Insurgent Heart: A Vipassana Manual for the Guerrilla Yogi — {5}
Distrust: Suspicion / Investigation
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 5 ~
Distrust: Suspicion / Investigation
At the beginning, do not trust your own shadow, never trust friendly peasants, informers, guides, or contact men. Do not trust anything or anybody until a zone is completely liberated. Vigilance: constant guard and scouting, setting up camp in a safe spot, and above all, never sleep with a roof over your head, never sleep in a house that can be surrounded. This was a synthesis of our guerrilla experience…
~ Ernesto Che Guevara, Episodes of the Revolutionary War
Occupying French forces, frustrated by the brazen and seemingly unrestrained activity of Krim Belkacem during the Algerian war of Independence, schemed to create “Force K” — a counter-insurgency unit designed to bring Krim to heel. Force K was made up of Kabyle people whose long-standing tensions with Arab neighbors the French hoped to exploit. But immediately after Force K’s creation, Krim infiltrated its leadership and overtook their command. Instead of debilitating the revolutionary National Liberation Front (FLN), Force K passed information and weapons to FLN units while disseminating disinformation to the French. Eventually, the members of Force K revealed their true allegiance and disappeared into the desert.
French forces in Waliya 4 came up with another scheme to use a man named Kobus as an anti-guerrilla operative in FLN controlled territory. Even though Kobus remained loyal to his French handlers, FLN leaders made it look as if he orchestrated a number of actions against the French, thus dismantling their confidence in Kobus and exposing him for eventual assassination by the FLN.
Over the course of eight years of war, the FLN were themselves victims of numerous disinformation campaigns — and not always from the French. Arab traitors were easy targets for the FLN and were often treated much worse than the French enemy themselves. Internal power struggles within the liberation movement led to a number of underhanded and cold-blooded power-plays that resulted in the death of many comrades.
An unfortunate reality of any revolutionary campaign is the general orientation of distrust that must be at the center of all planning and action. At the beginning of a mobilization, the revolutionary organization is too frail to chance being betrayed parties naively perceived to be friends. Later, as the enemy’s response gets more sophisticated, tactics of espionage and psychological warfare will be used against the rebels to sow discord and distrust within its leadership. Any revolutionary organization must therefore be grounded in an ethic of suspicion, practices of secrecy, and structured in such a way as to prevent any betrayals from infecting the larger organization. Utmost care must be taken to protect the development of the movement according to its own internal integrity.
The human mind is an incredible tool for identifying things, learning relationships between things, and creating conceptual frameworks that make sense of the world — around and within us — in order to navigate it effectively. When a child learns, this is a shoe, this is a bus, this is mom, this is me they slowly gain the shared reference points between us that allow us to negotiate our lives in society. We also learn and integrate aspects of things that are important: This is safe, this is poisonous, this is delicious, this is dangerous, this is useful for this. While this is an essential and powerful aspect of education and socialization it also forms a relationship to things in which knowing becomes fixed and our view of things solidified.
Once we think we know something we generally cease to be interested in it beyond our desire for its increase, decrease, or stasis. We stop exploring it. We hold a static view of the way things are. By the time we are adults, many of these views are not based on direct experience but on compounded notions, on conditioned reasoning, on fragments of information the mind has trained to reconstruct in specific ways. We begin to live more in the conceptual than the actual — more in our heads than in our bodies — so that our views stop being formed or informed from direct experience and instead on the layers and momentum of conceptual coherence that builds in the mind. I am this. You are this. These people are like this. This is good. This is bad. This is wrong. This is right. We hold the world — and ourselves — prisoner to our views. Even if these views happen to be true, they are conventionally true but not ultimately so. The same process that brings us into functional relationship with reality becomes our deepest defense against it. It entirely upends the function of concept in the mind. Our friend becomes our enemy. As a child we believe what we see. As adults we only see what we believe.
We can recognize the power of this inversion immediately when we begin our meditation practice. Rather than observe the sensations of rising and falling of the abdomen, the mind wanders in thought. When the mind does direct its attention to the breath, it is often a visual image of the belly that we observe, or our ideas about it, but not the direct sensations themselves. When we try to observe the hand, it is our memory of the hand we often see, our notions about it, not the sensations of tingling or warmth that are actually happening in the present moment.
Over time we come to appreciate the degree to which we live imprisoned by ideas about who we are — afraid of death, rejection, pain — and that we likewise keep the world around us imprisoned by those same anxieties and compulsions. We have become much more comfortable in the terrain of concept than in the terrain of reality, and this disorientation and reorientation is often a very slow and careful aspect of training of the revolutionary mind, requiring determination, patience, and investigative distrust.
Intelligence information must be broad — it must embrace everything, including the most insignificant material. There is a technique of obtaining information, and the urban guerrilla must master it. Following this technique, intelligence information is obtained naturally, as a part of the life of the people.
~Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla
An essential part of the process of investigative distrust is that we must be skeptical about what we think about things — our opinions about phenomena but also our perceptions of what these phenomena actually are. Our habit toward delusion is so strong that our interpretation of every moment must be suspect. As we combat the tendency to believe in notions as ultimate truth — in perceptions as reality — we must develop a practice of general distrust toward all that we observe.
Do not try and bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth…there is no spoon. Then you will see it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.
~ Spoon Boy, The Matrix
Most of the time we are not observing very clearly. Perhaps we are observing something but not all the aspects of it, or not in intense detail. Because of this we are tricked into believing a thing is a thing when in fact it is often, largely, another thing altogether, or even nothing at all. In order to strengthen our meditation practice, the guerrilla yogi must become increasingly sensitive and diligent about distinguishing between 1) what we believe to be true; 2) what we want to be true; and 3) what we know is true because we have experienced it directly. Most people blend these categories together seamlessly. But because we cannot always trust our degree of clear-seeing or of interpretation, the guerrilla yogi comes to be less and less sure about more and more of what they observe. Our need to lock things up into conceptual knowings, boxes, limitations, is also diminished. We become interested in reality on its own terms, not dedicated to our opinions or practicing meditation in order to shore up and strengthen our old stale views,
Having abandoned what is taken up, not clinging,
One does not create dependency even on knowledge.
Not taking sides among those who are divided,
One does not fall back on any view at all.For one who has no wish here for either end,
For various states of existence here or beyond,
There are no places of residence at all
Grasped after deciding among teachings.Not even a subtle notion is formulated by him
About what is seen, heard, or sensed here.
How could anyone here in the world categorize him,
That brahmin who does not cling to any view?They do not construct, they have no preferences;
Even the teachings are not embraced by them.
~ Buddha, Paramatthaka Sutta
Some people will believe that this notion of distrust sounds too negative. In practice it is not. The mind is fooled over and over again by objects — by its own delusion as to the true nature of things. It doesn’t recognize that a stump is really a land mine, that this sweet thing is really a booby trap, and so our lack of suspicion has painful consequences.
In its purest form, this distrust is merely carefulness (appamada) that seeks our own well-being and the well being of others. It is not uptight or controlling, it is merely careful: Careful about trusting any sense-object, careful about trusting the mind’s response, about the tendency to fall back on views and expectation. As we engage in a deepening degree of unknowing curiosity, the purity of our investigation is heightened, our sense of awe and wonder increased, the ease of our mind amplified. We generally confine the world in the bondage of our minds — this is this, that is that — and in that clenching our minds are equally shackled. When we are able to accept the power of our fabrications and recognize the fact that we don’t really know what we are seeing, who we are, what is really going on, only then are we able to actually explore and learn.
By whatever means, the sources of information at the disposal of the urban guerrilla are potentially better than those of the police. The enemy is observed by the people, but he does not know who among the people transmits information to the urban guerrillas. The military and the police are hated by the people for the injustices and violence they have committed, and this facilitates obtaining information which is damaging to the activities of government agents.
~ Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla
When we are engaged in a more pleasurable period of meditation, something simple may change — our concentration or energy will dissipate, for example — and we won’t have immediately realized it. We become frustrated, grasping more firmly onto the experience which is actually gone and not recognizing the new conditions, new phenomena, which have presented themselves. We are often left invisibly grasping at past pleasant experience without knowing it until we are in a full scale war with reality. When we are suspicious from the beginning of our own doubt, aversion, confidence, or view, we loosen the grip of conditions on our sense of peace.
A guerrilla yogi cannot underestimate the value that even a few moments of clear-seeing has on the power to transform our understanding of the world. Our expectations can be much higher than that, hoping that a period of clarity will last for hours or days or forever. But the conditions that lead to a powerful experience of clear seeing are often only in perfect balance for a short time — perhaps just a few moments. Sometimes these balanced conditions can last for longer periods, but until we have completely uprooted greed, hatred, and ignorance they will always fall apart.
VEDANA — THE HIDDEN OBJECT
Very often our entrapment comes from not seeing the quality of vedana, feeling tone, of a target. This is understandable because vedana is very hard to distinguish from the object itself. Seeing vedana clearly requires the arousal of very refined mental forces so it is not always going to be directly evident. Sometimes it needs to be inferred from a more gross mind state that has arisen or a more entangled pattern we find ourselves in. Either way, it is essential to remember that it is there and important to begin to get a sense of it: the faint whiff of vedana in the air clues us into the fact that a process of seduction or repulsion is beginning. Soon we may start to see the way in which vedana is like a hidden object, a booby trap, profoundly affecting our experience without us knowing.
We may notice a painful sensation in the knee, for example, but not initially be aware of our sense of aversion toward it. We may try to stay focused on observing the sensations in the knee, but find ourselves more and more upset. Mental anguish, perhaps even hopelessness, has become the predominant sensation but we do not see it. We think the painful physical sensations are what are most challenging and so we keep trying to watch those. But it is a mental experience — dukkha vedana — in response to the physical sensation which has become predominant and we don’t know how to observe it. From that, dependent upon that not-seeing, deeper mental pain arises. As long as we keep pressing to stay focused on the physical sensation, the mental hardship grows in strength outside the frame of our attention.
But if we are able to note the unpleasant quality, dukkha vedana, of the physical sensations we have a doorway to recognizing aversion. If we can to this, we open to the spectrum of emotional activity that may be involved, and while it will not make any of them pleasant, it will give us the possibility of trying to be with the range of physical and mental sensations more calmly and clearly. This is a classic capacity of dexterity of the guerrilla yogi that is lost when we approach the object with dull force.
The same can happen with a pleasurable experience, sukha vedana. Sitting at our window we might hear a beautiful bird song outside. We might cherish that sound — become enamored with it — and feel disappointment when the bird flies away. We imagine that if we put a bird-feeder outside our window we could listen this song more consistently. When we place the feeder outside it attracts the bird we love but it also attracts birds we don’t like and squirrels that scare away our cherished bird. So we decide to capture the bird and put it in a cage in our home. Now we have the pleasant song at all hours. But the bird does not thrive in a cage. Because of its loneliness and confinement, it stops eating and dies. Perhaps, if unheedful, we will go out to capture another one, and when it dies, another.
Or perhaps we will be mindful enough to acknowledge that in our craving for sense-pleasure we were responsible for the death of another being. We might seriously reflect on the process that unfolded, see its pitfalls and be careful not to do it again. Without the distrusting edge to our mindfulness, we cannot see clearly what is motivating our actions and so cause harm. We were responsible for this birdʻs death and we created agitation in our own minds. There is a tension, a constriction that develops in the mind which is always seeking to control conditions, to maintain our hold on these pleasant experiences. At any step of that process, mindful distrust could have stopped us from creating more harm.
If we acknowledged our own mental entrapment when the bird died, we would feel a healthy sense of moral shame (hiri) and moral dread (ottapa): remorse for our actions and a strong desire not to cause harm again in the future. In English, these words — shame and dread — can have a heavy connotation. In the Buddha’s teaching it is clear we are not encouraged to live our lives under a grinding cloud of shame. The self-centered quagmire of guilt is the last place a guerrilla yogi wants to find themselves bogged down. But a certain degree of remorse in relationships to our unwholesome actions and their consequences is considered healthy, essential in fact, to directing our volitional energy along the path of our moral compass.
You look at me with a smile and ask: What is gained by that? No revolution is made out of shame. I reply: Shame is already a revolution of a kind… Shame is a kind of anger which is turned inward. And if a whole nation really experienced a sense of shame, it would be like a lion, crouching ready to spring.
~ Karl Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge
If, earlier at the bird-feeder, we noticed that our mind suffered when the unpleasant birds arrived or when the pleasant bird flew away, we would have seen the pettiness of it and not bought-in to the fragile happiness it offered: dependent upon keeping the pleasant and rejecting the unpleasant. If we were mindful of the mental fantasy of a cage — of control based on desire — we could have stopped the physical action of capture. If we carefully noted just as the bird’s song first made contact with our ears, and hearing-consciousness arose, we could have noticed the pleasant quality, noticed the enjoyment of it, noticed the pain of our heart’s contraction around the experience — the pain of wanting — and in feeling it fully let it dissipate right away on its own. We wouldn’t want the pain of holding on to this ethereal thing.
If the mind was perfectly still and the awareness of hearing arose in our consciousness, we could simply add a mental note to our experience, “Oh, hearing… hearing…pleasant…” and let the sound pass away and the pleasure pass away, ready for the next experience to arise without a hint of grasping. This is the peace that comes from suspicion of objects. It is the peace that stops projecting our happiness or sadness on experiences in the undependable world around us but understands that our liberation or suffering actually comes from the actions of our own mind.
If everything is noted, all your emotional difficulties will disappear. When you feel happy, don’t get involved in happiness. When you feel sad, don’t get involved with it. Whatever comes, don’t worry, just be aware of it.
~ Dipa Ma
Mindful suspicion keeps us interested and engaged: we can’t trust our initial view but we want to find out what is really going on so we look more closely. It is entirely different than the hindrance of cynical doubt (vicikicchā). Doubt disengages us, inclines us to dismiss. I can’t do this. This is stupid. These teachers don’t know what they are talking about. Doubt is often disguised in reasoning that is entirely logical and our view becomes quite settled on it. But this disregarding is reckless and is an impulse we must be most careful with. In fact, distrust of doubt is one of the most important suspicions we can engage and will save our practice from derailment on countless occasions.
If carefulness (appamada) is a primary motivator of our suspicion, the mental factor of investigation (dhamma vicaya) is its primary tool, the mechanism by which it operates. We must be genuinely interested in whatever experience we are observing in order to see it clearly, and this is much harder than it may seem. It is why merely “paying attention” is not enough to qualify as true mindfulness. Over time we must humbly begin to see how very little of our investigation is actually very purely motivated. Unwittingly subject to the stream of vedana, much of our attention toward objects is instinctually designed to augment the pleasurable ones and rid ourselves of the unpleasant ones — that is, entirely motivated by the craving and aversion we are trying to uproot.
This is why physical stillness in neutral postures is so strongly encouraged in the practice: we have to bear the relentless impulses of the mind to constantly move the body, to adjust, to make more comfortable. Sometimes, often even, it is good to admit we are not totally free and allow ourselves to move. This is an act of kindness and compassion and we shoudl receive it as such. But this internal honesty and kind-hearted permission is significantly different than the controlled process of something like asana yoga, where the posture is manipulated in order to stretch the mind into acceptance, or tai chi, where energy is moved about to create a perfect state of balance — or any number of spiritual practices where concentration — in the form of unification of mind and body — is confused with the wisdom generated by investigation.
These practices claim to be “embodied” but in most cases they actually keep people trapped in a ceaseless need to keep manipulating the body — or the energetics of the body — to feel good, and to keep our awareness out of the body’s true uncontrollable and undependable nature. True embodied freedom is the powerful and subtle awareness of the relentless stream of physical experience that is flowing entirely out of our control. It is only through this awareness that we can be free while in discomfort, in disability, or while dying. The body will ultimately fail us. There will be knots we cannot work out, dysfunctions that will only grow. We must care for the body profoundly but never trick ourselves into thinking we can save or perfect it. If all we ever learn to do is adjust and manipulate it, we will never learn to die honorably. The guerrilla yogi practices birth, life, sickness, death, and decomposition in every moment.
Other practices try to avoid these truths with the mind as well: falling into the trap of the powerful tendency to identify with a “greater self.” We know we cannot trust the little sense of “I, me, mine” but that does not mean that we believe that we are the big sense either: the “All” or “Loving Awareness” or that there is a greater all-encompassing “Self” or “Consciousness” that we become absorbed into — the “Witness” or even an eternal “God.” These are all still fantasies of identity view that the Buddha was at war with: new oppressive regimes disguised as freedom.
Mind arises and passes away with each moment. It arises again because of the momentum of conditions of past action. Anywhere we try to identify, try to land as the foundation of being, even in a “greater self” is wrong view. There is no essential Self, within or beyond the body, in space or time. This is anatta and it is primary and essential and should be the basic standard by which we hold all views of me and mine with the deepest suspicion. The Self is a spasm that arises in relationship to phenomena based on ignorance of their changeable, undependable nature. Consciousness is just as unstable and undependable as any other phenomena — and arises and passes away in dependence with them: “The Self is dead! Long live the Self!”
Other spiritual practices may be exceptionally beautiful and powerful and carry a variety of benefits. But the guerrilla yogi must always ask themself if they are truly designed for the same disenchantment and release that the find in the Buddha’s dhamma? Very few are. That does not mean that they are bad, that we cannot benefit from them, or that we cannot respectfully engage in them. But we must do so clear-eyed, without unproven faith or belief in their efficacy for our ultimate liberation. Stretching can be of incredible benefit. So can taking a nap. Or riding your bicycle. While they can all be done mindfully, we shouldn’t confuse their philosophical frameworks with vipassana or the teachings of the Buddha. We should be skeptical about the underlying pressures on the mind in those activities that lead the experiences to be at odds with liberation, that reaffirm patterns of control and fantasy.
In fact, the guerrilla yogi should be just as suspicious of our motivation for our own vipassana practice as any other. We must be entirely skeptical even of the impulse of the mind to observe. We think that bringing the attention to an object is vipassana, but if the motivation of the mind is to get more of or get rid of we are undermining our own efforts. Most yogis will be humbled to see that the majority of their efforts to observe phenomena are tainted by grasping: trying to get concentrated, get insight, get wisdom or trying to get rid of discomfort, get rid of mind-states, get rid of the self. None of these are genuine interest — they are a false aim and a betrayal of our cause — but at least vipassana has the underlying framework to see these patterns skeptically.
So often people approach this path as if it is going to turn them into the fantasy version of themselves: more effective, more productive; a better leader, parent, child, friend, lover; and that it is going to heal our relationships, in effect make us and our lives more perfect. But the path mostly does the opposite: helps us get more and more at ease with the imperfections of ourselves and the world and the folly and ignorance at the root of trying to control everything, everyone — including ourselves. We will get nothing out of this path. And that nothing will be an unfathomable relief. In the process we will have all of the hope slowly ground out of us so that in the end, all that is left is a mind polished smooth like a shell.
There is a famous taoist story from Chuang Tzu that talks about a master carpenter and his apprentice who in their wanderings come upon a giant oak tree in the center of a village. The tree provided shade and protection for people at rest, in meditation, eating lunch, for family outings, profound conversations and intense arguments. The caring center of community life. When they walk past the tree without taking a second look, the apprentice is astonished. “Since I first took up my ax and followed you, Master, I have never seen timber as beautiful as this. But you don’t even bother to look, and go right on without stopping. Why is that?”
“Forget it — say no more!” said the carpenter. “It’s a worthless tree! Make boats out of it and they’d sink; make coffins and they’d rot in no time; make vessels and they’d break at once. Use it for doors and it would sweat sap like pine; use it for posts and the worms would eat them up. It’s not a timber tree — it is useless! That’s how it got to be that old!”
We ourselves think that we are working to make ourselves a tree with perfect grain — useful to all the plans and objectives of the status quo, to fit in and thrive in samsara. But we fail to see that it was through the great and manifold honest imperfections of the tree that it grew into this force that could provide such shade and protection for so many other beings. This is the practice of the guerrilla yogi — not the perfection of the self but the understanding of the self and through this understanding and dismantling of our prejudices and beliefs around it come to free the heart from all its fixations and obsessions.
This is all the more true for the hardest of knots and entanglements in our hearts. When a tree is wounded the scar tissue that builds around the wound is warped and dense, entangled and entwined, as it slowly forms a burl on the side of the trunk. These burls are frustratingly hard to work with, to carve, with their ironlike grain so wildly confusing. But they are considered the jewels of woodworking because the result of our efforts makes the most beautiful bowls, with the most glorious swirled grain. Do we relate to our own wounded places with that same reverence? Can we even imagine that they are not obstacles but our primary doorways to understanding? Will we take the time to understand the grain of the scars that have built up around our most wounded places so as to reveal the deep beauty that lies within?
So many of our attempts at relieving our suffering actually engage us in the same processes that feed it in the first place. We must always ask ourselves, can we truly be interested in something we are trying to control? On one hand, the mind needs to be reined in to some degree, its energies channeled, its capacity emboldened. But if in our process of concentration we stifle its wildness, its aliveness, we lose the relationship of interest that is the heart of our practice. We lose our doorway to freedom and without interest in the mind, we lose the relationship to care for it genuinely and to develop the compassion for all other beings that relentlessly go through the same turmoil.
DISENCHANTMENT
The guerrilla yogi need not only be suspicious of each target, but of their relationship to each target. Because the mind has not been properly trained — and simply doesn’t know any better — it will long for stability and satisfaction and seek to find stable footing in the quicksand of ephemeral phenomena. This powerful longing to find satisfaction, refuge, comfort in that which can never ultimately provide it cannot be overcome by willpower or decision. It can only be uprooted by insight, through experiential knowledge of the toxicity of hope. We must be honest about our heart’s investment in the arising or cessation of future experiences. We must be willing to see and experience the pain of hope and witness what a prison this is for our selves and for the world.
It is through investigation that we learn the true nature of phenomena, and thus become disenchanted by them. Through disenchantment we lose the expectations of fulfillment. Unbound from these preconceptions of experience, we are freed. This process of disenchantment with phenomena, with people, with life is an essential aspect of the path of liberation and one that most of us are deeply conditioned to resist. We see hope as an angel, but in reality it is just wanting dressed as an angel. We are invested in other people’s behavior. But as long as our happiness is dependent upon other peoples’ behavior we will never be happy. We are invested in the world being one way or another. But if we can only be free when all others are free, we will never be free.
One might worry that this disenchantment is a kind of despondency, but it isn’t. As we understand the word “disenchantment” in a common sense, it is accompanied by a kind of grief. But in the context of the Dhamma, letting go of hope and of expectation — of the delusion of satisfaction from sense objects — is a profound relief. We are liberated through disenchantment, released from the prison of expectation. We no longer lean into the future with hope for satisfaction, we have found relief in reality, “security in renunciation.”
Not harsh, not greedy, not perturbed, everywhere in tune: this is the reward — I say when asked — for those who are free from pre-conceptions. For one unperturbed — who understands — there is no accumulating. Abstaining, unaroused, they see security everywhere. The sage doesn’t speak of himself as among those who are higher, equal, or lower. At peace, free of selfishness, they do not cling, do not reject.
~ Buddha, Attadanda Sutta
We don’t need to beat ourselves up for feeling hope — for having expectation. That would be counter-productive, creating an aversion to hope which is not freedom at all. It is a recipe for authoritarian dogmatic rule in the name of the revolution. Of course we hope. It is not a sickness but a symptom. Instead, we must relate to our mental contractions with clarity and compassion, understanding that the mind longs for happiness and simply does not have the development yet to naturally abandon these impulses safely, to see the futility in the notion of satisfaction through sense-experience which is inherently unstable and unsatisfying.
Slowly the mind tires of the fabrications, tires of the conjuring, and feels more and more secure in the unmanipulated flow of experience. It sees the danger of each formation like a grenade in its hand. When the heart finally tires of explosion after explosion it will release each moment on its own. Trying to prevent the mind from clinging is just another form of clinging and so another win for Mara. In the process we must allow for the rhythm of release and contraction to proceed in its own conditioned way — and commit to watching it closely, seeking to understand. This process of allowing the opening and closing of the heart is actually much harder than the behavior modification that is so deeply engrained in us.
We must be skeptical about our assumptions, our erroneous views, and be hesitant about landing on one side of a paradox or another. Some people insist that the path is all effort. Others that it is all effortless. Why choose between the two? Why not approach each moment with the full range of skills at our disposal based on what we observe? This is a fundamental principle of a guerrilla yogi.
…the quick intelligence that constantly watches the ever-changing situation and is able to seize on the right moment for decisive action is found only in keen and thoughtful observers.
~ Mao Zedong, Guerrilla Warfare
One of the most significant adjustments we can come to make in our practice is in regards to what we think of as “deep” and ‘shallow.” Even if we have been told in countless stories though the ages of people coming to awaken through every-day experiences, we still tend to engage our practice in a way that is trying to “go deep,” trying to make something exciting and foreign happen — all based on a false idea that what is on the surface is not deep, and that profound experiences are things that are extraordinary and unfamiliar.
We must be suspicious of all of our instinctive methods of measurement and evaluation but our suspicion should not be tense. It should be relaxed. It should be infused with affection. It should pervade us so profoundly that we are completely un-agitated. When we have no expectation of what is next, about the threat of benefit a particular object has in store for us, we go about calmly.
In this process we come to realize that the greatest enemy is not outside of us, but inside, and that we have the power to overcome it. Not only that, but all the basic weapons we need to win are already within us. They simply need training.
Soon, the impulse to project our fear or anger or fantasy on others or on phenomena outside of ourselves begins to noticeably weaken. When we stop establishing our hopes for fulfillment onto the unstable conditions around us we gain the power to overcome this pain through wisdom. Then we act out of clarity and kindness, unattached to the outcome of our endeavors because of the faith we have in the righteousness of each action. The path to freedom becomes clear and trustworthy, if only just begun.
Observation, investigation, reconnaissance, and exploration of the terrain are also excellent sources of information. The urban guerrilla never goes anywhere absentmindedly and without revolutionary precaution, always on the alert lest something occurs. Eyes and ears open, senses alert, his memory is engraved with everything necessary, now or in the future, to the continued activity of the guerrilla fighter.
~ Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla
Chapter 6 Coming October 1st!
Click here for Chapter 4 (Distrust: Suspicion / Investigation)
I hope you have enjoyed what you have read so far!
