Buddhist Teachings on the Spiritual Warrior

We continue, at this critical time in America’s and the world’s political life and under the urgency of our climate emergency, to search for universal teachings from the world’s spiritual traditions.  Among these are teachings about spiritual warriorhood. 

All are called to be spiritual warriors on behalf of justice, compassion, and truth-seeking at critical historical periods like our own.  All spiritual traditions invoke that archetype.  It is a time for deep ecumenism like no other.

Buddhist nun Pema Chodron puts it this way: For practitioners or spiritual warriors–people who have a certain hunger to know what is true—feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back.  They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. 

Notice, it is hunger that makes a warrior– hunger for the truth.  The hunger for peace and justice and the truth that cannot be bought and sold and squelched and denied.  The emptying process prepares us to get more involved, not less.

Pema Chodron reminds us that fear and cowardice abound in times like ours. When the rivers and air are polluted, when families and nations are at war. When homeless wanderers fill the highways, there are traditional signs of a dark age.  Another is that people become poisoned by self-doubt and become cowards.

How do we move from cowardice to courage?  Chodron believes that “the ground of not causing harm is mindfulness, a sense of clearly seeing with respect and compassion for what it is we see.” 

Thich Nhat Hanh believes that mindfulness renders one strong and solid.  Mindfulness, if practiced continuously, will be strong enough to embrace your fear or anger and transform it.  We need not chase away evil.  We can embrace and transform it in a nonviolent, nondualistic way.  A warrior’s heart and mind know this.

Buddhist teacher and activist Joanna Macy has spoken of how privileged we are to be living at this time when so much spiritual vision and strength are needed to save Mother Earth from ourselves.  She also invokes an ancient prophecy from Tibet concerning the Shambhala warriors. 

Great courage—moral and physical—is required of the Shambhala warriors, for they must go into the very heart of the barbarian power, into the pits and pockets and citadels where the weapons are kept to dismantle them. 

What weapons are these?  “The weapons are compassion and insight”–  including “the radical interdependence of all phenomena.”  Macy believes now is the hour of the Shambhala warrior.

Adapted from Matthew Fox, “Spiritual Warriorhood,” in Fox, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Faith Traditions, pp. 413f and pp. 377-422.

See also Fox, “Spiritual Warriors” in Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 77-104.

And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.

And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.

And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, pp. 257-306.

And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election.

Banner Image: A practitioner of the ancient Taoist martial art of Tai Chi performs the movement “Snake Creeps Down” in the Wudang Mountains of China. Photo by Yürgen Oster on Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wudang_taiji1.JPG

Queries for Contemplation

Are you feeling the need to deepen your courage and steadfastness and spiritual warriorhood at this time?  How do you go about doing that?  Does remembering MLK Jr. and Sister Dorothy and teachings from Buddhism and other spiritual traditions assist you?

Recommended Reading

One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths

Matthew Fox calls on all the world traditions for their wisdom and their inspiration in a work that is far more than a list of theological position papers but a new way to pray—to meditate in a global spiritual context on the wisdom all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes that are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all the world spiritual traditions offer wisdom about each.“Reading One River, Many Wells is like entering the rich silence of a masterfully directed retreat. As you read this text, you reflect, you pray, you embrace Divinity. Truly no words can fully express my respect and awe for this magnificent contribution to contemporary spirituality.” –Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature,  to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth

Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox.  He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election

Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE. 
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE. 
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.