WAY OF THE PEACEFUL WARRIOR: A Book That Changes Lives

by Dan Millman

  The next day, in the early afternoon before workout, I took advantage of the blue sky and warm sunshine to sit 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 my assailant. “Socrates, you have absolutely no manners!”

  “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.”

  “Time to get moving, Sitting Bull. Go get your running shoes and meet me back here in twenty minutes.”

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

  “Joy!” She was barefoot and wearing blue running shorts 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 pushover. I wanted to talk, to tell her my feelings, my plans. She just held her fingers to my lips and said, “Time to talk later, Danny. For now, just follow me.”

  She began a combination of T’ai Chi movements, calisthenics, and coordination exercises for the mind and the body. In a few minutes, I felt light, loose, and energized.

  Without warning, Joy said, “On your mark, get set, go!” She took off, running up through campus. I followed, straining to keep up as we headed toward the hills of Strawberry Canyon. Huffing and puffing, not yet in running shape, I began to trail far behind. 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 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 useful practice, but eventually you have to open your eyes and look around. The warrior’s life is a moving experience.”

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

  Later that afternoon, I walked into the gym, lay on the mat, and stretched and stretched until the coach came over and asked, “Are you going to lie around all day, or would you like to try one of the other nice activities we have for you — we call them ‘gymnastics’ events.”

  I tried some simple tumbling moves for the first time, testing my leg. Running was one thing; tumbling was another. And it hurt. Advanced 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. 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 bent his knees, thrust his hips forward, and pulled his shoulders back. Then he put his hands out in front of him as if holding an invisible beach ball. “Hold this position without moving. Breathe slowly, and listen up. You move well, Dan, compared to most people, but your muscles hold too much tension. Tense muscles require more energy to move. So you have to learn how to release stored tension.”

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

  “It only hurts because your muscles are like rocks.”

  “All right, you’ve made your point! How long do I have to stay this way?”

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

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

  My forehead beaded with perspiration; intense pain gripped my shoulders and legs. Finally, Socrates said, “At ease.” I straightened, wiping my forehead and shaking my arms. “Come over here and introduce yourself to Oscar.” The cat purred with delight as Soc scratched him behind the ears. “We’re both going to serve as your coaches, aren’t we, boy?” Oscar meowed loudly. I patted him. “Now squeeze his leg muscles, slowly, to the bone.”

  “I might hurt him.”

  “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 the usual, common, or reasonable, to reach 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 let Oscar go out the door. 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. Worries, anxieties, and other mental debris are stored as chronic tension. Now it’s time for you to release these tensions and free your body from the past.”

  Socrates spread a white sheet on the carpet and told me to strip down to my shorts. He did the same. “What are you going to do if a customer comes?” He pointed to his overalls hanging by the door.

  “Now, do exactly as I do.” He began by rubbing a sweet-scented oil over his left foot. I copied every step as he squeezed, pressed, and dug very deeply into the bottom, top, sides, and between the toes, stretching, pressing, and pulling. “Massage the bones, not just the flesh and muscle — deeper,” he said. Half an hour later, we were through with the left foot. We repeated the process with the right foot. This went on for hours, covering every part of the body. I learned things about my muscles, ligaments, and tendons I’d never known before. I could feel where they were attached; I could feel the shape of the bones. It was amazing that I, an athlete, was so unfamiliar with the inside of my body.

  Socrates had quickly slipped into his overalls a few times when the bell clanged, but otherwise, we were undisturbed. When I donned my clothes at dawn, I felt as if I had a new body. Returning from a customer, Soc said, “You’ve cleaned many old fears from your body. Take the time to repeat this process once a week for the next month. Pay attention to the site of your injury.”

  More homework, I thought. The sky grew light. I yawned. Time to go home. As I was walking out the door, Socrates told me to be at the base of the fire trails at 1 P.M. sharp.

  I arrived early at the trails. I stretched and warmed up lazily; my body felt loose and light after the “bone massag
e,” but with only a few hours’ sleep I was still tired. A light drizzle had begun; all in all, I didn’t feel like running anywhere, with anyone today. Then I heard a rustling in the bushes nearby. I stood quietly and watched, expecting to see a deer emerge from the thicket. Out of the foliage stepped Joy, again barefoot, looking like an elf princess, wearing dark green shorts and a lime T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Happiness is a full tank.” A gift from Socrates, no doubt.

  “Hey, Joy, good to see you. Let’s sit down and talk; there’s so much I want to tell you.” She smiled and sped away.

  As I pursued her up around the first curve, almost slipping on the wet clay earth, I felt a weakness in my legs after yesterday’s exercise. I was soon winded, grateful that she kept her pace slower than yesterday’s.

  We approached the end of the lower trail. My breathing was labored and my leg throbbed. Then she said, “Upsy daisy,” and started up the connector. My mind rebelled. My weary muscles resisted. Then I looked up at Joy, bounding lightly up the hill as if it were level.

  With a yell, I started up the connector. Like a drunken gorilla, I ran hunched over, grunting, panting, blindly clambering up, two steps forward, sliding one step back.

  At the top, the trail leveled off. Joy stood there, smelling the wet pine needles, looking as peaceful and content as Bambi. My lungs begged for more air. “I have an idea,” I panted. “Let’s walk the rest of the way — no, let’s crawl — it gives us more time to talk. How does that sound, pretty good?”

  “Let’s go,” she said merrily.

  My chagrin turned to anger. I’d run her to the ends of the earth! I stepped into a puddle, slipped through the mud, and ran into a small tree branch, nearly knocking myself over the side of the hill. “Goddamn-it-shit-son-of-a-bitch!” My words emerged a hoarse whisper. I had no energy left to talk.

  I struggled over a small hill that seemed like the Colorado Rockies and saw Joy squatting, playing with some wild rabbits as they hopped across the trail. When I stumbled up to her, the rabbits leaped into the bushes. Joy looked up at me, smiling, and said, “Oh, there you are.” By some heroic effort, I leaned forward and managed to accelerate past her, but she just shot ahead and disappeared again.

  We had climbed eleven hundred feet. I was now high above the bay and could see the university below me. I was, however, in no condition or state of mind to appreciate the view. I felt very close to passing out. I had a vision of me buried on the hill, under the wet earth, with a marker: “Here lies Dan. Nice guy, good try.”

  The rain had increased, but I ran on as if in a trance, leaning forward, stumbling, pulling one leg forward after the other. My shoes felt like iron boots. Then I rounded a corner and saw a final grade that looked nearly vertical. Again my mind refused; my body stopped, but up there, at the top of the hill, stood Joy, with her hands on her hips as if challenging me. Somehow I managed to tip forward and start my legs moving again. I plodded, I pushed, I strained and groaned up the last endless steps until I ran right into her.

  “Whoa, boy, whoa,” she laughed. “You’re finished, all done.”

  Between gasps, as I leaned against her, I wheezed, “You... can... say... that... again.”

  We walked back down the hill, giving me welcome time to recover and talk. “Joy, it seems like pushing this hard this fast isn’t natural. I wasn’t really prepared to run this far; I don’t think it’s very good for the body.”

  “Probably not,” she said. “But this wasn’t a test of your body; it was a test of your spirit — a test to see if you could push on — not just with the hill, but with your training. If you had stopped, it would have been the end. But you passed, Danny, you passed with flying colors.”

  The wind began to blow, and the rain poured down, drenching us. Then Joy stopped, took my head in her hands, and kissed me. Water dripped from our sopping hair and ran down our cheeks. I reached around her waist and was drawn into her shining eyes, and we kissed again.

  I was filled with a new energy. I laughed at the way we both looked, like sponges that needed to be wrung out, and said, “I’ll race you to the bottom!” I took off and got a good head start. “What the hell,” I figured. “I can slide down these damn trails!” She won, of course.

  Later that afternoon, dry and warm, I stretched lazily in the gym with Sid, Gary, Scott, and Herb. The warmth of the gym was a pleasurable shelter from the pounding rain outside. Despite my grueling run, I still had energy to spare.

  But by the time I stepped into the office that evening and took off my shoes, my reserves had evaporated. I wanted to flop my aching body down on the couch and take a nap for ten or twelve hours. Resisting the urge, I sat as gracefully as I could manage and faced Socrates.

  I was amused to see that he’d rearranged the decor. Pictures of golfers, skiers, tennis players, and gymnasts were up on the wall; on his desk sat a baseball mitt and a football. Socrates even wore a sweatshirt that said, “Ohio State Coaching Staff.” It seemed that we’d entered the sports phase of my training.

  While Soc made us some of his special wake-up tea he called “Thundering Tarnation,” I told him about my gymnastics progress. He listened attentively, then said, “There is more to gymnastics and other sports than most people appreciate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He reached into his desk and took out three lethal-looking daggers. “Uh, never mind, Soc,” I said, “I don’t really need an explanation.”

  “Stand up,” he ordered. When I did, he casually threw a knife, underhand, straight toward my chest.

  I leaped aside, falling onto the couch as the knife dropped soundlessly to the carpet. I lay there, shocked, my heart beating overtime.

  “Good,” he said. “You overreacted a bit, but good. Now stand up and catch the next one.”

  Just then, the kettle started whistling. “Oh, well,” I said, rubbing my sweaty palms together, “time for tea.”

  “It will keep,” he said. “Watch me closely.” Soc tossed a glittering blade straight into the air. I watched it spin and drop. As it fell, he matched the speed of the blade with the downward motion of his hand and grasped the handle between his thumb and fingers, like a pincer, gripping firmly.

  “Now you try. Notice how I caught it so that even if I happened to grab the blade, it wouldn’t slice me.” He tossed another knife toward me. More relaxed, I stepped out of the way and made only a feeble attempt at catching it.

  “If you drop the next one, I’m going to start throwing overhand,” he warned.

  This time my eyes were glued to the handle; as it came near, I reached out. “Hey, I did it!”

  “Aren’t sports fun?” he said. We became totally immersed in throwing and catching. Then finally we sat down for tea.

  “Now let me tell you about satori, a Zen concept. Satori occurs when attention rests in the present moment, when the body is alert, sensitive, relaxed, and the emotions are open and free. Satori is what you experienced when the knife was flying toward you. Satori is the warrior’s state of being.”

  “You know, Soc, I’ve had that feeling many times, especially during competitions. Often I’m concentrating so hard, I don’t even hear the applause.”

  “Yes, that is the experience of satori. Sports, dance, or music, and any other challenging activity can serve as a gateway to satori. You imagine that you love gymnastics, but it’s merely the wrapping for the gift of satori. Your gymnastics requires full attention on your actions. Gymnastics draws you into the moment of truth; your life is on the line. As with a dueling samurai, it’s satori or death.”

  “Like in the middle of a double somersault.”

  “Yes. And this is why gymnastics is one of the warrior’s arts, a way to focus the mind and free the emotions as you train the body. But most athletes fail to expand this clarity into daily life. This is your task. And when satori becomes your everyday reality, we will be equals. Satori is your key to the gate.”

  I sighed. “It seems like such a distant possibility, So
crates.”

  “When you ran up the hill after Joy, you didn’t just gaze wistfully at the top of the mountain, you looked directly in front of you and took one step at a time. That’s how it works.”

  “The House Rules, right?”

  Socrates nodded, smiling. “And now you’d better get some sleep. Special session tomorrow morning at 7:00. Berkeley High School track.”

  When my alarm rang at 6:15, I dragged myself out of bed, submerged my head in cold water, did some deep breathing exercises, then screamed into my pillow to wake up.

  I was alert by the time I hit the streets. I jogged slowly, crossing Shattuck, and cut down Allston Way past the Berkeley YMCA, the post office, then across Milvia, onto the high school grounds, where Soc was waiting.

  His special program started with a half hour in that unbearable crouching position he’d shown me in the gas station. Then he showed me some basic principles of the martial arts. “The true martial arts teach nonresistance — the way of the trees bending in the wind. This attitude is far more important than physical technique.”

  Using the principles of aikido, Socrates was able to throw me without any apparent effort, no matter how I tried to push him, grab him, punch him, or even tackle him. “Never struggle with anyone or anything. When you’re pushed, pull; when you’re pulled, push. Find the natural course and bend with it. Join with nature’s power.” His actions proved his words.

  Soon it was time to go. “See you tomorrow, same time, same place. Stay home tonight and practice your exercises. Remember to breathe so slowly that you wouldn’t disturb a feather in front of your nose.” He glided off as if on roller skates, and I ran toward my apartment, so relaxed that I felt like the wind was blowing me home.

  In the gym I did my best to apply what I’d learned, “letting movements happen” instead of trying to do them. My giant swings on the high bar seemed to go around by themselves; I swung, hopped, and somersaulted to handstand after handstand on the parallel bars; my circles, scissors, and pommel work on the horse felt as if I were supported by strings from the ceiling, weightless. And, finally, my legs were regaining their spring.