Using Fear as an Alarm

(written to the students of Wild Coast dojo in about 2009)

By Tom Reed

note: while I am nonviolent, I question and contemplate nonviolence to gain a deeper understanding.

"If you truly loved yourself, you could never hurt another.”

-- Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama)

In last night’s class, we talked about the importance of feeling one's emotions. I talked more about how to feel about feeling them, especially the negative ones. I said that part of our training process is learning to deal with the natural tendency to react to an attack by negating it (the second noble truth), but I didn't make it clear that the emotion that arises from being attacked is fear. For some, this emotion causes hesitation--a brief paralysis of mind and body that ensures defeat if engaged with one who does not hesitate. For others fear is intolerable and immediately covered with anger/aggression, hence their response is executed with those qualities, usually marked by excessive use of the muscles.

This brings up fascinating questions in swordsmanship:

Can one prevail in sword battle while feeling fear? The answer, as I currently understand by my own experience, is complicated in that it depends what happens after you feel the fear. If you stay with the fear, as I said above, you will lose. But it is possible for the fear to awaken you to another state. The fear being an alarm that wakes us to the importance of the moment. Due to our training in martial technique, we can then drop into a confident state of doing what needs to be done--a state some call "the zone." I have been stressing the importance of treating the bokken as a live blade, insisting on true attacks, and mustering the intention to kill your partner in order to actually increase our fear level, so we can use it as such an alarm.

How is it possible to be fearless?

"Acknowledging fear is not a cause for depression or discouragement. Because we possess such fear, we also are potentially entitled to experience fearlessness. True fearlessness is not the reduction of fear; but going beyond fear."

--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

It is my current view that there are valid fears, noble fears, that are sane and do not impede one on the spiritual path. These might be called practical fears. They help us survive in daily life. For example they keep us from walking into busy streets. One should never not be afraid of walking in front of moving cars and trucks, but one should not live with such a fear constantly. Again, my view is to use the initial fear as an alarm to wake to a full awareness that is not afraid, but confident. This is one interpretation of “going beyond fear.”

Another, more profound interpretation is “going beyond ego.” so many of our fears are about the possible failure to maintain our ongoing story of who we think we are. Fears of the possible loss of love, wealth, power, respect, employment, etc. all disappear when we realize that there is no one whose success story must be maintained. This very realization, I think, is at the core of budo. When a samurai realized that he would most likely die in battle, there was no longer a story to maintain. He could then live with an “unfettered mind.” This victory over self was probably at the root of the martial spiritual path. It was a way to transcend the ego and its fears.

Can one kill an opponent with no anger/aggression? I think yes. And while the action may appear aggressive, my experience is that it is more like a force of nature, like the wave (our moan {logo}) (“Nature is not human hearted.” -- Lao Tsu). The action is something that has to happen in the situation. This then brings up the concept of katsujinken the "sword that gives life:" a fascinating subject to ponder.

My current interpretation of katsujinken is just what I described above. When the act of killing is just something that must happen, not only for your own survival, but so that you can continue to act for the good of those you are protecting. It is an act of service and protection. But only a swordsman who has transcended the ego can wield the true sword that gives life. Others will just be telling a story.

So the path to katsujinken is not in negating fear, but in momentarily experiencing the fear and choosing not to respond with anger, but with selfless confidence. Our training is to build this kind of confidence. The value of our training is to take this experience as a metaphor for life and do our best to apply the same principles as life presents challenges, ie: the arising of negative emotions (those that we would rather not feel).

Our training is oriented towards ideals, both psycho-physical and spiritual. One of those ideals, maybe the most pivotal one of all, is the experience of selflessness or the transcendence of ego. This is the "victory over self." This is not a lofty ideal. It is available to us at every moment.

end note: in 2022 it is essential that we contemplate "the greater good," what we are willing to do for that end, and how people can be manipulated because of their altruistic willingness to sacrifice for others.

Fore more on katsujinken: http://www.koryu.com/library/eamdur3.html