Tag Archives: #Onkwehonweneha

A war­rior lives by act­ing, not by think­ing about act­ing, nor by think­ing about what he will think when he has fin­ished acting.

When­ever a war­rior decides to do some­thing, he must go all the way. But, he must take respon­si­bil­ity for what he does. No mat­ter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must pro­ceed with his actions with­out hav­ing doubts or remorse about them.

A war­rior takes respon­si­bil­ity for his acts; for the most triv­ial of his acts. An aver­age man acts out his thoughts and never takes respon­si­bil­ity for what he does.

There is no empti­ness in the life of a war­rior. Every­thing is filled to the brim. Every­thing is filled to the brim and every­thing is equal.

A war­rior goes to knowl­edge as he goes to war; wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute-assurance. Going to knowl­edge or going to war in any other man­ner is a mis­take, and who­ever makes it might never live to regret it. —- When a man has ful­filled all four of these req­ui­sites – to be awake, to have fear, respect, and absolute-assurance – there are no mis­takes for which he will have to account, under such con­di­tions his actions lose the blun­der­ing qual­ity of the acts of a fool. If such a man fails, or suf­fers defeat, he will have only lost a bat­tle, and there will be no piti­ful regrets over that.

Dwelling upon the self too much pro­duces a ter­ri­ble fatigue. A man in that posi­tion is deaf and blind to every­thing else. The fatigue, itself, makes him cease to see the mar­vels all around him.

To be angry at peo­ple means that one con­sid­ers their acts to be (too) impor­tant. It is imper­a­tive to cease to feel that way. The acts of men can­not be impor­tant enough to off­set our only viable alter­na­tive: our unchange­able encounter with infinity.

The things that peo­ple do can­not, under any con­di­tions, be more impor­tant than what they are or more impor­tant than the world. And thus, a war­rior treats the world and peo­ple as an end­less mys­tery; and what peo­ple do as an end­less folly.

Any­thing is one of a mil­lion paths. There­fore, a war­rior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not fol­low it, he must not stay with it under any con­di­tions. His deci­sion to keep on that path or to leave must be free of fear or ambi­tion. He must look at every path closely and delib­er­ately. There is a ques­tion that a war­rior must ask, manda­to­rily: Does this path have a heart? – All paths are the same; they lead to now’here. How­ever, a path with­out heart is never enjoy­able, nor can it pre­pare one for the encounter with infin­ity. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy – it does make a war­rior work with all his might, but it does not make a war­rior work a lik­ing it. It makes for a joy­ful jour­ney; and as long as a man fol­lows it, he is one with it.

There is world of hap­pi­ness where there is no dif­fer­ence between things because there is no one to ask about the dif­fer­ence. But, that is not the world of men. Some men have the van­ity to believe that they live in two worlds, but it is only their van­ity. There is but one sin­gle world for us. We are men, and must fol­low, for now, the world of men contentedly.

A man has four nat­ural ene­mies; fear, clar­ity, power, and old age. Fear, clar­ity, and power can be over­come, but not old age. Its effects can be post­poned, but it can never be overcome.

A war­rior knows that he is only a man. His only regret is that his life is so short that he can’t grab onto all the things that he would like to. But for him, this is not an issue; it is only a pity.

Feel­ing impor­tant makes one heavy, clumsy, and vain. To be a war­rior, one needs to be light and fluid.

The most effec­tive way to live is as a war­rior. A war­rior may worry and think before mak­ing a deci­sion, but once he makes it, he goes on his way; free from wor­ries or thoughts. There will be a mil­lion other deci­sions still await­ing him. That is the warrior’s way.

A war­rior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tem­pers our spirit.

A war­rior must know that his acts are use­less, and yet, he must pro­ceed as if he didn’t know it. This is a warrior’s con­trolled folly. [Like Solomon’s vanity]

The aver­age man is either vic­to­ri­ous or defeated and, depend­ing on that, he becomes a per­se­cu­tor or a vic­tim. These two con­di­tions are preva­lent as long as one does not “see”. See­ing dis­pels the illu­sion of vic­tory, defeat, or suffering.

When a man embarks on the war­riors’ path, he becomes aware, in a grad­ual man­ner, that ordi­nary life has been left for­ever behind. The means of the ordi­nary world are no longer a buffer for him; and he must adopt a new way of life if he is going to survive.

Only the idea of death makes a war­rior suf­fi­ciently detached so that he is capa­ble of aban­don­ing him­self to any­thing. He knows his death is stalk­ing him and won’t give him time to cling to any­thing. So he tries, with­out crav­ing, all of everything.

The spirit of a war­rior is not geared to indulging and com­plain­ing, nor is it geared to win­ning or los­ing. The spirit of a war­rior is geared only to strug­gle, and every strug­gle is a warrior’s last bat­tle on earth. Thus the out­come mat­ters there lit­tle to him. In his last bat­tle on earth, a war­rior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages bat­tle, know­ing that his intent is impec­ca­ble, the war­rior laughs and laughs.

When noth­ing is for sure, we remain alert, peren­ni­ally on our toes. It is more excit­ing not to know which bush the rab­bit is hid­ing behind, than to behave as though we know every­thing. Other than his death, the war­rior knows that noth­ing on this earth is for sure.

Every time a man sets him­self to learn, he has to labor as hard as any­one can. The lim­its of his learn­ing are deter­mined by his own nature. Fear of knowl­edge is nat­ural; all of us expe­ri­ence it, and there is noth­ing we can do about it. But no mat­ter how fright­en­ing learn­ing is, it is more ter­ri­ble to think of a man with­out knowledge.

We hardly real­ize that we can cut any­thing out of our lives; any­time; in the blink of an eye.

As long as a man feels that he is the most impor­tant thing in the world, he can­not appre­ci­ate the world around him. He is like a horse with blind­ers; all he sees is him­self and he is apart from every­thing else.

In a world where death is the hunter, there is not time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for deci­sions. It doesn’t mat­ter what the deci­sions are. Noth­ing could be more or less seri­ous than any­thing else. In a world where death is the hunter, there are no small or big deci­sions. There are only deci­sions that a war­rior makes in the face of his inevitable death.

Once a man wor­ries, he clings to any­thing out of des­per­a­tion; and once he clings, he is bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whomever or what­ever he is cling­ing to.

For an aver­age man, the world is weird because if he is not bored with it; he is at odds with it. For a war­rior, the world is weird because it is stu­pen­dous, awe­some, mys­te­ri­ous, and unfath­omable. A war­rior must assume respon­si­bil­ity for being here; in this mar­velous place, in this mar­velous time.

A war­rior must focus his atten­tion on the link between him­self and his death. With­out remorse, sad­ness or wor­ry­ing. He must focus his atten­tion on the fact that he does not have time and let his acts flow accord­ingly. He must let each of his acts be his last bat­tle on earth. Only under these con­di­tions will his acts have their right­ful power. Oth­er­wise all actions will be, for as long as a man lives, the acts of a fool.

A man; any man, deserves every­thing that is a man’s lot – joy, pain, sad­ness, and strug­gle. The nature of his acts is unim­por­tant as long as he acts as a war­rior. — If his spirit is dis­torted he should sim­ply fix it – purge it, make it per­fect – because there is no other task in our entire lives, which is more worth­while. Not to fix the spirit is to seek death, and that is the same thing as to seek noth­ing, since death is going to over­take us regard­less of any­thing. To seek to per­fec­tion of the warrior’s spirit is the only task wor­thy of our tem­po­rari­ness and our manhood.

The hard­est thing in the world is to assume the mood of a war­rior. It is of no use to be sad and com­plain and feel jus­ti­fied in doing so, believ­ing that some­one is always doing some­thing to us. Nobody is doing any­thing to any­one, much less to a warrior.

A war­rior is a hunter. He cal­cu­lates every­thing. That’s con­trol. Once his cal­cu­la­tions are over, he acts. He lets go. That’s aban­don. A war­rior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against him­self or against his bet­ter judg­ment. A war­rior is tuned to sur­vive; and he sur­vives in the best of all pos­si­ble fashions.

A war­rior is only a man, a hum­ble man. He can­not change the designs of his death. But, his impec­ca­ble spirit, which has stored power after stu­pen­dous hard­ships, can cer­tainly hold his death for a moment; a moment long enough to let him rejoice for the last time in recall­ing his power. We may say that this is a ges­ture which death has with those who have an impec­ca­ble spirit.

A war­rior doesn’t hold to remorse or place unwar­ranted impor­tance on the self or too much empha­sis on his acts. The trick is what one empha­sizes. We either make our­selves mis­er­able or we make our­selves strong. The amount of work is the same.

The self-confidence of the war­rior is not the self-confidence of the aver­age man. The aver­age man seeks cer­tainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The war­rior seeks impec­ca­bil­ity and calls that hum­ble­ness. The aver­age man is hooked to his fel­low men, while the war­rior is hooked only to infinity.

The inter­nal dia­logue is what grounds peo­ple is their daily world. The world is such and such, or so and so; only because we talk to our­selves about its being such and such, or so and so. The pas­sage­way into the world of the war­rior opens up after a man has learned to shut off his inter­nal dia­logue. When­ever the war­rior learns to stop the inter­nal dia­logue, every­thing becomes pos­si­ble; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.

The hum­ble­ness of a war­rior is not the hum­ble­ness of a beg­gar. The war­rior low­ers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn’t per­mit any­one to lower his head to him. The beg­gar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor for any­one he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that some­one lower than him, scrape the floor for him.

The flaw with words is that they always make us feel enlight­ened, but when we turn and face the world, they always fail us and we end up fac­ing the world as we always have, with­out enlight­en­ment. For this rea­son a war­rior seeks to act rather than to talk, and to this effect, he gets a new descrip­tion of the world—a new descrip­tion where talk­ing is not that impor­tant and where new acts have new reflections.

Knowl­edge is a most pecu­liar affair, espe­cially for a war­rior. Knowl­edge for a war­rior is some­thing that comes at once, engulfs him and passes on. Knowl­edge comes to a war­rior, float­ing; like the dust that cover the wings of a moth. So, for a war­rior, knowl­edge is like tak­ing a shower, or being rained on by specks of gold dust.

The world is unfath­omable. And so are we, and so is every being that exists in this world.

A war­rior must cul­ti­vate the feel­ing that he has every­thing needed for the extrav­a­gant jour­ney that is his life. What counts for a war­rior is being alive. Life in itself is suf­fi­cient, self-explanatory and com­plete. There­fore, one may say with­out being pre­sump­tu­ous that the expe­ri­ence of expe­ri­ences is being alive.

War­riors do not win vic­to­ries by beat­ing their heads against walls, but over­tak­ing the walls. War­riors jump over walls; they do not demol­ish them.

An aver­age man thinks that indulging in doubts and tribu­la­tions is the sign of sen­si­tiv­ity and spir­i­tu­al­ity. The truth of the mat­ter is that the aver­age man is the far­thest thing imag­in­able from being sen­si­tive or spir­i­tual. His puny rea­son delib­er­ately makes itself into a mon­ster or a saint, but he is truth­fully too small for such a big mon­ster or saint role.

To be a war­rior is not a sim­ple mat­ter of wish­ing to be one. It is rather an end­less strug­gle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a war­rior; in exactly the same way that nobody is born an aver­age man. We make our­selves into one or the other.

Human beings are per­ceivers, but the world that they per­ceive is an illu­sion; an illu­sion cre­ated by the descrip­tion that was told to them from the moment that they were born. In essence, the world that their rea­son wants to sus­tain is the world cre­ated by a descrip­tion and it dog­matic and invi­o­lable rules… which their rea­son learns to accept and defend. Their rea­son makes them for­get that a descrip­tion is only a descrip­tion, and before they real­ize it, human beings have entrapped the total­ity of them­selves in a vicious cir­cle from which they rarely emerge in their lifetimes.

Only as a war­rior can one with­stand the path of knowl­edge. A war­rior can­not com­plain or regret any­thing. His life is an end­less chal­lenge, and chal­lenges can­not pos­si­bly be good or bad. Chal­lenges are sim­ply challenges.

The basic dif­fer­ence between a war­rior and an ordi­nary man is that a war­rior takes every­thing as a chal­lenge, while an aver­age man takes every­thing as a bless­ing or a curse.

When one has noth­ing to lose, one becomes coura­geous. We are timid only when there is some­thing we can still cling to.

Any habit needs all of its parts in order to func­tion. If some parts are miss­ing, the habit is disassembled.

Human beings love to be told what to do, but they love even more to fight and not to do what they are told, and thus they get entan­gled in hat­ing the one who told them in the first place.

The warrior’s way offers a man a new life and that life has to be com­pletely new. He can’t bring to that life his ugly old ways. The only free­dom that war­riors have is to behave impec­ca­bly. Not only does impec­ca­bil­ity carry with it free­dom; it is the only way to straighten out the human form.

People’s actions no longer affect a war­rior when he has no more expec­ta­tions of any kind. A strange peace becomes the rul­ing force of his life. The course of a warrior’s des­tiny is unal­ter­able. The chal­lenge is how far he can go and how impec­ca­ble he can be within those rigid bounds. A warrior’s ulti­mate accom­plish­ment is to enjoy the joy of infinity.

A war­rior is never under siege. To be under siege implies that one has per­sonal pos­ses­sions that could be block­aded. A war­rior has noth­ing in the world except his impec­ca­bil­ity;… and impec­ca­bil­ity can­not be threatened.

A chief prin­ci­ple of the warrior’s art is the prin­ci­ple that a war­rior always chooses his bat­tle­ground. A war­rior never goes into bat­tle with­out know­ing what the sur­round­ings are. A war­rior relaxes and aban­dons him­self, he fears noth­ing. Only then will the power that is avail­able to guide him open the road for the war­rior and aid him. Only then.

War­riors com­press time; this is another prin­ci­ple of the warrior’s art. Even an instant counts. In a bat­tle for your life, a sec­ond is an eter­nity, an eter­nity that may decide the out­come. War­riors aim at suc­ceed­ing, there­fore they com­press time. War­riors don’t waste an instant.

Apply­ing all the prin­ci­ples of the warrior’s art brings about three results. The first is that war­riors learn never to take them­selves seri­ously; they learn to laugh at them­selves. If they are not afraid of being a fool, they can fool any­one. The sec­ond is that war­riors learn to have end­less patience. War­riors are never in a hurry; they never fret. And the third is that war­riors learn to have an end­less capac­ity to improvise.