I really enjoyed "For Frodo". The image is powerful: the warrior who knows peace and chooses battle anyway. But I wonder whether the East-West divide you draw is entirely fair to the Eastern tradition.
The Zen that took root in Europe — from Suzuki to Thich Nhat Hanh — does not propose retreating into the forest. Quite the opposite: it insists that practice has no value unless it is lived in the middle of the marketplace, the family, the conflict. The Mahayana bodhisattva does exactly what you describe: he could enter nirvana, and declines. He chooses to stay. For Frodo, one might say.
Perhaps the real divide is not between East and West, but between two readings of the same tradition: the one that mistakes non-attachment for passivity, and the one that understands you can raise the sword without letting your hand cling to it.
That, after all, is what the Zen warriors do: they act fully, without the ego needing to win in order to survive.
@Mike Brock. Powerful and beautiful. Here’s a gentle question: is it an either or choice? Perhaps we go into the forest for silence and meditation, not to escape, but to return stronger, ready for not just the battle, but beyond.
Frodo needed the loyalty, courage and love of his friends to remember why the battle was necessary and worthwhile. And that it couldn’t be fought alone. So, for Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry, and all the creatures of Middle Earth —hobbits, dwarfs, elves, wizards, and yes, humans, flawed as we are.
I do not recommend self-erasure for anyone. I am only revealing that for me the recent dawning of the recognition that I’m ok if things don’t work out the way I want I am not required to suffer if my cause doesn’t succeed. And I will always feel it is worth fighting. I just happen to feel stronger and more at peace fighting from a grounding in humility.
I love your poetic imagery ❤️🔥 I see the lure of both philosophical foundations. But I wonder if is possible to be grounded in the serene acceptance that tho I fight I accept that I am not determinative. I’m 81 yrs old and have been burdened all my life by a desire to make everything good for others. It seemed a laudatory and unselfish attitude until, late in life, I realized there was a good deal of hubris mixed in with my good knight savior attitude. Now I live with the joy of realizing that it is the fulfillment of fighting for my ideals that enlivens me even as I accept that I will not determine the outcome.
I do not believe self-erasure should be asked of anyone. Some people will go sit down by the river. I don't judge them for it. Some people will tend to their gardens. And others will stand watch. There is no shame in tending to ones own needs. There is only shame in it when one exploits others or decides to lie to themselves because lying is more comfortable than truth.
You'll note I didn't suggest that the Hobbits of the Shire, tending to their gardens are cowards. I said, they should be defended. I didn't guilt them for their peaceful existence.
Worth noting: in the last volume of the trilogy, after Mordor falls, the Shire-hobbits end up having to organize and fight to defend their own home. Even the garden-tenders, in the end, had to take up arms. Tolkien seems to suggest that the peaceful life doesn't exempt you from the guard — it just means the moment comes later, and closer to home.
In some sense the one defines the other. Our understanding is shaped by their contrast. I think I choose to live in that bifurcated space rather than eschewing either entirely. I suppose I am challenging the notion of needing to choose
Sitting here by the river... literally, I have a small river in my back yard. I was planning to sit by the river and write and contemplate, then this fascist uprising happened and I felt the same as Frodo: “I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” At 73 I could respectfully retire, but now my grandchildren will be growing up in chaotic hellscape because we elected emotional children to run the world. I will work to make sure they have food & shelter. What else could I do?
When Ch'an Buddhism went to Japan, becoming Zen, it was embraced by the Samuri. They saw it made them better warriors. (The Buddhism favored by the general population was, and is (by a ratio of 4 to 1) the Pure Land School, with its savior figure of Amitabha Buddha, or Amida Nyora in Japanese, who will take his followers into heaven if they pray to his name on their deathbeds -- no special effort in life required.)
The Zen-samurai synthesis is real and it is the closest historical precedent to what the meditation articulates. It is not quite the same synthesis, and the difference is worth naming. The samurai cultivates non-attachment and places the egoless capacity at the service of a given order — a lord, a code, a clan. The sword is raised in obedience. What I am describing is different. The sword is raised in creation. The consciousness that has felt the contemplative pull and declined it has not declined it because a lord commanded otherwise. It has declined it because it has chosen — in full freedom, in full awareness of the alternative — that the specific beloved thing is worth defending. The Western addition to the Eastern ontology, as I understand it, is exactly this creative act. The Zen samurai has the ground. The meditation adds the choice. And the choice is what lets the synthesis resist being conscripted by whatever political order happens to command the warrior who has done the contemplative work.
This matters because the Zen tradition has a documented failure mode around precisely this question — the accommodation with Japanese militarism in the twentieth century, when monks who had cultivated decades of non-attachment found themselves able to rationalize imperial aggression because the dissolution of ego did not include the creative act of choosing what the egoless capacity was for. The Western tradition, at its best, refuses this accommodation because it places the creative choice inside the consciousness rather than outside it. The sword cannot be conscripted because the meaning for which it is raised is internal.
So what does the Zen samurai do? Whatever the lord commands. What does the consciousness in the meditation do? What it has chosen. These are not the same thing, even when the action looks identical from outside.
The rōnin point is sharp and I do not want to answer it by reaching for a universal ground my framework does not claim. I do not think the structure of the meditation alone distinguishes the liberal revolt from the reactionary one. I do not think it can. My framework is Humean about this — normative commitments are not derivable from anything outside the experience of the consciousness holding them. I am raising the sword for what I raise it for because of who I am, what tradition has formed me, and what my dispositions make vivid as worth defending. The Sonnō jōi rōnin raised the sword for what they raised it for because of who they were, what tradition had formed them, and what their dispositions made vivid as worth defending. I cannot refute them from outside their experience any more than they could refute me from outside mine. What I can do is articulate my position clearly, stake it openly, and invite others who recognize the same beloved to join me in defending it. The structure of the meditation is not an argument for the universality of my side. It is an articulation of how I have come to stake my side, offered to readers who may recognize something of their own staking in it. That is the most the framework permits me to claim, and I think it is enough.
To truly have peace, we must establish & maintain clear boundaries. Especially when confronted with a psychopathic deranged malignant narcissist & his army of enablers & wannabees. I see you as a Warrior for Peace.
My constant fear has been our continued coexistence with Republicans. I have repeatedly said that we do not need Republicans; we would be a truly democratic country without them, with a national health plan for all, gun control, a wage scale for all, and a respectful retirement package for everyone. I have advocated for a soft secession and, eventually, a full secession, with two countries existing side by side as Republican and Democratic states.
The November election will be a landslide for the Democrats. However, the Republicans, especially in the South, will still be alive and waiting to undo all the progressive ideas enacted by the Democrats. The reality is that our country has long been a battle between the North and the South, between the Republicans and the Democrats. We have swung back and forth between the two parties.
The Republican opponent now is the MAGA movement, the radical believers in Trump who think he can do no wrong. Our immediate enemy is MAGA, the diehard followers of Trump. Nothing Trump could do would change their undying commitment to him. That is up to now. Their belief in Trump resembles the mentality of cult members who would follow their leaders over a cliff rather than change their belief in their leaders' superior wisdom. Cultism takes many forms, and once the believers lock into the programmed mentality, they will not change. Religious systems and social societies share characteristics of cultism. Think of the soul-searching and torment that occurs when someone is considering leaving a formal religion, and now compare that to the agreement of all the followers of Jim Jones in Africa, who agreed to a mass suicide of 918 people in Jonestown. Once they have established a belief, it is almost impossible to change that thinking process. We see the same things in neighborhoods, states, and sports teams' obsessions.
So why is Trump a destroyer of MAGA
Trump’s bizarre behavior, irrational decisions, and deteriorating mental condition are causing them concern. Trump's deranged decision-making and his continued demonstration of this mental deterioration are slowly weakening their belief that he is their savior. He is providing them with daily examples of his dysfunctional mentality, and he will continue to deteriorate, presenting more and more examples of this failing personality.
Trump is past the point of retreating to normal behavior; he has drunk the Kool-Aid and is obsessed with POWER. Like all authoritarian leaders, power is the motivating factor behind their delusions. Steven Cohen, in his book Disloyal, tries to capture Trump's “magnetic force because he offered an intoxicating cocktail of power, strength, celebrity, and a complete disregard for the rules and realities that govern our lives. To Trump, life was a game, and all that mattered was winning and his desire for power at all costs.” The lust for power can drive a person insane, consuming them and amplifying their magnetic effect; insatiability grows over time.
He will continue his erratic behavior and will present examples of it daily. In 6 months, he will become unrecognizable, and it will be impossible for MAGA not to see these examples of his deterioration. So, Trump will have done something that no one else could have; he may have destroyed MAGA, something that could have been done only by him.
Hi Mike,
I really enjoyed "For Frodo". The image is powerful: the warrior who knows peace and chooses battle anyway. But I wonder whether the East-West divide you draw is entirely fair to the Eastern tradition.
The Zen that took root in Europe — from Suzuki to Thich Nhat Hanh — does not propose retreating into the forest. Quite the opposite: it insists that practice has no value unless it is lived in the middle of the marketplace, the family, the conflict. The Mahayana bodhisattva does exactly what you describe: he could enter nirvana, and declines. He chooses to stay. For Frodo, one might say.
Perhaps the real divide is not between East and West, but between two readings of the same tradition: the one that mistakes non-attachment for passivity, and the one that understands you can raise the sword without letting your hand cling to it.
That, after all, is what the Zen warriors do: they act fully, without the ego needing to win in order to survive.
Thanks for the piece.
@Mike Brock. Powerful and beautiful. Here’s a gentle question: is it an either or choice? Perhaps we go into the forest for silence and meditation, not to escape, but to return stronger, ready for not just the battle, but beyond.
Frodo needed the loyalty, courage and love of his friends to remember why the battle was necessary and worthwhile. And that it couldn’t be fought alone. So, for Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry, and all the creatures of Middle Earth —hobbits, dwarfs, elves, wizards, and yes, humans, flawed as we are.
Heavens, you are a beautiful writer/thinker.
Love Ya Mike.
I do not recommend self-erasure for anyone. I am only revealing that for me the recent dawning of the recognition that I’m ok if things don’t work out the way I want I am not required to suffer if my cause doesn’t succeed. And I will always feel it is worth fighting. I just happen to feel stronger and more at peace fighting from a grounding in humility.
I love your poetic imagery ❤️🔥 I see the lure of both philosophical foundations. But I wonder if is possible to be grounded in the serene acceptance that tho I fight I accept that I am not determinative. I’m 81 yrs old and have been burdened all my life by a desire to make everything good for others. It seemed a laudatory and unselfish attitude until, late in life, I realized there was a good deal of hubris mixed in with my good knight savior attitude. Now I live with the joy of realizing that it is the fulfillment of fighting for my ideals that enlivens me even as I accept that I will not determine the outcome.
I do not believe self-erasure should be asked of anyone. Some people will go sit down by the river. I don't judge them for it. Some people will tend to their gardens. And others will stand watch. There is no shame in tending to ones own needs. There is only shame in it when one exploits others or decides to lie to themselves because lying is more comfortable than truth.
You'll note I didn't suggest that the Hobbits of the Shire, tending to their gardens are cowards. I said, they should be defended. I didn't guilt them for their peaceful existence.
Worth noting: in the last volume of the trilogy, after Mordor falls, the Shire-hobbits end up having to organize and fight to defend their own home. Even the garden-tenders, in the end, had to take up arms. Tolkien seems to suggest that the peaceful life doesn't exempt you from the guard — it just means the moment comes later, and closer to home.
Hilariously Sauren's armies believe that they are NOT the evil men, orcs, uruk hai or trolls serving a dark lord and master.
In some sense the one defines the other. Our understanding is shaped by their contrast. I think I choose to live in that bifurcated space rather than eschewing either entirely. I suppose I am challenging the notion of needing to choose
Sitting here by the river... literally, I have a small river in my back yard. I was planning to sit by the river and write and contemplate, then this fascist uprising happened and I felt the same as Frodo: “I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” At 73 I could respectfully retire, but now my grandchildren will be growing up in chaotic hellscape because we elected emotional children to run the world. I will work to make sure they have food & shelter. What else could I do?
When Ch'an Buddhism went to Japan, becoming Zen, it was embraced by the Samuri. They saw it made them better warriors. (The Buddhism favored by the general population was, and is (by a ratio of 4 to 1) the Pure Land School, with its savior figure of Amitabha Buddha, or Amida Nyora in Japanese, who will take his followers into heaven if they pray to his name on their deathbeds -- no special effort in life required.)
So, what would the Zen Samuri do?
The Zen-samurai synthesis is real and it is the closest historical precedent to what the meditation articulates. It is not quite the same synthesis, and the difference is worth naming. The samurai cultivates non-attachment and places the egoless capacity at the service of a given order — a lord, a code, a clan. The sword is raised in obedience. What I am describing is different. The sword is raised in creation. The consciousness that has felt the contemplative pull and declined it has not declined it because a lord commanded otherwise. It has declined it because it has chosen — in full freedom, in full awareness of the alternative — that the specific beloved thing is worth defending. The Western addition to the Eastern ontology, as I understand it, is exactly this creative act. The Zen samurai has the ground. The meditation adds the choice. And the choice is what lets the synthesis resist being conscripted by whatever political order happens to command the warrior who has done the contemplative work.
This matters because the Zen tradition has a documented failure mode around precisely this question — the accommodation with Japanese militarism in the twentieth century, when monks who had cultivated decades of non-attachment found themselves able to rationalize imperial aggression because the dissolution of ego did not include the creative act of choosing what the egoless capacity was for. The Western tradition, at its best, refuses this accommodation because it places the creative choice inside the consciousness rather than outside it. The sword cannot be conscripted because the meaning for which it is raised is internal.
So what does the Zen samurai do? Whatever the lord commands. What does the consciousness in the meditation do? What it has chosen. These are not the same thing, even when the action looks identical from outside.
Ah, but not the rōnin, the masterless samuri whose place in myth is like that of Clint Eastwood in a Western -- fighting for justice on principle.
Rōnin in real life assassinated foreigners and those foreign-influenced in Japan to help bring about the Meiji Restoration and Make Japan Great Again.
The rōnin point is sharp and I do not want to answer it by reaching for a universal ground my framework does not claim. I do not think the structure of the meditation alone distinguishes the liberal revolt from the reactionary one. I do not think it can. My framework is Humean about this — normative commitments are not derivable from anything outside the experience of the consciousness holding them. I am raising the sword for what I raise it for because of who I am, what tradition has formed me, and what my dispositions make vivid as worth defending. The Sonnō jōi rōnin raised the sword for what they raised it for because of who they were, what tradition had formed them, and what their dispositions made vivid as worth defending. I cannot refute them from outside their experience any more than they could refute me from outside mine. What I can do is articulate my position clearly, stake it openly, and invite others who recognize the same beloved to join me in defending it. The structure of the meditation is not an argument for the universality of my side. It is an articulation of how I have come to stake my side, offered to readers who may recognize something of their own staking in it. That is the most the framework permits me to claim, and I think it is enough.
The Essence of Being. And then the Doing. So beautiful written. 🌹
To truly have peace, we must establish & maintain clear boundaries. Especially when confronted with a psychopathic deranged malignant narcissist & his army of enablers & wannabees. I see you as a Warrior for Peace.
Moved to tears. Thank you.
TRUMP, A DESTROYER OF MAGA
My constant fear has been our continued coexistence with Republicans. I have repeatedly said that we do not need Republicans; we would be a truly democratic country without them, with a national health plan for all, gun control, a wage scale for all, and a respectful retirement package for everyone. I have advocated for a soft secession and, eventually, a full secession, with two countries existing side by side as Republican and Democratic states.
The November election will be a landslide for the Democrats. However, the Republicans, especially in the South, will still be alive and waiting to undo all the progressive ideas enacted by the Democrats. The reality is that our country has long been a battle between the North and the South, between the Republicans and the Democrats. We have swung back and forth between the two parties.
The Republican opponent now is the MAGA movement, the radical believers in Trump who think he can do no wrong. Our immediate enemy is MAGA, the diehard followers of Trump. Nothing Trump could do would change their undying commitment to him. That is up to now. Their belief in Trump resembles the mentality of cult members who would follow their leaders over a cliff rather than change their belief in their leaders' superior wisdom. Cultism takes many forms, and once the believers lock into the programmed mentality, they will not change. Religious systems and social societies share characteristics of cultism. Think of the soul-searching and torment that occurs when someone is considering leaving a formal religion, and now compare that to the agreement of all the followers of Jim Jones in Africa, who agreed to a mass suicide of 918 people in Jonestown. Once they have established a belief, it is almost impossible to change that thinking process. We see the same things in neighborhoods, states, and sports teams' obsessions.
So why is Trump a destroyer of MAGA
Trump’s bizarre behavior, irrational decisions, and deteriorating mental condition are causing them concern. Trump's deranged decision-making and his continued demonstration of this mental deterioration are slowly weakening their belief that he is their savior. He is providing them with daily examples of his dysfunctional mentality, and he will continue to deteriorate, presenting more and more examples of this failing personality.
Trump is past the point of retreating to normal behavior; he has drunk the Kool-Aid and is obsessed with POWER. Like all authoritarian leaders, power is the motivating factor behind their delusions. Steven Cohen, in his book Disloyal, tries to capture Trump's “magnetic force because he offered an intoxicating cocktail of power, strength, celebrity, and a complete disregard for the rules and realities that govern our lives. To Trump, life was a game, and all that mattered was winning and his desire for power at all costs.” The lust for power can drive a person insane, consuming them and amplifying their magnetic effect; insatiability grows over time.
He will continue his erratic behavior and will present examples of it daily. In 6 months, he will become unrecognizable, and it will be impossible for MAGA not to see these examples of his deterioration. So, Trump will have done something that no one else could have; he may have destroyed MAGA, something that could have been done only by him.
Beautiful.
Buddha may represent letting go.
But the Eastern tradition also venerates Krishna (Bhagavat Gita).
Fight. Fight to kill. But without attachment to self.
YOU UNDERSTAND.
For Frodo and the gentle decency of the Shire!
Amen brother!