Way of the Peaceful Warrior (20 page)

“What's that?”
 

“When you discover that, you'll already be there. In the meantime, your training can now move to a different arena.”
 

A change! A sign of progress. I was getting excited. Finally we're going to get moving again, I thought. “Socrates,” I asked, “What different arena are you referring to?”
 

“For one thing I'm no longer going to be an answer machine. You're going to have to find the answers from within.” “And you begin now. Go out back, behind the station, behind the trash bin. There, in the very corner of the lot, against the wall, you'll find a large flat stone. Sit on that stone until you have something of value to tell me.”
 

I paused. “That's all?”
 

“That's it. Sit and open your mind to your own inner wisdom.”
 

I went outside, found the rock, and sat in the darkness. First, random thoughts drifted through my mind. Then I thought of all the important concepts I'd learned in my years at school. An hour went by, then two, then three. The sun would rise in another few hours, and I was getting cold. I began to slow my breathing and to vividly imagine my belly as warm. Before long, I felt comfortable again.
 

Dawn came. The only thing that I could think of to tell him was a realization I'd had during a psychology lecture. I got up on stiff, sore legs and hobbled into the office. Socrates, looking relaxed and comfortable at his desk, said, “Ah, so soon? Well, what is it?”
 

I was almost embarrassed to say it but hoped he'd be satisfied. “Okay, Soc. Beneath all our apparent differences we all share the same human needs and fears; we're all on the same path together, guiding one another. And that understanding can give us compassion.”
 

“Not bad; back to the rock.”
 

“But it's going to be dawn--you're leaving.”
 

“That's no problem,” he grinned. “I'm sure you'll have thought of something by tonight.”
 

“Tonight, I…” He pointed out the door.
 

Sitting on the rock, my whole body aching, I thought back to my childhood. I considered my past, searching for insights. I tried to compress all that had transpired in the months with Socrates into a witty aphorism.
 

I thought of the classes I was missing and the gymnastics workout I'd have to miss--and the excuse I'd give the coach; maybe I'd tell him I had been sitting on a rock in a gas station. That would be a crazy enough story to make him laugh.
 

The sun crept with agonizing slowness across the sky. I sat, hungry, irritated, then depressed, as darkness fell. I had nothing for Socrates. Then, just about the time he was due in, it came to me. He wanted something deep, something more cosmic! I concentrated with renewed effort. I saw him walk into the office, waving to me. I
redoubled my efforts. Then, about midnight, I had it. I couldn't even walk, so I stretched for a few minutes before shuffling into the office.
 

“I've seen beneath people's social masks to their common fears and troubled minds, and that has made me cynical, because I haven't yet been able to get beyond all that to see the light within them.” I figured that was a revelation of major proportions.
 

“Excellent,” Soc announced. Just as I started to sigh, he added, “but not quite what I had in mind. Can't you bring me something more moving?” I roared with anger at no one in particular and stomped out to my philosopher's stone.
 

“Something more moving,” he had said. Was that a hint? I naturally thought back to my recent workouts in the gymnastics room. My teammates now clucked about me like mother hens. Recently I was doing giant swings around the high bar, missed a pirouette change, and had to jump off from the top of the bar. I knew I was going to land on my feet pretty hard, but before I even hit the ground, Sid and Herb caught me in mid-air and set me down gently. “Be careful, Dan,” Sid scolded. “You want to snap your leg before it heals?”
 

None of that seemed very relevant to my present situation, but I let my awareness relax, hoping that maybe the Feeling would advise me. Nothing. I was getting so stiff and sore I couldn't concentrate anymore. I didn't think it would be cheating to stand on the rock and practice a few flowing movements of t'ai chi, the Chinese form of slow-motion exercise that Soc had shown me.
 

As I bent my knees and gracefully rocked back and forth, my hips turning and arms floating in the air, I let my breath control the shifting of my weight. My mind emptied, then filled with a scene.
 

A few days before, I had jogged slowly and carefully to Provo Square, in the middle of Berkeley, across from City Hall and directly adjacent to Berkeley High School. To help relax, I began swaying back and forth in the movements of t'ai chi. I concentrated on softness and balance, feeling like seaweed floating in the ocean.
 

A few boys and girls from the high school stopped and watched me, but I paid them no attention, letting my concentration flow with the movements. When I finished and walked over to put my sweat pants back on over my running shorts, my ordinary awareness asserted itself: “I wonder if I looked good.” My attention was captured by two pretty teenagers who were watching me and giggling. “I guess those girls are impressed,” I thought, as I put both legs into one pant leg, lost my balance and fell on my ass.
 

A few other students joined the girls in their laughter. I felt embarrassed for a moment, but then lay back and laughed with them.
 

I wondered, still standing on the rock, why that incident could be important. Then it hit me; I knew I had something of value to tell Socrates.
 

I walked into the office, stood before Soc's desk, and said, “There are no ordinary moments.”
 

Soc smiled. “Welcome back.” I collapsed on the couch and he made tea.
 

After that, I treated every moment in the gym--on the ground as well as in the air--as special, worthy of my full attention. Further lessons would be necessary though, for as Socrates had explained to me more than once, the ability to extend razor-sharp attention to every moment in my daily life would require much more practice.
 

The next day in the early afternoon before workout, I took advantage of the blue sky and warm sunshine to sit shiftless in the redwood grove and meditate. I hadn't been sitting for more than ten minutes when someone grabbed me and started shaking me back and forth. I rolled away, panting, and stood in a crouch. Then I saw who it was.
 

“Socrates, you have absolutely no manners sometimes.”
 

“Wake up!” he said. “No more sleeping on the job. There's work to be done.”
 

“I'm off duty now,” I teased. “Lunch hour, see the next clerk.”
 

“It's time to get moving, Chief Sitting Bull. Go get your running shoes and meet me back here in ten minutes.
 

I went home and put on my old Adidas shoes, and hurried back to the redwood grove. Socrates was nowhere in sight. Then I saw her.
 

“Joy!” She was wearing blue satin running shorts, yellow Tiger shoes, and a T-shirt tied at the waist. I ran up to her and hugged her. I laughed, I tried to push her, to wrestle her to the ground, but she was no push-over. I wanted to talk, to tell her my feelings, my plans, but she held her fingers to my lips, and said, “There will be time to talk later, Danny. Now, just follow me.”
 

She demonstrated a tricky warm-up; a combination of t'ai chi movements, visualizations, calisthenics, and coordination exercises to “warm up the mind as well as the body.” In a few minutes, I felt light, loose, and full of energy.
 

Without warning, I heard Joy say “On your mark, get set, go!” She took off, running upward through campus, toward the hills of Strawberry Canyon. I followed, huffing and puffing. Not yet in running shape, I began to trail far behind. Angrily I pushed harder, my lungs burning. Up ahead, Joy had stopped at the top of the rise overlooking the football stadium. I could hardly breathe by the time I reached her.
 

“What took you so long, sweetheart?” she said, hands on her hips. Then she bounced off again, up the canyon, heading for the base of the fire trails, narrow dirt roads that wound up through the hills. Doggedly I pursued her, hurting as I hadn't hurt in a long time but determined to run her down.
 

As we neared the trails, she slowed down and began running at a humane pace. Then, to my dismay, she reached the base of the lower trails and instead of turning around, led me up another grade, far into the hills.
 

I offered up a silent prayer of thanks as she turned around at the end of the lower trails, instead of heading up the agonizingly steep, quarter-mile “connector” that joined the lower and upper trails. As we ran more easily back down a long grade, Joy began to talk. “Danny, Socrates asked me to introduce you to your new phase of training. Meditation is a valuable exercise. But eventually you have to open your eyes and look around. The warrior's life,” she continued, “is not a sitting practice; it is a moving experience. As Socrates has told you,” she said, as we rounded a curve and began a steep downgrade, “this way is a way of action--and action is what you'll get.”
 

I, meanwhile, had been listening thoughtfully, staring at the ground. I answered, “Yes, I understand that, Joy, that's why I train in gym...” I looked up just in time to see her lovely figure disappear in the distance.
 

I was completely drained when, later that afternoon, I walked into the gym. I lay on the mat and stretched and stretched, and stretched, until the coach came over and asked, “Are you going to stretch all day, or would you like to try one of the other nice activities we have for you--we call them 'gymnastics' events.”
 

“Okay, Hal,” I smiled. I tried some very simple tumbling moves for the first time, testing my leg. Running was one thing; tumbling was another. Advanced tumbling moves could exert as much as sixteen hundred pounds of force as the legs drove into the ground, thrusting the body skyward. I also began to test my trampoline legs for the first time in a year. Bouncing rhythmically into the air, I somersaulted again and again. “Whoopie, yahoo!”
 

Pat and Dennis, my two trampoline mates, yelled, “Millman, will you take it easy? You know your leg isn't healed yet!” I wondered what they'd say if they knew I had just run for miles in the hills.
 

Walking to the station that night, I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. I stepped out of the cool October air into the office, ready for some soothing tea and relaxing talk. I should have known better.
 

“Come over here and face me. Stand like this,” Socrates demonstrated, his knees half bent, his hips forward, and his shoulders back. He put his hands out in front of him, as if holding an invisible beach ball. “Hold that position without moving and breathe slowly, while I tell you a few things you need to know about proper training.”
 

He sat down behind his desk and watched me. Right away my legs started to ache and tremble. “How long do I have to stay this way?” I groaned.
 

Ignoring my question, he said, “You move well, Dan, compared to the average man, but your body is nevertheless full of knots. Your muscles hold too much tension, and tense muscles require more energy to move. So first of all, you have to learn how to release stored tensions.”
 

My legs were starting to shake with pain and fatigue. “It hurts!”
 

“It only hurts because your muscles are like rocks.” “All right, you've made your point!”
 

Socrates only smiled and left the office abruptly, leaving me standing, bent-legged, sweating and shaking. He came back with a wiry grey tomcat who had obviously seen some action on the front lines.
 

“You need to develop muscles like this cat so that you can move like us,” he said, scratching the purring feline behind the ears.
 

My forehead was beaded with perspiration. The pain in my shoulders and legs was intense. Finally, Socrates said, “at ease.” I stood up immediately, wiping my forehead and shaking loose. “Come over here and introduce yourself to this cat.” It purred with delight as Soc scratched it behind the ears. “We're both going to serve as your coaches, aren't we, puss?” The cat meowed loudly and I patted it. “Now squeeze its leg muscles, slowly, to the bone.”
 

“I might hurt it.”
 

“Squeeze!”
 

I pressed deeper and deeper into the cat's muscle until I felt the bone. The cat watched me with curiosity and kept purring. “Now squeeze my calf muscle,” Soc said.
 

“Oh, I couldn't, Soc. We don't know each other well enough.”
 

“Do it, Dumbo.” I squeezed and was surprised to feel that his muscles felt just like the cat's, yielding like firm jelly.
 

“Your turn,” he said, reaching down and squeezing my calf muscle.
 

“Ow!” I yelped. “I'd always thought hard muscles were normal,” I said, rubbing my calves.
 

“They are normal, Dan, but you must go far beyond normal, beyond usual, beyond common and reasonable, into the realm of the warrior. You've always tried to become superior in an ordinary realm. Now you're going to become ordinary in a superior realm.”
 

Socrates petted the cat once more and let it go out the door. It hung around for a moment, then wandered off. He then began my introduction to the subtle elements of physical training. “By now you can appreciate how the mind imposes tension on the body. You've accumulated worries and concerns and other mental debris for years. Now it's time for you to release old tensions that have become locked into the muscles.”