relationship to a series of reports over time. With experience, a yogi begins to see patterns in their internal experience. For example, when pain arises we may notice that doubt soon follows. Patterns become familiar and less personal. We can become interested in processes and relationships that used to frustrate us. Keep your scent on trail. Keep records. Commit as much as you can to memory.
EDUCATION
Information must be factual to build up confidence among the people in the national movement. What it must do it this:
1) Give the people tenacity to stand up to the enemy by showing them the struggle is worthwhile and necessary. They must be made aware that the national struggle will be victorious in the end — but that the end depends on them.
2) Get world public opinion behind the just fight of the people.
3) Undermine the enemy’s morale and his propaganda by exposing his methods and by constant emphasis on the unjustness of his cause.
4) Be the spiritual mainspring of those actively engaged in the national movement so that they understand the need to destroy the enemy and his power forever.
~ Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army
Though the Buddha had a variety of teachers with whom he trained in a range of meditative techniques (mostly related to concentration), none of them had attained the complete liberation he aspired to and so could not offer him guidance toward that final goal. He had to figure it out for himself. The amount of faith that must have been necessary for Siddhartha Gautama to fulfill his mission is utterly staggering. Finding one’s own way to freedom in the dark, with no sense that it had been done before, not even that it was possible, took human qualities of inconceivable beauty and magnitude. Indeed, one of the particular points of reverence for the Buddha is that he was samasabuddhasa — “rightly self-awakened.” The deeper into the path we get, the more profound can be our appreciation for having the guidance of the Buddha himself as well as multitudes of others who have attained the path before us.
This guidance should be taken up, studied, questioned, explored, and ultimately integrated into our own practice: accepted if it works, rejected if it backfires, transformed where that is called for, but all with the most rigor and care that we can muster. No one else’s word should be taken as fact until we have experienced it. No oneʻs word should be rejected until we are absolutely confident in its fault. Nothing should be changed without the utmost reserve and testing. We will benefit from reading, listening, learning, questioning, and wrestling with the words and teachings, the traditions and cultures, that have come before us. They should not be accepted without inquiry but neither should they be rejected outright just because they don’t immediately align with our philosophy of what we think should be true.
Theory is very necessary but unmethodical study yields no result.
Therefore in studying theory we have to stress that theory must be integrated with practice.
~ Ho Chi Minh
We must rigorously differentiate between what we believe to be true, what we want to be true, and what we know to be true. This requires a careful, whole hearted, and honest process of praxis — of theory and experiential application. Even when it comes to Buddhist theory, though, we have so much to choose from that it can be overwhelming. Bookstores are filled with meditation and “mindfulness” instruction in many flavors and with many variations. All of it should be approached with utmost skepticism. It is rare in the world to find people truly interested in release, in disenchantment, in the ending of constructed being. Most authors will seek to use the practice in ways that reaffirm their identities and yours. But the Dhamma “goes against the stream” and we should always measure any book by the relationship to what has been said by the ancients.
An important encouragement for the guerrilla yogi is to trust the tradition as the foundation of your theoretical knowledge. Not without healthy skepticism, but the ancient texts — the Pali cannon and the collection of Nikaya suttas that are available in book form and online — will serve you well as the primary basis of the framework of your exploration. There is a rich, robust, and diverse array of teachings therein that form a coherent structure of profound relevance as well as historic interest.
Who can say that the texts of the tradition are entirely trustworthy? Who can say that they all truly offer the words of the Buddha? No one. There are many questions to wrestle with in regards to translation, to the potentially detrimental impact of oral transmission over hundreds of years, to the patriarchal agenda of the early compilers, to the nature of Buddha-hood and whether the Buddha himself, enlightened as he was, had enduring aspects of personality that were more complex than the tradition would like to admit. Many of these are things that will never be resolved and so we can take our inheritance with profound gratitude, open-mindedness, and a healthy a dose of rational but engaged skepticism. A guerrilla yogi knows that they cannot trust all information from all sources. But because of the broad general coherence of the suttas, one begins to get a sense of where to be suspicious, where to have confidence, and where to be careful.
There are some militarists who say: ‘We are not interested in politics but only in the profession of arms.’ It is vital that these simple-minded militarists be made to realize the relationship that exists between politics and military affairs. Military action is a method used to attain a political goal. While military affairs and political affairs are not identical, it is impossible to isolate one from the other.
~ Mao Zedong
Ancient devout teachers and practitioners put vast amounts of time and consideration into the interpretations of the suttas as well as formulations of method and frameworks that are invaluable — if not always entirely trustworthy. The compilers of the tradition had agendas — some obvious, some hidden, some unconscious — that impacted their motivations and their decisions about their efforts. Where the Abhidhamma succeeds most brilliantly is in its description of momentary experience of consciousness. Where it comes up short is often in trying to create an objective explanation of material reality outside of consciousness. Just because we know to be suspicious of some of the data from this source doesn’t mean we disregard the whole body. There are pieces we learn to absorb and trust and others that will call us to look at our experience with more earnest investigation.
For example, abhidhamma literature suggests that one cannot be mindful of anger because you cannot have a moment of sati and dosa arise at the same moment — a moment of mindfulness is a wholesome moment not tainted by greed, hatred, or delusion and so cannot exist at the same moment as anger. It recognizes instead that the arising and passing distinct moments of anger and mindfulness in rapid succession can feel as if we are being mindful of anger, and so we can observe it fruitfully. Is this true? When we look as closely as possible what do we experience? Does our sense of this change one day to the next? It is also said that the physical water element cannot be experienced directly, that what we notice actually is the combination of air, earth, and fire elements in quick succession, providing the sensation of cool cohesion. Is this true? Check it out. The literature says that visual shape does not exist as a fundamental reality of which we can be conscious, but color does — and so shape is a product of mental perception in relationship to the boundaries of color. Is this true? Check it out.
Theravada abhidhamma presents experience in particle form: life, being, as a chain of momentary experiences, arising and passing, each conditioning the arising of the next. Life as we begin to see it is a flux between nama and rupa, name and form, in dynamic interplay giving the perspective of dimensionality. Modern science recognizes that all light and matter have a dual nature: both a particle form and a wave form, depending on how we look at it. We should not assume that the particle form of the abhidhamma is the only way to see or understand reality, but it is a helpful and true one that puts our normal perspective in a liberating light.
79. How will our men be busy when there is no immediate task?
They will relax during the day, wash their feet daily and take care of their toenails since feet and legs are the engines of the guerrilla. They will study the maps of the region, memorizing the names of all nearby villages, and their population and some of the names of the people, they will identify on a blank chart all rivers, tributary rivers, springs, reservoirs, and wells. They will learn the distances between different points within that sector and the location of bridges and sewers that might be used for train sabotage. In other words they must learn by heart whatever piece of information might be helpful to carry on the war or to facilitate the tasks of other sections of the militia.
~ Alberto Bayo Giroud
The closer in time we get to literature formed in the present, the more questions arise about of caliber of the material and the minds that created it. There is good writing out there, but it takes a lot of sifting through to find it. Since we only have a certain amount of time to dedicate to our studies, it is always best to go with the Nikayas and commentarial literature.
At best, the Nikayas can be deeply informative and inspiring. On the other hand, they can sometimes hold such a high standard that we wither and feel ourselves humiliated in comparison. We don’t measure up. The tone in many of the suttas can also be very male, very macho, and striving oriented. This is likely because it was men who dominated the tradition for a very long time, and a particular kind of man has thrived in that religious culture and been empowered to pass it down. In this way, what is offered as universal does not have the self-awareness of the historic and cultural particularity that it embodies. That is how mainstream privilege works and why the voices at the margin are so important.
Classes were run in caves; each village sent a person to study for a few days, then he went back and taught his co-villagers. When his knowledge was exhausted he returned to the class and learned some more. While teaching others, the teachers also learned themselves. Such was the method we adopted for the mass education work and for its development into a movement…
The organization of teaching should be in accordance with the living conditions of the learners, then the movement will last and bear good results. Our compatriots are still poor and cannot afford paper and pens, therefore a small pocket exercise-book is enough for each person. Reading and writing exercises can be done anywhere, using charcoal, the ground, or banana leaves as pens and paper. Clandestine cadres were to teach and make one person literate every three months.
~ Ho Chi Minh
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT
Our Party grew and developed in the favourable international conditions created by the victory of the great October Revolution. The achievements of the Party and the people are inseparable from the fraternal support accorded us by the Soviet Union, People’s China and the other socialist countries, the international Communist and workers’ movement and the national-liberation movement and also the peace movement. We were able to surmount all difficulties and lead the people to glorious victories because the Party did not divorce the revolutionary movement in its own country from the revolutionary movement of the world proletariat and the national-liberation movement of the oppressed people.
~ Ho Chi Minh
The Algerian war of independence from France was one of the first coherent uses of international pressure to support a guerrilla liberation movement. The leaders of the FLN used relationships with western media outfits to highlight French war-atrocities in order to garner international public sympathy. They strategically used the policy mechanisms of the United Nations to apply pressure to France and leveraged cold-war tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union to gain support from both for their independence cause.
Cuban and Vietnamese revolutionary struggles would not have succeeded without funds, arms, and strategic guidance offered by more developed sympathetic states. Vietnam could never have resisted American interference for so long and with such success without the financial and military support of the Soviet Union and China. Many guerrillas in African struggles needed and utilized bases across borders in friendly countries to run back to for security. Vital support comes not only from states but from individuals living in foreign lands. Algerian forces in the revolution depended upon financial support from Algerians living in France. The IRA depended on funds from Irish Americans. The Republican side of the Spanish Civil War depended on volunteers from around the world to form the ranks of their battalions. In many ways the revolution cannot be bound by national boarders.
Accepting the support of hegemonic institutions larger and more powerful than yourself is fundamental to success but it is also a dangerous game. To what degree are policies dictated from afar? When do the foreign mandates clash with our native interests? When are we beholden to these forces even when they are in the wrong or when their deeper motivations run counter to our long-term goals? What are the costs of allegiance to foreign establishments and institutions of power?
A similar dynamic can be found in our relationships between our mode of practice and our tradition in Asia we well as our relationships with other Buddhist traditions, or other religious traditions entirely.
For a long time I believed that it was unnecessary to go and practice or pilgrimage in Asia. Meditation can be practiced anywhere because the Dhamma can be found anywhere, in any object, in any moment, in any cultural context, in any time and place. We have good teachers in the West. We have supportive facilities. We have a growing body of resources that are available to more and more people, in books, online and elsewhere. But after going to Burma year after year, where my tradition is rooted, I have come to see how important a connection this is for me: in personal relationships, certainly, but perhaps more uniquely in having the opportunity to spend time in a cultural context where the Dhamma is the norm, where the dominant culture is a Buddhist culture, and a baseline respect for the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, and for intensive practice is unquestioned and honored. To be in a place where faith in the Dhamma is all around you is incredibly supportive, like filling a vitamin deficiency you didn’t know you had. This may be especially true in our early years of practice when we may feel at odds with the dominant culture, where we may need to hide our Buddhist-ness. To be “out” and to be open and to share and be nourished by the ambience of faith is no small thing.
There is a profound experience to be in a place where people speak of the Buddha as if he just walked through the village last week — as if we had just missed him — where they still wrap his statue in a shawl when the night is cold. To be in a village where people speak of arahants known to be alive today, ones they met as children, or whose bodies are still entombed in a nearby pagoda, provide an unfamiliar comfort. To hear the multitude of stories of meditators whose striving has inspired people for generations, to walk beside a field where it is said one monk flew across every day to get his breakfast, to walk into a cool limestone cave and feel the all-pervasive vibe, like the opposite of a nuclear bomb, of someone who attained enlightenment there a hundred years ago — has an impact and can give you the energy and momentum of faith that a tradition is supposed to provide.
If we pay close enough attention and keep our investigative minds sharp, spending time in a Buddhist culture is both inspiring and disenchanting. The deep social integration of ethics and Buddhist mythology is profound and important. At the same time we find that these societies are equally subject to the same forces of inequality, prejudice, violence and greed, as our own or others. The institutions of the Dhamma themselves are not free from scandal or degradation, and these things can be very challenging to negotiate. Many of our traditions come out of orthodox religious institutions that are troubled in one way or another or at the very least have dramatic blind spots that are antiquated or oppressive. Most stark are often the deeply sexist traditions embedded in the religion and culture that have resulted in the prohibition of full female monastic ordination. Even more basically we encounter the fundamental subservience of nuns to monks within the traditional sāsana ordination. Of course one can effortlessly find representatives of the Dhamma who hold views that are racist, classist, prejudiced in one way or another.
In many countries where Buddhism is the religion of the majority — and/or practiced by the majority ethnic group — we find that it has all the trappings of any dominant culture, especially when it comes to the relationship with minority ethnic or religious communities. Persecutions, injustice, ethnic superiority, nationalism, and prejudice of all kinds are just as evident in Buddhist societies as Christian ones. Buddhist religious infrastructure can be just as sinister and imperious and dedicated to oppressive social economic power-structures as Christian churches are in the West or Muslim mosques are in the central Asia or North Africa. The recent Bamar-Buddhist violence against the Rohingya Muslim people in Burma is only the most recent — if most atrocious — explosion of vitriol on the part of the Buddhist majority against minority ethnic groups in the country. These realities can help us pierce the fantasy of a Buddhist majority in the west, obliterating the notion that mindfulness will save any society.
Generally, we will still be able to find in some corner a person or place that we feel deeply embodies the shining path of liberation that we are deeply drawn to, and this may be in the midst of a multitude of things we find disheartening. It can cause us to question our assumptions about the social value of the Dhamma, of the lineage that we are a part of. This is good. It is so much better to wrestle with our tradition than to blindly follow it, or blindly dismiss it. Indeed, in the west our habitual arrogance of view is a fundamental weakness that should be kept always in check. Our relationship to traditional Buddhist cultures — especially those still rooted in rural village life — can help give us fresh eyes on notions of obedience, admonishment, cosmopolitan privilege.
When we come into deeper engagement with our spiritual heritage, we complicate and enrich our path. These relationships with people and cultures are necessary as we collectively learn to practice together, to struggle together, to develop solidarity amid real differences, real problems. We are living in a time where shared learning has untold potential for fostering vitality to the contemporary expression of the sāsana.
The guerrilla yogi by their nature holds deferential respect for the ancient institutions of our tradition (and of others) but also assumes the highest degree of personal responsibility and freedom of movement in terms of general operational functioning. We are certainly not beholden to them when it comes to issues of social oppression.
We on the Arab front were very intimate with the enemy. Our Arab officers had been Turkish officers, and knew every leader on the other side personally. They had suffered the same training, thought the same, took the same point of view. By practising modes of approach upon the Arabs we could explore the Turks: understand, almost get inside, their minds. Relation between us and them was universal, for the civil population of the enemy area was wholly ours without pay or persuasion. In consequence out intelligence service was the widest, fullest and most certain imaginable.
~ T.E. Lawrence
There are countless sources of wisdom in the world and different experiences and expressions of it can be supportive of our practice — and relationships across these differences can be a dynamic blend of challenging and nourishing. We will benefit from that flexibility to find our own sources of inspirational materials, while always begin careful to understand what is and what isn’t in precise alignment with the teaching of the Buddha as our tradition holds it. Cold Mountain, Rumi, Hafiz, Mary Oliver, Rilke, Tupac, or Biggie may inspire us — and we can value that inspiration while still understanding the limits of their resonance, where the frequency doesn’t quite match.
Of course we prefer our wisdom organic, free-range, and freshly-squeezed when possible. But knowing how vast wilderness is and how disorienting the desert can be the guerrilla yogi eats where there is food and drinks from whatever source they find. In desperate times, they are not so proud as to refuse wisdom from a can.
We had to arrange their minds in order of battle just as carefully and as formally as other officers would arrange their bodies. And not only our own men’s minds…We must also arrange the minds of the enemy, so far as we could teach them; then those other minds of the nation supporting us behind the firing line… then the minds of the enemy nation waiting the verdict; and of the neutrals looking on; circle beyond circle.
~ T.E. Lawrence
[1] Much of the content of this section has been adapted from the reporting instructions of the Panditarama Meditation Center in Burma.
Click here for Chapter 14 (PROTRACTED WAR:
Land Reform / Crisis / Building a Regular Army)
Click here for Chapter 12 (The Revolutionary Spirit: Discipline / Determination / Faith)
