Insurgent Heart: A Vipassana Manual for the Guerrilla Yogi — {4}
Mobility: Bases / Fluidity /Agility
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 4 ~
Mobility: Bases / Fluidity /Agility
When the situation is serious, the guerrilla must move with the fluidity of water and the ease of the blowing wind.
~ Mao Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare
In their struggles with more powerful adversaries, non-traditional fighters throughout history have come to understand that they must be able to move quickly and with agility at all times: ready to fight, to flee, to pursue, to hide, or take advantage of an unexpected opening. A small band of partisans can move quickly around a fortified base, blend into the population, or disappear into the mountains much more easily than a battalion of regular soldiers. In this way, the guerrillas leverage their weakness — lack of numbers or heavy artillery — to their benefit.
…avoid the solid, attack the hollow; attack; withdraw; deliver a lightning blow, seek a lightning decision. When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws. In guerrilla strategy, the enemy’s rear, flanks, and other vulnerable spots are his vital points, and there he must be harassed, attacked, dispersed, exhausted and annihilated.
~ Mao Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare
Most Buddhist meditation traditions emphasize the enormous power of mind needed to penetrate the target in order to attain insight. But when we think of something powerful or forceful we tend to imagine something large, something heavy, something hard — and this limitation of our imagination can prohibit us from utilizing the capacity we have more readily at hand in our vipassana practice: a mind that is nimble and agile — able to move with reality, with life, as it is moving.
In the Dhammasanghani of the Abhidhamma Pitaka, the ancient compendium of dhammas in Buddhist psychology, twenty five mental factors are considered to be beautiful (sobhana cetasikas). Twelve are in pairs of mental qualities associated with all beautiful mental states: tranquility (cittapassaddhi and kayapassaddhi), lightness (cittalahutā and kayalahutā), malleability (cittamudutā and kayamudutā), wieldiness (cittakammaññatā and kaya kammaññatā), proficiency (cittapāguññatā and kayapāguññatā) and uprightness (cittujukata and kayujukata). So often our assumptions about the powerful mind imply a rigid and unyielding quality. Yet how can we ignore that nearly half[1] of the beautiful mental qualities that are encouraged in the practice of vipassana can be described by words like buoyant, agile, flexible, soft, workable, pliable, dexterous, proficient, learned, familiar, clever, masterful, upright, straightforward, honest.
When we aim toward any target of observation, we see that it is moving at incredible speed. The life-cycle of a moment of consciousness happens much faster than the unskilled mind can keep up with. When we begin to train the mind to keep up with the flow of experience we come to see that most mental and physical phenomena that we already experience as fast are actually made up of even smaller moments, happening in such unbelievably quick secession that give life a sense of solidity. So even a powerfully concentrated mind, if fixed on an object in a heavy-handed way, will be too sluggish to keep up with reality as it is actually moving. To meet the movement of life with all its force the mind must be equally light, agile, able to flow with experience as it unfolds, without expectation or pre-conception. Ultimately, our mind must learn to be both powerful and agile. The dual action can feel like modes that counteract one another but it is a paradox which we must learn to trust and explore because they are both absolutely necessary.
THE GUERRILLA BASE
Guerrilla bases must have a good line of withdrawal in case of attack. Indeed they should have several routes of escape. If possible there should be only one entrance and the base should be located in an inaccessible area — mountains, marshes, uninhabited places. It should be changed frequently.
~Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army
Before going off to attack some far-off enemy, a guerrilla campaign must first establish bases in safe territory that provide a modicum of security and stability. For the guerrilla yogi, some targets of the attention also have the ability to provide the refuge of more long-term bases for the attention to reside in. Relatively neutral territories tend to be where we look to find a target area where we can practice the basic mechanics of engagement over the long-haul: a place we can come back to in times of overwhelming attack. While no base will be safe forever from attack, and we want to train the mind to be able to maintain fruitful contact with the wide range of human experience, cultivating a base is an important aspect of the practice.
The guerrilla yogi can try starting with a four-tiered system for their home base: 1) the stream of sound; 2) the physical sensations arising throughout the whole body; 3) the physical sensations in the hands; 4) the physical sensations of the rising and falling of the breath at the abdomen. Generally, we will try to find one of these targets to use as our primary base but we must recognize that there are times where the conditions are unfavorable for success in one and so it is important to have several back-ups to help engage the attention.
Of course, experiences will inevitably arise outside of these bases and we can always bring awareness to them, relating to them with all the same qualities of mindfulness and concentration, before coming back to our primary base at our own discretion. We must be committed in our connection to our base but also be agile, ready to move as it moves and/or as conditions change. We must stay nimble and light so that we do not get stuck or frozen on one aspect of the experience. The harder we push the mind, the duller it gets. The duller it gets, the more danger we are in… unless we are nimble enough to note the dullness and explore it. Then we are back in position and have extracted ourselves from a defensive rut.
…in selecting any kind of base, there is one essential thing to look for: it must have a good get-away — a good way out to safety if discovered or attacked; preferably more than one get-away.
~Bert “Yank” Levy, Guerrilla Warfare
A yogi can become fully enlightened simply by watching the breath. It has all the elements needed to attain the deepest insight, through it are revealed the nature of all four foundations of mindfulness, and will train the mind in all the skills it needs to attain its liberatory goal. We should never forget this, especially in our delusions of grandeur when we believe that to claim our victory we need to fight the most ferocious dragons.
But, for me, as an asthmatic with all kinds of allergies, for many years the breath was not neutral, was not safe. It was too evocative and entangled in patterns of anxiety and discomfort and so was not a good base. So I learned to use the more open field of sensations throughout my entire body as my primary base for the attention. Over time, more and more of my physical experience became easier for me to connect with, eventually including my breath.
But even when the sensations of breathing felt more neutral, I came to see that focus on the small area of the abdomen felt too confining and the larger field of sensations of the entire body allowed the space with which to engage that didn’t agitate or frustrate my mind. Sometimes the body was too wild-open a field so I learned to narrow my attention to the area of the hands. Sometimes the hands were too narrow a field, so I opened up to the sensations of sounds around me, vibrating at the ear door. Many people who have trauma related to their bodies often benefit from opening up the attention to this wider field: learning to practice with the stream of sounds arising and passing outside the body.
When the energy is low we can consciously move between objects: a series of touch points throughout the body to help gain traction for the attention. This can look something like: left knee, right hip, left elbow, right shoulder, lips touching, left shoulder, right elbow, left hip, right knee, and back: perhaps moving at the pace of the breath. When the energy is high, we might gather the attention more firmly on a single object if it works to help us get traction with the target objects over time.
The guerrilla yogi must explore and act on what works to engage the attention with the vanguard point and cannot afford to get stuck in “shoulds” with our practice — based on preconceived ideas. They try their best to be open to what is effective. Any non-conjured direct experience that is relatively neutral can be our home base or temporary target. It does not matter what we use, if we learn to use it well. There are innumerable other objects that can be appropriate bases for the attention but the point is simple: always be ready to move and always have another place to go.
During the battle of Dong Ap Bia — or “Hamburger Hill” — in the South Vietnam, American forces attacked the Peoples Army of Vietnam jungle position for 10 days in the remote A Sầu Valley, near the border of Laos. Normally Vietcong forces only engaged in intense battle very briefly before disappearing into the jungle, but in the case of Dong Ap Bia concentric bunker positions prepared them for a longer entrenched positional confrontation. Difficult terrain that channeled American soldiers into single-file lines, lack of suitable helicopter landing sites, unpredictable weather, and dense jungle canopy helped disorganize the American forces and made the confrontation a very bloody one.
In total, 5 US infantry battalions and 10 batteries of artillery were committed to the fight, with the US Air-force flying 272 sorties and dropping more than 500 tons of ordinance. Officially 72 Americans were killed and 372 were wounded. And while many more Vietcong lost their lives (as was often the case), at the precise moment of overwhelm most of them silently vanished into the jungle and disappeared into the darkness across the border into Laos.
The Americans claimed victory — and the hill — but found themselves owners of an insignificant scorched hilltop in the middle of nowhere, with no strategic value. Perplexed and demoralized about the meaning of such absurd efforts and profound losses, two weeks later US forces abandoned the hill which local tribesmen called “the mountain of the crouching beast.” Within a month, the North Vietnamese had reoccupied it. The incident was a terrible media fiasco in the US and led to an important sober reconsideration of American involvement in Vietnam from within the power structure.
It was one of many incidents that could be numerically characterized as a defeat for the North Vietnamese. But because of their dexterity and strategic coherence, and the damage done to the enemyʻs morale, in practical terms it was an important success.
The conventional approach to meditation can certainly lead to this profound misunderstanding — that good practice means following your breath and we need to stick with it no matter what. But the goal of vipassana is not to follow the breath. The goal is insight and it can happen anywhere and we should train for that precise possibility. If we are anchored at the abdomen but find ourselves thinking, we can be mindful of those thoughts, investigate the nature of thought, or sound, or the itch on our face or whatever else — and when it has passed, we can return to the breath or follow the next arising experience. No problem. If a powerful attack of terror befalls us while we are practicing, we can try to be with it in the mind, in the heart, in the body: using all the points of connection we can that maintain our mindful connection. But when we are overwhelmed, there is no point in getting destroyed. We can switch to targets outside the attack: practice metta, move to sound, open the eyes, run back to a safe-house wherever we can find it. When the time is right we can retreat entirely without shame.
In conventional warfare an army is obsessed with “real estate.” It seeks to conquer land, consolidate its position, then move on to conquer more land. The guerrilla army knows it cannot usually defend territory for very long. After a skirmish, whether it has won or lost, it is willing to retreat to a safe location. When ready, it comes back to reconquer the land the enemy has abandoned, or even attack the enemy at its rear as it withdraws. In this way, the guerrillas don’t formally control land, but no land is dependably under the control of the enemy. This wears the enemy down. Their rear immediately becomes the front or they are flanked from the side and suddenly they must engage in all directions — something they are entirely unsuited for. They become disheartened by having to come back to retake the same area over and over again, while the guerrilla yogi finds it invigorating.
The guerrilla yogi likewise lacks the capacity necessary to claim the “real estate” of the primary base for very long, especially when it is under attack. We engage as thoroughly as we can for as long as we can but don’t resist, for example, even the mind’s dispersal into fantasy — a realm that feels safer for the mind than the instability of reality. We bivouac in this new base of conceptual activity, observe the thoughts and emotions as best we can, and can return to the breath or other target of the mindfulness if we choose.
We must unite the strength of the army with that of the people; we must strike the weak spots in the enemy’s flanks, in his front, in his rear. We must make war everywhere and cause dispersal of his forces and dissipation of his strength. Thus the time will come when a gradual change will become evident in the relative position of ourselves and our enemy, and when that day comes, it will be the beginning of our ultimate victory
~ Mao Zedong, Guerrilla Warfare
The guerrilla yogi must have high standards and low expectations. With each sitting we should not imagine that we will have more than one minute of grounded concentration, or even one clear observation of breath. This is not defeat. This is understanding the nature of reality and of dukkha. It took me ten years of intensive practice — daily and yearly retreats including several three-month retreats — before I felt I could honestly say that I saw the full rising and falling of a single breath. And while it was amazing I also saw that it was merely concentration and that just because my concentration had not been quite so unified before did not mean that mindfulness had not resulted in profound insight without it. Mindfulness can arise powerfully without strong concentration but one needs to understand how to operate it differently. When the mindfulness is strong but not supported by powerful concentration the guerrilla yogi has the power to “alert shift” as Mao describes,
In addition to the dispersion and concentration of forces, the leader must understand what is termed “alert shifting.” When the enemy feels the danger of guerrillas, he will generally send troops out to attack them. The guerrillas must consider the situation and decide at what time and at what place they wish to fight. If they find that they cannot fight, they must immediately shift. Then the enemy may be destroyed piecemeal. For example, after a guerrilla group has destroyed an enemy detachment at one place, it may be shifted to another area to attack and destroy a second detachment. Sometimes, it will not be profitable for a unit to become engaged in a certain area, and in that case, it must move immediately.
~Mao Zedong, Guerrilla Warfare
There is so much emphasis in most traditions placed on concentrating our attention on a particular object, like the breath, that we can forget that it is simply a training ground. We train for insight in any of the four foundations of mindfulness and cannot afford to have a preference about where it happens. We engage wherever the attention is drawn. If a bee only gathered pollen from one flower it would never pollinate the field. Similarly, wisdom arises from the pollination that happens as the mind moves from one object to another. Understanding how phenomena relate to one another is the essence of dhammanupassana, the fourth foundation of mindfulness.
The mind that wanders everywhere, motivated by craving, aversion, and ignorance, will tend to reproduce and strengthen craving, aversion, and ignorance. But the mind that is not allowed to wander at all can also amplify those same mental forces because the effort it takes to maintain that rigidity of mind are so-often rooted in the same desire to control and aversion to reality. The mind that is allowed to wander a little, that isn’t bothered by it, will relax. And only a relaxed mind is one that is receptive to insight.
Again, the Ho Chi Minh trail — what the North Vietnamese called “Route 559” — was a vast network of interlinking trails through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos built by the North Vietnamese Army to enable Việt Cộng guerrilla units to penetrate the south. US forces could only operate with extreme discretion in those other countries and this afforded an important degree of refuge for the guerrillas. Moving through these other countries, friendly to the cause, provided them with some degree of safety. Similarly, our primary base can, over time, come to be a safe country for us, friendly terrain, and because of this we should never dismiss its essential value to our broader campaign.
At the same time, a single road would not have provided versatile access to all points in the south nor escape routes back into safety. All the different routes of the Ho Chi Minh trail were necessary and worked together to provide access to their strategic destination no matter which routes got bombed or blockaded. In our efforts to create a Ho Chi Minh trail of the mind, the guerrilla yogi follows this same method of creating numerous and overlapping trails and points of access through the system. If we only train with the breath, we will never know how to engage something more fearsome when it arises.
With this baseline ethic, a guerrilla yogi will not become disheartened because of their inability to concentrate their attention on the primary or secondary target. Most of the time when we try to aim and sustain our attention the mind wanders or other objects call our attention. In the chaos we can feel scattered and defeated. But if we relate to the base as a guerrilla yogi and trust the value of khanika samadhi more than of fixed concentration, we will not be upset by the wandering or by so-called “distraction” because we recognize that nothing is truly a distraction; we can fight our war anywhere. We are concentrated on the experience of the present moment — whatever experience that may be. We have trained to be this fluid, this agile, and have no belief that “good practice” means staying within the base for long periods of time. We have built trails back home from everywhere and so anywhere can lead us back home.
THE SELF
The sense of Self is our biggest and most well-established intuitive base. It is home like no other thing, though what it is actually comprised of changes from moment to moment. Sometimes it feels like we are in our bodies. Sometimes it feels like our bodies are us. Sometimes it is our emotions or our thoughts and our stories about who we are, our aspirations for who we want to be.
As the persistent-yet-momentary product of greed, hatred, and delusion, we must be extremely cautious about the sense of Self because it is really like having a base in enemy territory. Just like with the home base in practice — our primary target — we are training to become more and more comfortable outside that temporary refuge. But we also need to feel that it is ok to go back again and again, as flawed a refuge as it might be. We need to understand the draw of the Self in order to ultimately be released from dependence on it.
We are constantly and compulsively generating the framework for an internal structure of Self. All conditioned phenomena we encounter at the sense doors are unstable. The mind tries to create a sense of stability through grasping, rejecting, and tripping into delusion — all three of which help create a persistent sense of Self.
Our sense of Self creates a sense of stability, or coherence amid the stream of rapidly changing phenomena, and we use every single moment of sense-experience to reinforce it. Of course, if it was actually stable, we wouldn’t need to keep shoring it up. This scaffolding of the Self last only a moment so we live in a frenzy of building and rebuilding, frantically trying to grab control of the flow of life: asserting and reasserting who we are, rehearsing our selves over and over again.
All of the hindrances (nīvarana) can similarly be understood as protective tools that are trying to defend us from the relentless inundation of experience and its instability. Craving is a kind of contraction around experience that generates the sense of Self. Aversion and ill-will are similar. Sloth and torpor help deaden the mind to experience by creating a kind of somatic experience of delusion. Restlessness keeps us on the run from reality. Doubt casts our whole endeavor under the cloud of delusion, keeping the mind un-investigative and the empire intact.
Who would we be if not for all the things we worry about or want — our jobs, our relationships, our health, our world? The Self is a dynamic triangulation of our strongest longings and fears and fantasies. It is important to recognize both the need for compassion toward our stabilizing tendencies as well as the wisdom of their ultimate unsatisfactoriness. No fixed base or structure can ultimately give us the security. Again, realizing that it is only through insight, brought upon by mindfulness and care that we are able to uproot the need to engage in these tendencies.
Even when we “come back” from being “lost in thought” we are really returning to the comfort of our deepest delusion — of our Self, here at the center, watching — which we then reinforce by the belief that we are suddenly “being mindful” again. It is fine to appreciate the apparent stability of the sense of Self and come back to it as a base. But we must also recognize that have found ourselves back in the mist of the great delusion and stay vigilant and dextrous with our attention. We should not claim this terriroty as “more real” but instead help sharpen our sense that all conditional realities are subject to the same forces of changeability, undependability, and essencelessness. In this way we come to see the possibility of being free in a greater and greater range of terrain, to the degree that someday we will have no need for bases at all, including the base of the Self. Everything will be a base and nothing will be the Self.
It doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve been wounded so often, it’s as if we’re running through water but we don’t get wet. We free an area, then go someplace else.
~ Melsa, YPJ fighter, Revolution in Rojava
AGILITY
We can have no agenda as to what target arises in each moment or the next. This is the purest form of practice. It is so pure that even if a preference does arise, we don’t resist it either. It is OK. Remember: we are not trying to hold ground. We engage with the targets that present themselves and let them arise and pass on their own. Defilements come, we allow them. Hindrances come, we allow them. We can aim and sustain our attention on them for as long as engagement is fruitful. Hatred, bitterness, irritation, craving, sadness, knee pain, itch, memory, fantasy. We cannot evaluate our practice based on what targets arise. It doesn’t matter at all. But resistance, if it is rooted in wanting, aversion, or delusion, gives them strength. The more we resist them, the more ground they hold. The less resistance we give to these tides of the mind, the more they ebb and flow without effecting us.
In fact, the less we resist the resistance, the more dexterous our guerrilla band will be. When we think “this shouldn’t be happening,” or “I shouldn’t be attached,” we must recognize this resistance and allow even the resistance. Explore it genuinely and we will see that eventually even it will blow through. If we conceive, “I am a terrible yogi” or “I am the best yogi” we recognize conceit but see no territory in it, claim no part of it. It is known in its arising and its passing. The mind is a vapor that we treat like a mountain. Let Mara have his hill. Let Mara have his anger, no need to try and wrestle it from him.
The guerrilla tries their best to not get stuck in an indefensible position, to be so attached to a base or a target that it is pinned down and not ready to find a new one at a moment’s notice. This is just as true for pleasant experiences as unpleasant ones. Any yogi can get enamored with certain unfamiliar experiences in their practice. When we experience something very new, — or maybe something familiar in a new way — we feel like we have finally achieved something and there is a tendency in the heart to contract around it, to cling to it, to try to hold, perpetuate or recreate it time after time. Even when we intellectually know that this is folly, the heart cannot help itself. But the guerrilla yogi understands that these experiences arise because of the existence of certain conditions also understands that it is untenable to hold this ground once those conditions change, and will not be attached to it. It will not risk defeat based on this attachment. This is the true freedom of vipassana: not the maintenance of any particular state, but the mind that finds freedom everywhere because it is not attached to anything anywhere being a certain way.
One of the best examples of this kind of agility in the cannon is from the Uppalavaṇṇā Sutta, where the Bhikkhuni Uppalavaṇṇā demonstrates her incredible versatility to Mara in an expression of classic guerrilla training,
Then bhikkhuni Uppalavaṇṇā, having understood,
“This is Mara the Evil One,” replied to him in verses:
Though a hundred thousand rogues
Just like you might come here,
I stir not a hair, I feel no terror;
Even alone, Mara, I don’t fear you.
I can make myself disappear
Or I can enter inside your belly.
I can stand between your eyebrows
Yet you won’t catch a glimpse of me.
I am the master of my own mind,
The bases of power are well developed;
I am freed from every kind of bondage,
Therefore I don’t fear you, friend.
Then Mara the Evil One, realizing,
“The bhikkhuni Uppalavaṇṇā knows me,”
sad and disappointed, disappeared right there.
It is this mobility and non-attachment to tactic which expresses the fulfillment of the training — of complete mastery and the destruction of defilement without the need of anger or hatred. When Uppalavaṇṇā finally addresses Mara as “friend” we are struck by the profound totality of her accomplishment: a mind infused with love and wisdom even for the greatest enemy.
There are many dimensions to what we might consider the mental versatility of attention: its direction, its scope, its flavor, its intensity, its motivating intention. For most people, intense energy (viriya) simply cannot be aroused all of the time, at least not in a balanced way that doesn’t ultimately support the propagation of defilements. Not only is constant intensity not possible, it is not helpful. Intense pressure tends to actually dull the mind, make it less precise because we can never push the mind to the speed of reality. A relaxed mind naturally arises and passes at the speed of reality. The forced effort of striving, often rooted in wanting or aversion — and therefore leaning into some future moment — will actually undermine its deepest potential. Our effort is better spend attuning to and being mindful of whatever energy level is actually present — that has currently arisen — and exploring it and learning about it rather than forcing it to match an ideal or ambition.
In a real sense maximum disorder was our equilibrium.
~ T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Sometimes this means a kind of inner “down-shifting” to meet the actuality of experience rather than stepping on the gas to reach a higher gear that you are ambitious to achieve. Straining for a higher energy level will often lead to frustration, cultivating hate or desire, or over-exuberance that gets in the way of clear-seeing. Sometimes intentionally letting the mind wander can help us find our way down to a lower gear that actually matches what can click the mind into fruitful engagement.
Newcombe had constant difficulties owing to excess of zeal, and his habit of doing four times more than any other Englishman would do: ten times what the Arabs thought needful or wise… ‘Newcombe is like fire,’ they used to complain; ‘he burns friend and enemy.’
~ T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
In this way the guerrilla method is fundamentally a training in equanimity (upekkha) because we are learning each moment not to be attached to any object, to any experience, to see the equal worthiness of all experience of being known and investigated as well as the equal unworthiness of all experience of being attached to, and can relate to them all with these beautiful qualities of mindfulness and concentration. Because equanimity is the doorway to enlightenment, we see how this approach is utterly practical and has the final goal always at its heart.
At times and over time our versatility in a wider range of experience becomes evident. We can find ourselves capable of engaging in intense experiences of pain, grief, or anger in very stable and fruitful ways. When we do engage with more difficult targets, we must recall one of the most basic mottos for a guerrilla insurgency: only engage in the battles you are confident you can win.
This means we may well run from more battles than we engage. The overzealous and naive fighter will rush headlong into any battle — blinded by their lust for glory and greatness — and be easily vanquished by the enemy, putting their own lives at unnecessary risk but also the lives of their compatriots. The guerrilla yogi is unique in understanding that humility is a development factor to our progress, that once we learn how to engage the enemy we might spend the majority of our time learning to avoid or escape their strength. This is a particular and essential aspect to this campaign of liberation and one that is not taught in almost any of our traditional teachings.
The enemy is numerically superior and better armed than the Guerrilla Army. Guerrilla units must overcome this disadvantage by knowing when to concentrate their forces and when to disperse them. They must concentrate their forces, by linking up with other units and by reinforcements, when the enemy is in a weak position and can be attacked. They must disperse forces when confronted by large confrontations of enemy units, when there is danger of encirclement, and where the terrain is unfavourable.
~ Kwame Nkrumah, The Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare
When we hear that the Buddha sat down one day at the foot of the Bodhi tree and made the determination to finally get free, we can be inspired to of the same and make a similar determination. But this inspiration is naive. Why set ourselves up for failure? The Buddha had been training and preparing the ground for this liberation for innumerable lifetimes. We don’t know where we are in that process over the vast fields of space and time. Best to be ambitious yet humble so that when we do decide to sit down and make that final determination, we will be ready to fulfill the promise of our training.
Don’t be a warrior dead from lack of fear.
~Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche
There is no ultimate refuge outside of our own wisdom, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have or use bases. Until the war is over we will need places of rest and comfort, relaxation and rejuvenation, where we do not always feel at war. One can only feel at war on so many fronts for so long before the heart gets weary and embittered — leading to hardness, desertion, or betrayal. In a universe defined by instability, it is of fundamental importance to have places of temporary refuge. These bases can be our primary target objects in practice. They can be our sense of Self. The Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha are the most classic examples of refuge that we can take as Buddhists. They can also be temporary respites from the training. There are a multitude of other bases, places of spiritual and material refuge, that provide us rest and a sense of renewal, that give us shelter, sanctuary, and a sense of safety during this long journey.
We cannot underestimate the value of rest: in our primary base, or taking a shower, of basic comforts, for the process of regeneration. But these bases are abandoned as needed, let go of when attacked, because we have deeper and deeper faith in our ability to find them again when they are available and other phenomena have passed. We don’t try to hold it but we can keep coming back to it, deepening our relationship to it over time, eventually making ourselves more impervious to attack.
We can, however, establish small bases of a seasonal or temporary nature. This we can do because our barbaric enemy simply does not have the manpower to occupy all the areas he has overrun and because the population of China is so numerous that a base can be established anywhere.
~ Mao Zedong, Guerrilla Warfare
Over time we do develop the ability to fix our concentration on one object for longer periods, holding greater “real estate.” The process of created liberated zones is a slow one, developed over time. But we also know that this doesn’t matter — that we can and will great achieve success with or without it, depending upon conditions. In fact, we can create a temporary base in anger, terror, or sadness and this is the ultimate truth of liberation: not a fixed state of unchanging bliss but a dynamism of equilibrium that is not threatened by any changing condition. Any verified experience of this provides the greatest faith in the guerrilla yogi.
They were as unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail.
~ T.E. Lawrence
[1] The others are hardly stone-like and include: faith (saddha), mindfulness (sati), moral shame (hiri), moral dread (ottapa), non-craving (alobha), non-hatred (adosa), and equanimity (tatra-majjhattatā) as well as the right action (samma kammanta), right speach (samma vaca), and right livelihood (samma ajiva) and the two (appamanna cetasikas) (appamann) and compassion (karuna) (pañña)
Click here for Chapter 5 (Distrust: Suspicion /Investigation)
Click here for Chapter 3 (Contact: Aim / Attack / Harass)
