Fertile Ground for a Warrior

Michele Benzamin-Miki 1996

from Buddhist Women on the Edge.
North Atlantic Books

I walk upon the rich, fertile soil of many traditions, cultural and religious. My mother was Japanese and her root religion was Shinto, later to be Catholic. My father was born and raised in America, of mixed parentage, Czechoslovakian Catholics on his mothers side and on his fathers side Spanish Sephardic Jews; he is a Catholic.

My father met my mother in Japan during the Korean War, and they were wed in a Catholic Church in Kobe. My parents traveled back and forth several times between America and Japan, trying to decide where to put down some roots for a family. I was born on one trip to America and my sister a year later on the trip back to Japan, and there we stayed till I was almost four.

When I was a small child this rich, cross-cultural heritage was my playground and I was happy in it. As I grew older, I felt my parent's discomfort as they adjusted to a biracial marriage and their decision to raise us in America. I found myself having to pledge allegiance to only one country, America, and profess only one faith Catholicism. This created in me confusion, frustration, and worst of all a sense of oppression.

I learned early on in my life that I had a natural ability for drawing. Whenever I needed to escape the limitations of the real world, I would retreat to my world of art. It was my haven, a source of joy, my outlet for expression. Within the drawings and paintings were hidden symbols and self portrayals, like a diary of secret journeys within an imagination too wild to be expressed verbally at that time. A field of all possibilities. I could go beyond the issues of race, religion and economic class, to a place much like a borderland. I lived here, in between, not completely American nor Japanese. I walked on this path in the middle of the two worlds, where I could be loyal to no other authority other than my own heart.

At twenty-one, a trip to Japan with my mother, my first time back since I was three, stirred up childhood memories and reunited me with a part of myself I had disowned. It was strangely familiar, walking inside those enormous hollow bodies of cast iron Buddhas in Kamakura, Nara, and Kyoto. I was amazed to see my mother resurrected here in her homeland, after suffering the many hardships of adjusting to America. I watched her reconnect to her heritage and root religion, and regain personal sovereignty. Despite language barriers I reclaimed bonds to my Japanese family that would later change my entire view of life and spirituality.

I came back to America and continued seeking ways of enriching my experience of Japan. I began a training in the martial arts, starting with karatedo, and soon after that meditation (vipassana). My father studied the martial arts and meditation while in Japan and had taught me some basic self defense when I was a young girl. When my mother was a young girl, during the wartime, it was part of the physical education training to study how to use a short staff and learn some fighting techniques. It was in my blood, so I felt at home in the martial arts. I was fond of my first teacher in karate, but grew unsatisfied with the classes constant emphases on sparring, and fighting for competition. I remember my surprise when he said, during a training period, "When someone is attacking you, you must make sure they don't get back up again." I understood this to be his way of bringing the element of realty into our practice, until he added, "And if I am asked in court I will deny having said this." I felt his inner struggle and my disappointment. It is clear to me now that I learned a lot more from the moral issues he was struggling with, than from what he taught. Sparring taught me that it was more than just the physical strength, technique, or even speed, it was your state of mind before the fight, that revealed the outcome.

Two and a half years into my karate training I moved out of the area and had to find another teacher. I was visiting a school in which several kinds of martial arts were offered and was moved to take up aikido. I was in need of something to soften the hard edge of fighting in me, and this art-form filled that need.

Shortly before my transition into aikido I discovered the benefits of meditation. I walked into a temple in LA with a friend who had invited me to come to a yoga class with her. Here I was once again standing in front of an enormous Buddha statue, more colorful than the ones in japan, and a bald headed man in yellow ocher robes approached us and said, "Come in, you are early, we start in a half hour." We both sensed this was the wrong place for a "stretch" class, but the man was interesting and we were adventuresome, and so began my vipassana practice. Inside the enormous body of the Buddha, in the Dharma, I found their was room for everything. I was now embarking on the well trodden path of the integration of the martial arts and meditation, as well as putting together the puzzle pieces of my life. There I could recognize my relatives in Japan and America, my relation to Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, Jesus and Mary, Shakyamuni and Tara, angels and Bodhisattvas, it was here, all the opposites of my life merged. I signed a piece treaty with all the warring factions inside me, and became aware of the path set before me. I am a warrior, born out of parents of the fires of the Japanese-American war.

In times of great anguish and confusion warriors are born, arise, and are called forth into action, to restore peace, and bring about understanding and clarity. These are such times. It is easy to fall asleep in the middle class comfort and convenience of America in the twentieth century. Regardless of your economic background we are living in times where living a content and simple life is not supported. In order to be happy we are constantly upgrading our lifestyle. We buy into consumer conveniences that safe time, yet we find ourselves so busy keeping up with these things we have lost contact with one another, and what we are doing to the planet. Our communication and patience levels with one another wears thin in a world of fast foods, instant Quaker oats, mini malls within walking distance from your homes, plastic money giving immediate gratification of our desires, and "virtual reality." Everything is set up so we cannot see the long term effects of living this way, because it seems like progress.

We separate from our relationship to this planet, by creating a closed system where only human rights (questionable also) are honored, and the planet and every other life form is either a commodity or a resource for our use. It is a point of religious argument that the earth is our domain and we are in a spiritual hierarchy, humans at the top. Even from the point of view that we are the caretakers, in a stewardship of the planet, breeds arrogance. We are a part of the planet, in symbiotic relationship with, and interconnected to, all life and mineral forms.

The Buddha says, "Know ye the grasses and the trees...Then know ye the worms and the moths, and the different sorts of ants...Know ye also the four-footed animals small and great, the serpents, the fish which range in the water, the birds that are borne along on wings and move through air...Know ye the marks that constitute species are theirs, and their species are manifold." This is a good place to start.

In the practice of mindfulness is paramount, looking deeply into the nature of things, and "ye shall know thyself." In Buddhism we talk a lot about an awakened mind, "enlightenment." Here I find the danger of interpreting mind as separate from body, creating an epic battle of the body as defiled and the mind supreme. We turn our bodies into a spiritual commodity, seen as just a vehicle for our enlightenment. We use our spiritual practice as a disengagement and a retreat from the world, like our bodies a field of endless suffering (Samsara). Mind and body experience is split just as Nirvana and Samara. We repeat the battle of other civilized cultures: the Greeks with soul and body, the Christians with spirit and flesh, the Victorians with reason and emotion. To quote Sam Keen, "If we were fully integrated persons we might refer to ourselves as being body/minds rather than as having bodies." We would then engage in life fully and compassionately, understanding that Samara and Nirvana coexist. As in the gospel according to John, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth," and Lama Anagarika Govinda,"To the enlightened man, however, whose consciousness embraces the universe, to him the universe becomes his "Body."

If we continue to exist in a way that disconnects us from our bodies and the planet we will soon die as a species, and create a legacy of suffering that will last a long time after our extinction. Is this the function of a spiritual life? Maybe we feel helpless or overwhelmed, and would prefer to leave it up to someone else stronger, more capable to change our situation, or as some may have it, "Just leave it in Gods hands." The most common and convenient denial for Buddhists is not to be attached to anything, this life, this planet. We are attached, interconnected, and inseparable. We are in a constant flow of interconnection: this very body, this life, this world, is the body of the Buddha, the Dharma, and Sangha. We create more suffering (karma) by continuing to separate ourselves, and feel as if our actions don't count. In quoting Thich Nhat Hahn, "Someday there will be an instrument that can measure the effect of a leaf falling on the earth with a distant star," well I see that instrument as our mindfulness. With mindfulness we see that our intentions and smallest actions have an effect on the world.

I see the interrelationships of our complacency, denial and fear, hidden sometimes behind the mask of "spiritual detachment", with the destruction of life on earth. It is like the image of a frog immersed in a kettle of lukewarm water, the flame low, simmering, slowly being cooked. The frog does not realize it's imminent demise , and so it has no reason to jump out of the kettle. Are we dead already? Dead Buddhists? Or is it time to wake up and smell the toxins, act before it is too late. The action can be as simple as a shift in the way we view our part in this world, not spectator but an active participant in how the world is in it's present state; thus watering the seed of compassion inside of us.

In each warrior is the seed of compassion. The seed lays dormant in the fertile ground of the heart waiting to be broken open by the fires of delusion, greed, and enmity. The warrior learns by taking action from this place of compassion, and his or her action is tempered by the wisdom of knowing the task ahead is not futile but endless. This is where one becomes not attached to the outcome. You can be ambushed by your hopes, and become ineffective. In quoting poet Nanao Sakaki during a heated discussion on the outcome and fate of our planet, "You know, we don't have to survive."

The path of the Buddhadharma has brought into my martial arts training the sword of compassion and wisdom. With these tools a warrior can develop tireless energy and clear focus in action. She or he has the inner strength to be steady and still at times, sustaining an immovable gaze, and the freedom and abandon to jump in and take risks when necessary. To know intimately the beauty of failure. To let go of attachment to the outcome only after having given everything you have to give. The warrior realizes the only true enemy is complacency, and self righteousness.

Without compassion and wisdom a warrior can lose sight, energy and zeal turn to a destructive, out-of-control force. With misguided passions she or he can be bought and soldiered into acts of self righteous benevolence, lashing out irresponsibly without understanding the full consequences of their actions. When there is an enemy to fight against we are for the moment "safe" from having to look into our own deep wounds, but we do not heal, and the problem remains.

I have been teaching meditation and contemplation on compassion along with the nonviolence principles of aikido for a while now, and countless times I am asked if I would kill someone in order to protect myself or a loved one. I've answered, "I would kill! I'd kill their action! not the person." Now as I write this down this convenient answer, another thought enters my mind: yes, I could indeed kill the person. I feel this is important for me to acknowledge. I am reminded of a story a friend told me. He was participating in a peace rally, and someone angrily threw a question to him: "What would you do if you met the person who killed your loved ones? Don't tell me you wouldn't be angry and want to take their life!" He replied, "Yes, but then I would count on you brother to restrain me." We are not alone in our pain, it is necessary to know how to ask for help.

As I walk the path of a warrior, I find my great teachers to be that of love and tolerance. I call myself a "warrior," because I am a woman rediscovering her strengths, who is taking up a path traditionally worn by men. By taking up this path I am uncovering a long lineage of woman warriors, bringing these archetypes of strength back to me and other women. I feel strongly that women need to acknowledge their personal power.

As women we need to uncover our own myths, handed down through history and by our family to us. Every family, has an elaborate system of stories and rituals according to their culture, background, lineage, that differentiates it from other families. These myths give us security and identity, but can also create intolerance, selective blindness, and rigidity. If we understands how our actions have been controlled by these myths, and ask the question, "For whom does it serve?" and the reply is not "Women"(ourselves), then it is time to reevaluate and rewrite them. I feel, as a women, my role in Buddhism is to pay homage to, honor, and love deeply, my own mother, grandmother, and the ancestral sisters within the Buddhist tradition. If we as women do this, we can reclaim and bring back to life our rich heritage of women participation in Buddhism, often obscured by history, and blaze new trails for ourselves and the mothers and daughters of the future.

My teaching and learning is about integration; Asian and Euro-American, spiritual practice and social engagement, active compassion and reflective wisdom, mind and body, humans to all sentient and non sentient beings, women, warriorship and Buddhism. To integrate is to make whole and complete, unite. The enormous body of the Buddha is made up of non Buddhist elements.

Copyright © Michele Benzamin-Miki