Sunday, January 11, 2015

The Difference Betweeen Courage And "No Fear"

There are some walks of life that exist as near caricature of masculinity itself.  "Soldier" is one of these things.  For some people, "Rinzai Zen Monk" is another.

When people hear "soldier", they think "courage".

And the commanding manner in which some Zen people speak conjures the same image, for many.

But, what is "Courage?"

It is overcoming  fear.

So the two (courage and fear) are connected.  They are intertwined.

And this is a very different thing, from "no fear".  Someone without fear has no use for "courage".

Question:  In a military ceremony, with everyone dressed up, behaving very seriously, or in a Rinzai Zen sesshin, how would this guy of no fear appear?

Well, he won't appear like the others.  He won't appear courageous.

Reminds me...

When I was a teenager, I had the chance to go to the Naval Academy.  I was invited to go down to Annapolis for a week.  I was thinking of studying Engineering down there.  The Navy guys showed me the place, and took me and some other guys on a boat ride around the Chesapeake Bay.  I saw where Roger Staubach broke the record for the obstacle course.  Made me want to try, but it wasn't part of the program.

My family didn't have much money.  Annapolis was a cheap way of getting a pretty good education. 

At 16 or so, I struggled with this decision.

But I decided against it.  I just didn't want to be part of the military.  Although women seemed to like them (important to a 16 year old) the spiffy uniforms didn't excite me so much.    I was just never one for uniforms, even if women like them, and that is still the case.

And something ate at me, back then.

I can think of reasons to shoot somebody.  Perhaps if there is an immediate threat -- you come home to find somebody attacking your children with a knife.  Of course, if you have a gun in your hand, you use it.

But we can even dispense with the notion of justice, for this exercise.  Lets say somebody does something really nasty, and you just get really angry.  OK then you might want to shoot the guy.

I'm not saying that is a good reason.  I am just saying it makes a kind of sense.  It is a reason.  "What do you want?  I got angry!"

To me, "being a soldier" just didn't seem like a good reason.  It seemed like a crazy thing, to me.  I was thinking: you have to follow someones orders, and that guy might be an idiot!  That's OK if you are helping to manufacture widgets, but, for a soldier, lives are a stake. 

There are all of these ideologies afloat.  To the soldier, these ideologies serve to help bring about courage.  They help in overcoming fear.  Soldiers, around the world, fight for country, for freedom, for the "American way of life", and so on. 

But, from a "universal" view, what exactly are these things?

What is "freedom" to an Iraqi?

Hard to say.

It is just too hard to say.

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