The Warrior’s Solution
Writings | Training, Life
Writings | Training, Life


“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom is not a state; it is a process. It is something you are, not something you have. In freedom, there is a continual releasing of reactive material as it arises in each moment of experience. The reactive process doesn’t stop by itself. As Gampopa wrote eight hundred years ago in The Jewel Ornament of Liberation: samsara is notorious for being without end. Hence Dr. King’s dictum: you have to demand freedom. It must be your intention. What is The Warrior’s Solution? It’s a way to be — to be truly present in your daily life and not be run by the expectations of the world or the demands of reactive processes. It consists of a set of power-based methods for presence. Presence, of course, is the aim of all spiritual practice. But two problems consistently show up:
– Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom is not a state; it is a process. It is something you are, not something you have. In freedom, there is a continual releasing of reactive material as it arises in each moment of experience. The reactive process doesn’t stop by itself. As Gampopa wrote eight hundred years ago in The Jewel Ornament of Liberation: samsara is notorious for being without end. Hence Dr. King’s dictum: you have to demand freedom. It must be your intention. What is The Warrior’s Solution? It’s a way to be — to be truly present in your daily life and not be run by the expectations of the world or the demands of reactive processes. It consists of a set of power-based methods for presence. Presence, of course, is the aim of all spiritual practice. But two problems consistently show up:
- Passivity in developing the level of attention that makes insight, compassion, and intention possible.
- Passivity in cutting through internal and external patterns of conditioning as they arise, in daily life or in meditation.
- Marginalization: the belief system makes ideas, perspectives, or insights that threaten it seem unimportant.
- Framing: the belief system frames your thinking so that nothing that threatens the system can be thought.
- Seduction: the belief system presents a picture of a world that seems to fulfill your dreams.
- Alignment: the belief system tells you that, in order to exist, be happy, or have influence, you have to conform to the belief system.
- Reduction: the belief system freezes you by reducing complex situations to a single emotionally charged issue.
- Polarization: the belief system limits your ability to choose by presenting issues only in terms of right and wrong, this or that.