What is the ‘way of the warrior’? Students investigate the arts of war and peace in this course about virtue and the ethics of violence

 

A painting by Yoshifusa Utagawa shows the famous samurai Miyamoto Musashi, left, fighting Sasaki Kojiro. Artelino via Wikimedia Commons

Title of course:

The Way of the Warrior

What prompted the idea for the course?

I am a lifelong martial artist who grew up training in both taekwondo and karate. During a pivotal point in graduate school, I realized that the study of martial arts helped me better understand political philosophy – and that revelation inspired this course.

Southern California contains a unique hub of martial artists, many of whom studied with Bruce Lee. When I was working on my doctorate at The Claremont Colleges, I discovered an exceptional school just down the street from campus and began to study Filipino martial arts, Lee’s Jeet Kune Do, and Rickson Gracie Jiu Jitsu. My teacher, Guro Jason Cruz, refined the method of training the body with the training of the mind in a way that is still unmatched.

At the time, I was studying political philosophy and education in ancient Greece, including the significance of the “palaestra” and the “gymnasia,” which were sites for boxing, wrestling and the pankration – a practice akin to mixed martial arts today – but also intellectual cultivation.

The intensity of my own training helped me gain a deeper understanding not only of Greek warrior culture but also for the study of martial arts and its relationship to philosophy: physical and intellectual development were both indispensable in a virtuous life.

After I started teaching at Hamilton, I created this course to compare different views of warrior ethics.

What does the course explore?

Our class investigates the ways of life for warriors and the ethical codes that emerge in their political communities. We compare themes such as virtue, or human excellence, justice, life and death, while looking at Western and non-Western views in dialogue.

Aristotle, for example, emphasized the truly noble and good human being: someone who had achieved complete virtue and deserved the greatest goods, such as honor. Yamamoto Tsunetomo, when describing “Bushido” – the code of the Japanese samurai – prioritized being prepared to die and serving one’s lord in the pursuit of honor.

One crucial issue we examine is whether the true “way of the warrior” really involves destruction or is finally about something akin to the power of love. One might presume that the warrior way requires killing, but we challenge that assumption and consider whether there are higher principles at stake. To paraphrase Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido, in injuring others, do you injure yourself?

Why is this course relevant now?

The use of violence and the ethics of war are perennial issues. In particular, conflicts are oftentimes initiated, prolonged or supported by people who have no experience with battle, fighting or even sparring.

One way people can take debates over the use of violence more seriously, and whether force is justified when responding to injustice, is by paying close attention to the writings of these experienced warriors and philosophers.

What will the course prepare students to do?

Ultimately, the course connects back to the overarching concept of liberal education: Are the principles we discuss in class universal? Are the arts of war and peace useful in other pursuits?

For example, the works of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese general, and Miyamoto Musashi, the undefeated samurai, are frequently read in economics and business.

Musashi stated that the way “is based on excelling others in anything and everything,” a character made “possible by the power of martial arts.” We discuss whether that is how we should approach our entire lives.

Finally, the class reflects on whether engaging with these texts from other times and places can liberate us – whether this learning process can expand our horizons beyond popular ideas today.

Kenneth Andrew Andres Leonardo, Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Government, Hamilton College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

3 things to learn about patience − and impatience − from al-Ghazali, a medieval Islamic scholar

 

Al-Ghazali’s book ‘Alchemy of Happiness,’ held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Al-Ghazali - Bibliothèque nationale de France via Wikimedia Commons

From childhood, we are told that patience is a virtue and that good things will come to those who wait. And, so, many of us work on cultivating patience.

This often starts by learning to wait for a turn with a coveted toy. As adults, it becomes trying to remain patient with long lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles, misbehaving kids or the slow pace of political change. This hard work can have mental health benefits. It is even correlated with per capita income and productivity.

But it is also about trying to become a good person.

It’s clear to me, as a scholar of religious ethics, that patience is a term many of us use, but we all could benefit from understanding its meaning a little better.

In religious traditions, patience is more than waiting, or even more than enduring a hardship. But what is that “more,” and how does being patient make us better people?

The writings of medieval Islamic thinker Abu Hamid al-Ghazali can give us insights or help us understand why we need to practice patience – and also when not to be patient.

Who was al-Ghazali?

Born in Iran in 1058, al-Ghazali was widely respected as a jurist, philosopher and theologian. He traveled to places as far as Baghdad and Jerusalem to defend Islam and argued there was no contradiction between reason and revelation. More specifically, he was well known for reconciling Aristotle’s philosophy, which he likely read in Arabic translation, with Islamic theology.

Al-Ghazali was a prolific writer, and one of his most important works – “Revival of the Religious Sciences,” or the “Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn” – provides a practical guide for living an ethical Muslim life.

This work is composed of 40 volumes in total, divided into four parts of 10 books each. Part 1 deals with Islamic rituals; Part 2, local customs; Part 3, vices to be avoided; and Part 4, virtues one should strive for. Al-Ghazali’s discussion of patience comes in Volume 32 of Part 4, “On Patience and Thankfulness,” or the “Kitāb al-sabr waʾl-shukr.”

He describes patience as a fundamental human characteristic that is crucial to achieving value-driven goals, and he provides a caveat for when impatience is called for.

1. What is patience?

Humans, according to al-Ghazali, have competing impulses: the impulse of religion, or “bāʿith al-dīn,” and the impulse of desire, or “bāʿith al-hawā.”

Life is a struggle between these two impulses, which he describes with the metaphor of a battle: “Support for the religious impulse comes from the angels reinforcing the troops of God, while support for the impulse of desire comes from the devils reinforcing the enemies of God.”

Muslim scholar Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī. From the cover illustration of 'The Confessions of Al-Ghazali,' via Wikimedia Commons

The amount of patience we have is what decides who wins the battle. As al-Ghazali puts it, “If a man remains steadfast until the religious impulse conquers … then the troops of God are victorious and he joins the troops of the patient. But if he slackens and weakens until appetite overcomes him … he joins the followers of the devils.” In other words, for al-Ghazali, patience is the deciding factor of whether we are living up to our full human potential to live ethically.

2. Patience, values and goals

Patience is also necessary for being a good Muslim, in al-Ghazali’s view. But his understanding of how patience works rests on a theory of ethics and can be applied outside of his explicitly Islamic worldview.

It all starts with commitments to core values. For a Muslim like al-Ghazali, those values are informed by the Islamic tradition and community, or “umma,” and include things like justice and mercy. These specific values might be universally applicable. Or you might also have another set of values that are important to you. Perhaps a commitment to social justice, or being a good friend, or not lying.

Living in a way that is consistent with these core values is what the moral life is all about. And patience, according to al-Ghazali, is how we consistently make sure our actions serve this purpose.

That means patience is not just enduring the pain of a toddler’s temper tantrum. It is enduring that pain with a goal in mind. The successful application of patience is measured not by how much pain we endure but by our progress toward a specific goal, such as raising a healthy and happy child who can eventually regulate their emotions.

In al-Ghazali’s understanding of patience, we all need it in order to remain committed to our core principles and ideas when things aren’t going our way.

3. When impatience is called for

One critique of the idea of patience is that it can lead to inaction or be used to silence justified complaints. For instance, scholar of Africana studies Julius Fleming argues in his book “Black Patience” for the importance of a “radical refusal to wait” under conditions of systemic racism. Certainly, there are forms of injustice and suffering in the world that we should not calmly endure.

Despite his commitment to the importance of patience to a moral life, al-Ghazali makes room for impatience as well. He writes, “One is forbidden to be patient with harm (that is) forbidden; for example, to have one’s hand cut off or to witness the cutting off of the hand of a son and to remain silent.”

These are examples of harms to oneself or to loved ones. But could the necessity for impatience be extended to social harms, such as systemic racism or poverty? And as Quranic studies scholars Ahmad Ismail and Ahmad Solahuddin have argued, true patience sometimes necessitates action.

As al-Ghazali writes, “Just because patience is half of faith, do not imagine that it is all commendable; what is intended are specific kinds of patience.”

To sum up, not all patience is good; only patience that is in service of righteous goals is key to the ethical life. The question of which goals are righteous is one we must all answer for ourselves.

Liz Bucar, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Northeastern University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

IN MEMORY OF OUR FARMERS - SOUTH AFRICA

 

 

 WATCH THE VIDEO!!!

 

Farm murders in South Africa refer to violent attacks, often involving torture or murder, that occur on farms and rural smallholdings. These crimes affect both white and black farmers, farmworkers, and their families. While the motives vary—from robbery to labor disputes—these attacks are often brutal and have sparked national and international concern. The issue is complex and highly politicized, with debates around race, land reform, crime, and rural safety. Data on the exact number and nature of these attacks can be inconsistent, but farm murders remain a significant rural security issue in South Africa.

What the ancient Indian text Bhagavad Gita can teach about not putting too much of our identity and emotions into work

 

This famous scene from the Bhagavad Gita, featuring the god Krishna with his cousin, Prince Arjuna, on a chariot heading into war. Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

A 2023 Gallup poll found that U.S. employees are generally unhappy at work. The number of those who feel angry and disconnected with their organization’s mission is climbing.

An analysis of data from 60,000 employees by BambooHR, an HR software platform, also found that workplace morale was getting worse: “Employees aren’t experiencing highs or lows — instead, they are expressing a sense of resignation or even apathy.”

As a scholar of South Asian religions, I argue that a mindfulness technique called “nishkama karma” – acting without desire – described in an ancient but popular Indian text called the “Bhagavad Gita,” may prove useful for navigating the contemporary world of work.

The Gita presents a variety of “yogas,” or disciplined religious paths. One such path suggests adopting an attitude of righteous resignation – a kind of Stoic equanimity or even-mindedness. In the workplace, this might mean performing one’s professional duties to the best of one’s ability – but without being overly concerned about the results for one’s personal advancement.

The Gita and action

The “Bhagavad Gita,” or “Song of the Lord,” is an 18-chapter dialogue between Krishna, the Lord of the Universe, and the warrior-hero Arjuna. Found in the sixth book of the world’s longest epic poem, the “Mahabharata,” the Gita was likely composed between the third century B.C.E. and the third century C.E.

The Gita opens on a battlefield where Arjuna, the beleaguered champion of the Pandavas, is set to fight his cousins, the Kauravas, along with his uncles and former teachers, for the rightful control of the ancestral kingdom.

Arjuna is faced with the moral ambiguity of internecine warfare. He is stuck in a dilemma between obligations to his kin and former teachers and obligations to his “dharma” – religious and social duty – as a warrior to fight against them. Arjuna is therefore understandably reluctant to act.

Krishna, who has assumed the humble guise of Arjuna’s charioteer in the story, advises Arjuna that it is impossible for anyone to refrain entirely from all action: “There is no one who can remain without action even for a moment. Indeed, all beings are compelled to act by their qualities born of material nature” (3.5).

Even choosing not to act is itself a kind of action. Krishna instructs Arjuna to perform his duties as a warrior regardless of how he feels about the prospect of fighting against family and friends: “Fight for the sake of duty, treating alike happiness and distress, loss and gain, victory and defeat. Fulfilling your responsibility in this way, you will never incur sin” (2.38).

Given the inevitability of action, Krishna advises Arjuna to cultivate an attitude of nonattached equanimity or even-mindedness toward the results of his actions. Unlike feeling detached from the work process itself, cultivating an attitude of detachment from the results of one’s work is presented in the Gita as a method for gaining a clear and stable mind.

‘Nishkama karma,’ or nonattached action

The term that the Gita uses, variously rendered as “work” or “action,” is “karma.” Derived from the Sanskrit root “kri” – to do, to act or to make, karma has a range of meanings in Hindu literature. In early Vedic thought, karma referred to the performance of a sacrifice and the results that followed.

By the time of the composition of the Gita, over a 1,000 years later, the concept of karma had expanded considerably. From the sixth century B.C.E. onward, Hindu texts typically describe karma as any thought, word or deed, and its consequences in this or a future lifetime.

Carved statues of Lord Krishna and Arjuna seated on their chariot at the Viswashanti Ashram, Bengaluru, India. Wirestock/iStock via Getty Images plus

Krishna explains to Arjuna that his actions or karma should follow dharma, the religious and social obligations inherent in his role as a warrior of the Pandavas. And the proper dharmic attitude toward the results of action is nonattachment.

The word that describes this nonattachment is “nishkama,” or without desire – the proper spirit in which karma is to be undertaken. From the perspective of the Gita – a perspective shared widely in traditional Indian thought – desire is inherently problematic due to its insistent preoccupation with the self. By reducing desire, however, one can perform one’s work or action without the constant distraction of seeking praise or avoiding blame.

Furthermore, since knowing the outcome of one’s actions is impossible, the Gita advises performing one’s duties without a sense of ego in a spirit of service to the world. “Therefore, without attachment, always do whatever action has to be done; for it is through acting without attachment that one attains the highest state,” as Krishna says to Arjuna (3.19).

The flow state

In his modern classic “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,” psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes about the optimal mental state that may be experienced while performing an engaging task. Csikszentmihalyi describes “flow” as a mental state where one is fully immersed in the task at hand. In such a state, attention is focused on the work being done without any self-conscious concerns about performance or outcome.

By way of example, Csikszentmihalyi asked readers to consider downhill skiing. He noted that while one is fully engaged in the process itself, there is no place for distraction. For a skier, he said, “There is no room in your awareness for conflicts and contradictions; you know that distracting thought or emotion might get you buried face down in the snow.”

Csikszentmihalyi’s research suggests that problems like distraction, feeling detached from one’s work, and job dissatisfaction can arise when people lose sight of the action of work itself. As Csikszentmihalyi writes, “The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure from the present. When that happens, they forfeit their chance of contentment.”

Acting without attachment

A fragmented mind that approaches work or action with an agenda of gaining power, wealth or fame cannot perform at its best. The Gita suggests that the secret to success at work is cultivating a balanced state of mind that isn’t fixated on ego inflation and self-promotion.

It is impossible to be fully present during the performance of a task if one is speculating about unknowable future contingencies or ruminating about past outcomes. Likewise, for Csikszentmihalyi, cultivating the “flow state” means actively remaining present and engaged while performing a task.

Csikszentmihalyi’s writings about the “flow state” resonate with the advice of Krishna in the Gita: “As ignorant people perform their duties with attachment to the results, O scion of Bharat (an epithet for Arjuna), so should the wise act without attachment, for the sake of leading people on the right path” (3.25).

Nishkama karma and the “flow state” are not identical ideas. However, they share at least one fundamental assumption: Focusing on the task at hand, with no thought of gain or loss, is necessary for achieving our best, most satisfying work.

Robert J. Stephens, Principal Lecturer in Religion, Clemson University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.