Mav's blog: "Training"

Honor is central to warriorship.  It's a concept common to all warrior groups, regardless of the cultures in which they formed.  Whether you call it Bushido, The Code of Chivalry, or something different, all fighting men and women aspire to ethical codes guiding the manner in which they practice the profession of arms and how they live their lives.

Given the moral nature of these codes, they are compatible with most religions and are often mistaken for doctrines of religious origin.  However, warrior honor is not based on religion.

Warriors aren't honorable because they fear a wrathful god.  They are honorbale because it's a practical requirement of their profession.  They are honorbale because it's the most powerful way to live.  Most of all, warriors are honorable because to be otherwise is cowardly!

Whether you are a military member or not, personal honor is just as important.  Studying the martial arts makes you stronger than your non-warrior peers, and you're much more capable of injuring those around you.  Without the moral compass that honor provides, citizen-warriors can be dangerous indeed. Only honor separates the warriors from the thugs.

Honor is a term many people use but few understand.  For most, the word still conjures up scenes of duels or military exploits, but people are hard pressed to explain exactly what role honor plays in these adventures.  In other words, they can usually describe situations in which someone did or didn't acthonorably, but they can't quite say why what that person did was or wasn't honorable.

Many equate honor to honesty; if you tell the truth and pay your debts you're honorable.  Others link honor to their reputations.  If they are respected in their comunities or peer groups, they feel their honor is intact.  Unfortunately, while some of these issues do relate to honor, others have nothing to do with it at all.

Indeed, truth, self-restraint, loyalty, and the other virtues are honorable.  But practicing one or more of these ideals doesn't necessarily ensure one is a man or woman of honor - at least not in the warrior model.

To recognize and practice warrior honor, one must understand it.  Warrior honor is founded on three basic tenets:

1. Obligation

2. Justice

3. Courage

*** The book "Living the Martial Way: How to Develop attitudes based on the ancient Asian martial arts by Forrest E. Morgan can show you more details regarding this attitude.  I'm posting this info to not just intrigue you about an honorable attitude towards life, but in this book you will find ways to control your weakness and not vice versa.  I would love to type all this book down for you all, but that would mean I'd be stealing from this kat who wrote the book... anyhow.. the point is this.. read more into this so you can be a dominant species and not just a statistic (to limit yourself to the expectations either from stereotype or from anyone/anything that has stopped you from going further in your life).  Because after walking in this path, still a student btw :p, my eyes were open to the damage we allow ourselves to run into. 

Understand the concept of the Driven.. Am I driven by my weakness when I am not my best, or am I capable to differentiate a mistake from who I am?

There are many things in this book that will encourage you to keep learning more on the way of the Warrior Model and/or lead you deeper into martial arts.  But like I said, it's all a choice, and by that we set our constitution every day.

- - some mental training for yourself:

Think hard on what drives you to weakness, and ask yourself do I want to be this way all my life, or do I want to rip off these chains you've allowed to snare you from enjoying the gift of God we call life?