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Pathless path12/5/2023 During the 1950’s he established several new monasteries in southern Vietnam, began publication of the journal “Vietnamese Buddhism”, and began formulating his project for “engaged Buddhism”. He received full ordination at Bao Quoc Institute in 1949. After a happy childhood in which he decided to become a Buddhist monk, he entered Tu’ Hieu Monastery at age seventeen. Thich Nhat Hanh was born in central Vietnam during the early 1930’s. This was sound advice from a devotee who followed the Buddhist path so resolutely and authentically that he blazed a new trail with it. He looked in our direction while moving past and smiled, saying “There’s nothing to it, just follow the path.” The room was crowded and one of the monks mentioned to him that there was a graduate student present who would like to become more familiar with his ideas. I had traveled to a small college in northern New Jersey where he was delivering a speech, along with a number of devotees with whom I had corresponded about his philosophy, and they led me to a waiting-room room just as he was about to walk out to speak. I met him, literally in passing, in 1997 as a doctoral student while doing a dissertation on his conception of ‘emptiness’ (sunya). He may throw away the remaining part, the last part of the cigarette he may have moved through all the gestures without even being aware of what he was doing.The recent demise of famous Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh brought to mind some poignant memories. If there is some inner restlessness, immediately his hand goes into his pocket he brings out the cigarette, starts smoking. Just robot-like he reaches into the pocket. If you have habits – and everybody has habits, you can see it… A man takes out his packet of cigarettes from a pocket, watch him, he may not be at all aware what he is doing. "Habits function without consciousness they don't need any awareness, they can move without you. All over the world, throughout history, the soldier has been trained in a robot-like existence he has to create habits. Hence it is called the way of the soldier. "What will you do? Anger is there what will Yoga suggest to do? It suggests: create the habit of compassion – create the opposite, make it so habitual that you start functioning like a robot. Yoga immediately cuts you with a sword into two parts: the right and wrong the right has to win over the wrong. Sex has to go and give place to brahmacharya, to pure celibacy. Anger has to be completely destroyed and compassion created. Hate has to be destroyed and love evolved. The path of the warrior is to destroy all that is wrong, negative, and develop all that is positive and right. You have anger and greed and sex, and millions of things. "For example, you have hate in you: the path of the warrior is to destroy the hate within. They divide reality and they create an inner conflict – they proceed through conflict. And almost all religions, except Tantra, follow the path of Yoga. It gives you a clear-cut distinction as to what is wrong and what is right, what is good and what is bad, what belongs to God and what belongs to the Devil. "Yoga tries to create a conflict within you. "A soldier has to fight inch by inch a soldier has to be aggressive, a soldier has to be violent, the enemy has to be destroyed or conquered. So first you will have to understand what is the path of a soldier, a warrior, only then will you be able to understand what Tilopa means by the royal path. One is the path of the warrior, the soldier the other is the path of the king: the royal path.
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