Now for the main event. My thinking about the ethical life lately has simplified into a single commencing outlook or preparatory departure. To the extent that one must assume the role of warrior in the course of life, the proper attitude is, first, one of discovery. Set out to discover the world with as little prejudicial pre-instruction as possible. This sense or disposition toward discovery is essentially the quintessential characteristic of the authentic tourist. Thus the warrior is, first and foremost, a tourist. But he, she is a wild tourist and never enwrapped by the traps of consumerism. He or she sees like the enlightened bear that goes over the mountain (i.e.,...The bear goes over the mountain, the bear goes over the mountain, the bear goes over the mountain...to see what it can see. And all that it can see, all that it can see...is a novel apprehension of reality, a novel apprehension of totality, a genuine rendition of infinity...is all that it can see....)
So the warrior tourist goes about doing his, her best at taking the whole world in, and concurrently, either 1) enjoying it fully, or 2) challenging it awfully with the roar of embattled engagement. Now the warrior’s act of enjoyment or engagement may seem to an observer as a response--the product of a calculation employing a set of personal decision rules. But this is really not the case at all. Quite otherwise, this enjoyment or engagement is an organic outgrowth of his, of her initial disposition towards prime apprehension of the world. If there is thought attendant to this process, and there often is but not invariably, it is typically not studied and tortured, but guiding and informative. It is not the instance of finding oneself at a fork in a road (a la Robert Frost) and pausing to decide one way...or the other. Rather, attention to the moment leads the warrior invariably onwards upon the trail blazed for his, for her destiny and the joy or engagement that ensues is merely the appropriate interpenetration of the warrior’s will with the way of the world as it is manifested.
To see...and see...and see: the spectacle of life fully for whatever it is. And to do so joyfully or engagingly.
So here's an example of this from my own life, and perhaps you'll laugh for the humor intrinsic in the situation, but I think it exemplifies the attitude which I'm here attempting to depict:
A friend of mine and I were at a baseball game and between innings we decided to leave our seats and go to the beer stand to get another beer. As we turned away from the field and down the rampway under the stands, my friend nudged me to turn back around and behold three utterly cute chicks standing two feet away at the precipe rail to the field, stretching and waving, backs turned to us. They were up on their toes, and with hourglass bodies and booty-tight shorts, they were pure oozing paradigms of nervous sexuality. I first looked at my friend's eyes as he visually drilled them from head to toe. I then looked to them and beheld what he beheld and lusted for, but...there was something in their bodies' energies-- a wiggle, a dance, what? In unison their arms reached up, a baseball zoomed above their reach, and...
My friend never saw it coming. Well he saw it, but because he was in a stimulus-response mode, he was too late. The ball was heading square for his nose, two inches, one inch away. He flinched from the expected impact, but there was none.
As I was predisposed both to the enjoyment of wiggling butts and an understanding of how they danced in that world, I engaged the moment thoughtlessly. Even as I was thrilled by the sight, my hand snatched the ball from in front of my friend's nose with the back of my hand just brushing his nose. Had I made a conscious decision to act so? Hell no. Was it merely a reaction to the sight of the flying ball? Two feet away, I never would have had time to so react successfully. I had felt the lightning before it struck, I was predisposed, and my hand snatched without an instruction from my mind. My friend was as unbelieving as I was unthinking: I had saved him a broken nose.
Oh yes, I was quick. Jackie Chan quick. In hindsight, I snatched for the wrong thang, but that's another story!
And, oh, the ball? David Justice threw it from the outfield in response to the girls' attention to him between innings.
Damn! What a sight! What a moment! And my friend, needless to say, bought the beers!
Help! I'm blogging and I can't prop up!
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