Being a Warrior isn't Buddhist

     In the student bathrooms at Tassajara, there is a sheet of paper with spots on it for students to sign up to clean throughout the current month.  The note accompanying the sign-up sheet details what needs to be done and urges students to follow through and actually clean on the day they sign up for.  The last sentence of the note reads: "Remember: cleaning is a core practice of zen training."
     Both with and without remembering this note, I have often thought to myself that with all the cleaning I do in the navy, I'm basically already doing zen training.  There are many parallels to monastic life in the navy, actually.  Every morning at Tassajara, there is work circle -- the navy has morning quarters.  At Tassajara there is soji -- in the navy we do "cleaning stations".  Also, I am usually sleep-deprived, my nerves are frayed, and the temperature of where I sleep is largely influenced by the weather.  So what do I have to go to a monastery for?  I already touched on this subject in a very early post that I wrote here.  But I have continued to think a lot about this issue, and there is more I would like to say.  In particular, I often remember a comment one of my root teachers made during dokusan when I asked for his thoughts on my decision to go into the navy:  "being a warrior isn't buddhist."
     As I said in that early post, the way my mind responds to the activity of the moment is what makes the difference between the activity resembling a fanciful image of zen practice and the activity being tedious and frustrating.  I know, tedious, frustrating activity is the quintessential stuff of zen practice.  It's the best zen practice of my life in terms of providing frustrating, aversion-inspiring experiences to hold in spacious awareness and activity with with to engage fully having no gaining idea, and I'm sure it is quite healthy to be engaging in activity which does not resemble a fanciful image of zen practice.  Also, I suffer and my shit surfaces in very unhappy ways both in the navy and at Tassajara.  If I cannot awaken under these circumstances in the navy, what makes me think I could do it at a monastery?
     Perhaps if "the marketplace" was sufficient to support awakening and studying dharma, then monasteries would not be a thing.  At Tassajara, the other people actively support me (and I them) in cultivating wisdom and compassion.  In the navy... not so much.  While many of my shipmates are pretty righteous individuals who (though they may not realize it or phrase it with buddhist language) do a fine job encouraging me to continue with the struggle of right action both by their example and through conversations, for the most part it's a cruel, careless environment. It is full of distractions.  And there is not nearly enough zazen.  The mind needs space.  Life needs space.  As Brad Warner says, a person needs to let their mind become very, very quiet to see the way things are.  There is far too much noise, literally and figuratively, in the navy and the marketplace for a student to become settled enough to get a glimpse of the bright pearl, even if all things -- marketplace, navy, airplanes, propulsion plant spaces -- are actually phenomenal manifestations of the bright pearl.
     Another key feature to a monastic setting is the intention of the people there.  I only recently realized how much intention matters.  Through conversations with guys and gals I work with, I have observed a consensus that the reason we are doing something affects how we feel about it.  If we are "cleaning for time," (i.e. just cleaning because there isn't anything else our leadership has for us to do but they just don't want to let us go home yet), it is a lot more frustrating than if we are helping to organize maintenance paperwork to support the upkeep of our equipment.  So even though I could in theory control my own intention in whatever activity I engage in, the fact is that activity at a monastery is intended to support awakening and activity in the navy is intended to support war (and bureaucracy).  The intention of the students at Tassajara is different than the intention of the other sailors on USS Carl Vinson.  This affects my attitude, and the attendant feelings affect my follow-on mental activity.  This may be a wrong notion, but that's where I am at, currently.  Or at least that's one reason I feel that getting out of the navy and practicing at Tassajara will be more supportive of seeking the way.
     The last thought I wanted to explore regarding my teacher's admonition was that there is more to being a warrior than just being in the military.  I used to envision that there was a way I could be a bad-ass and buddhist, or at least a bad-ass buddhist.  But attributes commonly associated with being a bad-ass include a lack of empathy and a disregard for rules.  I seek to cultivate empathy, and even though I do bump up against the forms of zen from time to time, I appreciate them for what they are.  So being a bad-ass in this way is incompatible with buddhist training.  Similarly, even though I am in the military, I wouldn't dream of calling myself a warrior.  Plenty of people who are not in the military are more warrior-ish than me.  Being a warrior means drawing a hard line between allies and enemies.  Rather than seek to identify with one's enemy, a warrior seeks only to understand their strategy in order to out-maneuver them.  I have been like this in very small ways from time to time, but it is not a mentality I can maintain for a while.  It kind of reminds me of a Darlene Cohen talk in which she discusses her past nature of vindictiveness.  A warrior seeks to destroy the opponent.  In a warrior's world, the fight is never over.  I think that for a bodhisattva, a warrior analogy can fit: seeking to understand suffering in order to lessen it, never giving up the effort to save all beings even if that effort has no attainable end, etc.  My teacher is right that being a warrior is anathema to being a buddhist.  I don't think that I qualify as being a warrior just because I am in the navy, but I do think that being in the navy is so different from being in a monastery that I may as well be trying to be a bad-ass, warrior-buddhist.  And there's no such thing.  Is there?