Way of the Peaceful Warrior (27 page)

Socrates had told me, long ago, that even for the warrior, there is no victory over death; there is only the realization of Who we all really are.
 

As I lay in the sun, I remembered peeling away the last layer of the onion in Soc's office to see “who I was.” I remembered a character in a J. D. Salinger novel, who, upon seeing someone drink a glass of milk, said, “It was like pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.”
 

I remembered Lao Tzu's dream.  Lao Tzu fell asleep and dreamt he was a butterfly. Upon awakening, he asked himself, “Am I a man who has just been dreaming that he was a butterfly, or a sleeping butterfly, now dreaming that he is a man?”
 

I walked down the beach, singing the children's nursery rhyme over and over:
 

“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
 

After one afternoon walk, I returned to my sheltered campsite, hidden behind some rocks. I reached into my pack and took out an old book I'd picked up in India. It was a ragged English translation of spiritual folk tales. Flipping through the pages, I came upon a story about enlightenment:
 

“Milarepa had searched everywhere for enlightenment, but could find no answer--until one day, he saw an old man walking slowly down a mountain path, carrying a heavy
sack. Immediately, Milarepa sensed that this old man knew the secret he had been desperately seeking for many years.
 

“ Old man, please tell me what you know. What is enlightenment?”
 

The old man smiled at him for a moment, and swung the heavy burden off his shoulders, and stood straight.
 

“ Yes, I see!” cried Milarepa. “My everlasting gratitude. But please, one question more. What is after enlightenment?”
 

Smiling again, the old man picked up the sack once again, slung it over his shoulders, steadied his burden, and continued on his way.
 

That same night I had a dream: I awoke in the middle of the night, under a shining moon. The air was warm and the world was silent, except for the rhythmic wash of the tides. I heard Soc's voice but knew that it was only another.
 

I sat and watched the moonlight sparkling on the sea and capping the distant mountains with silver. “What was that saying about mountains, and rivers, and the great search? Ah, yes,” I remembered: “First mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Then mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers. Finally, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.”
 

I stood, ran down the beach, and dove into the dark ocean, swimming out far beyond the surf. I had stopped to tread water when I suddenly sensed a creature swimming through the black depths somewhere below my feet. Something was coming at me, very rapidly: it was Death.
 

I flailed wildly to the shore and lay panting on the wet sand. A small crab crawled in front of my eyes and burrowed into the sand as a wave washed over it.
 

I stood, dried myself, and slipped into my clothes. I packed by the light of the moon. Then, shouldering my knapsack, I said to myself,
 

“Better never begin; once begun, better finish.”
 

I knew it was time to go home.
 

As the jumbo jet settled onto the runway at Hopkins Airport in Cleveland, I felt a growing anxiety about my marriage and my life. Over six years had passed. I felt older, but no wiser. What could I say to my wife and my daughter? Would I ever see Socrates again and if I did, what could I bring to him? Linda and Holly were waiting for me when I got off the plane. Holly ran to me squealing with delight, and hugged me tight. My embrace with Linda was soft and warm, but empty of real intimacy, like hugging an old friend. It was obvious that time and experience had drawn us in different directions.
 

Linda drove us home from the airport. Holly slept contentedly on my lap.
 

Linda had not been lonely in my absence, I learned. She had found friends--and intimacies. And as it happened, soon after my return to Oberlin I met someone very special; a student, a sweet young woman named Joyce. Her short black hair hung in bangs over a pretty face and bright smile. She was small, and full of life. I felt intensely attracted to her, arid we spent every available hour together, walking and talking, strolling through the Arboretum grounds, around the placid waters. I was able to talk with her in a way I'd never been able to speak with Linda--not because Linda couldn't understand, but because her paths and interests lay elsewhere.
 

Joyce graduated in the spring. She wanted to stay near me, but I felt a duty to my marriage, so we sadly parted. I knew I'd never forget her, but my family had to come first.
 

In the middle of next winter, Linda, Holly and I moved back to Northern California. Perhaps it was my preoccupation with my work and with myself that was the final blow to our marriage, but no omen had been so sad as the continual nagging doubt and melancholy I first felt on our wedding night--that painful doubt, that sense of something I should remember, something I'd left behind  me years ago. Only with Joyce had I felt free of it.
 

After the divorce, Linda and Holly moved into a fine old house. I lost myself in my work teaching gymnastics and Aikido at the Berkeley YMCA.
 

The temptation to visit the gas station was agonizing, but I would not go until I was called. Besides, how could I go back? I had nothing at all to show for my years.
 

I moved to Palo Alto and lived alone, as lonely as I had ever been. I thought of Joyce many times, but knew I had no right to call her; I still had unfinished business.
 

I began my training anew. I exercised, read, meditated, and continued driving questions deeper and deeper into my mind, like a sword. In a matter of months, I started to feel a renewed sense of well-being that I hadn't felt in years. During this time, I started  writing, recording volumes of notes from my days with Socrates. I hoped my review of our time together would give me a fresh clue. Nothing had really changed, at least nothing I could see since he had sent me away.
 

One morning, I sat on the front steps of my small apartment, overlooking the freeway. I thought back over the past eight years. I had begun as a fool and had almost become a warrior. Then Socrates had sent me out into the world to learn, and I'd become a fool again.
 

It seemed a waste--all eight years. So here I sat on the front steps, gazing over the city to the mountains beyond. Suddenly my attention narrowed, and the mountains began to take on a soft glow. In that instant, I knew what I would do.
 

I sold what few belongings I had left, strapped my pack to my back, and hitchhiked south toward Fresno, then headed east into the Sierra Nevadas. It was late summer--a good time to get lost in the mountains.
 

On a narrow road somewhere near Edison Lake, I started hiking inward to an area Socrates had once mentioned. Inward and upward, toward the heart of the wilderness. I sensed that here in the mountains I would find the answer--or die. In a way, I was right on both counts. I hiked up through alpine meadows, between granite peaks, winding my way through thick groves of pine and spruce, up into the high lake country, where people were scarcer than the puma, deer, and small lizards that scurried under rocks as I approached.
 

I made camp just before dusk. The next day I hiked higher, across great fields of granite at the edge of the timberline. I climbed over huge boulders, cut through canyons and ravines. In the afternoon I picked edible roots and berries, and lay down by a crystal spring. For the first time in years, it seemed, I was content.
 

Later in the afternoon, I walked alone in the wilds, down through the shade of tangled forests, heading back to base camp. Then I prepared wood for the evening fire, ate another handful of food, and meditated beneath a towering pine tree, surrendering myself to the mountains. If they had anything to offer me, I was ready to except it.

After the sky turned black, I sat warming my hands and face over the crackling fire, when out of the shadows stepped Socrates!

“I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd drop in,” he said. In disbelief and delight, I hugged him and wrestled him to the ground, laughing and getting both of us thoroughly dirty. We brushed ourselves off and sat by the fire. “You look almost the same, old warrior--not a year over a hundred.” (He did look older, but his grey-speckled eyes still had their twinkle.)

 “You, on the other hand,” he grinned, looking me over, “look a lot older, and not much smarter. Tell me, did you learn anything?”
 

I sighed, staring into the fire. “Well, I learned to make my own tea.” I put a small pot of water on my makeshift grill and prepared the spicy tea, using herbs I'd found on my hike that day. I hadn't been expecting company; I handed him my cup, and poured my tea into a small bowl. Finally, the words poured forth. As I spoke, the despair that I'd held off for so long finally caved in on me.
 

“I have nothing to bring you, Socrates. I'm still lost--no closer to the gate than I was when we first met. I've failed you, and life has failed me; life has broken my heart.”
 

He was jubilant. “Yes! Your heart has been broken, Dan--broken open to reveal the gate, shining within. It's the only place you haven't looked. Open your eyes, buffoon--you've almost arrived!”
 

Confused and frustrated, I could only sit there helplessly.
 

Soc reassured me. “You're almost ready--you're very close.” I pounced on his words eagerly. “Close to what?”
 

“To the end.” Fear crept up my spine for a moment. I crawled quickly into my sleeping bag, and Socrates unrolled his. My last impression that night was of my teacher's eyes, shining, as if he were looking through me, through the fire, into another world.
 

In the first direct rays of the morning sun, Socrates was already up, sitting over by a nearby stream. I joined him for a while in silence, tossing pebbles into the running water, and listening to the plop. Silent, he turned and watched me closely.
 

That night, after a carefree day of hiking, swimming, and sunning, Socrates told me that he wanted to hear about everything I could remember feeling since I had seen him. I
talked for three days and three nights--I'd exhausted my store of memories. Socrates had hardly spoken the whole time, except to ask a brief question.
 

Just after the sun had set, he motioned for me to join him by the fire. We sat very still, the old warrior and I, our legs crossed on the soft earth, high in the Sierra Nevadas.
 

“Socrates, all my illusions have shattered, but there seems nothing left to take their place. You've shown me the futility of searching.
 

But what about the way of the peaceful warrior? Isn't that a path, a search?”
 

He laughed with delight and shook me by my shoulders. “After all this time, you finally come up with a juicy question! But the answer is right in front of your nose. These past eight years you have abandoned your “warriorship” so you could search for it. But the way is now; it always has been.”
 

“What do I do then, now? Where do I go from here?”
 

“Who cares?” he yelled gleefully. “A fool is 'happy' when his cravings are satisfied. A warrior is happy without reason. That's what makes happiness the ultimate discipline--above all else I have taught you.”
 

As we climbed into our sleeping bags once more, Soc's face shone at me in the red glow of the fire. “Dan,” he said softly.
 

I was growing drowsy. As my eyes closed, I said softly, “But Socrates, some things and people are very difficult to love; it seems impossible to always be happy.”
 

“Nevertheless, Dan, that is what it means to be a warrior. I am not telling you how to be happy, you see, I am just telling you to be happy.” With these final words, I slept.
 

Socrates shook me gently awake just after dawn. “We have a long hike ahead,” he said. Soon we set off into the high country.
 

The only sign of Soc's age or susceptible heart was the slowed pace of his climb. Once again I was reminded of my teacher's vulnerability and his sacrifice. I could never again take my time with him for granted. As we climbed higher, I remembered a strange story that I had never understood until now.
 

A saintly woman was walking along the edge of a cliff. Several hundred feet below her, she saw a dead mother lion, surrounded by crying cubs. Without hesitation, she leaped off the cliff so that they would have something to eat.
 

Perhaps in another place, another time, Socrates would have done the same thing.
 

We climbed higher and higher, mostly in silence, through sparsely wooded rocky ground, then up to the peaks above the timberline.
 

“Socrates, where are we headed?” I asked as we sat for a brief rest.
 

“We're going to a special mound, a holy place, the highest plateau in many miles. It was a burial site for an early American tribe so small that the history books do not record its existence, but these people lived and worked in solitude and in peace.”
 

“How do you know this?”
 

“I had ancestors who lived among them. Let's move on now; we must reach the plateau before dark.”
 

At this point I was willing to trust Socrates with anything, yet I had an unsettling feeling that I was in grave danger and that he wasn't telling me something.