REWIND: Birth of the spiritual warrior with Susan Gillis Chapman

075 When war and rumours of war are everywhere in the news how we personally relate to uncertainty and show up for others matters more than ever. The temptation to harden our hearts and join the chorus of polarizing voices is difficult to resist. However, it doesn’t matter what side of a conflict we identify with or the opinions we hold. Toxic certainty, hatred and fear are contagious and the real enemies of peace. Spiritual warriorship has existed in eastern and western traditions for thousands of years to show the way of bravery. In times of crisis the spiritual warrior rises above aggression and looks within to transform a fearful mind in the cradle of compassion.

In this episode of Awake In Relationship I speak with returning guest Susan Gillis Chapman, Buddhist teacher and author of The 5 Keys of Mindful Communication and a new book, Which Way Is Up?: Finding Heart in the Hardest of Times, due to be published in June 2024. In this conversation we discuss the transformative power of compassion and qualities of a modern spiritual warrior living in times of great change and fear. We also discuss contemplative practices for invoking the heart of bravery and leading with love.

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Transcript

Reopening The Archive & Setup

Silas Rose 0:00

Hello friends. Every now and then I'd like to open up the back catalogue on the show. Especially for new listeners. As we stand on the cusp of a new lunar new year. The year of the fire horse. Which sounds kind of intense. Apparently filled with lots of energy and movement. And possibly revolution. I want to republish an episode with my dear friend. Susan Gales Chapman on Spiritual Warriorship. I'll be back in a couple weeks with fresh content, including an interview with author and Buddhist teacher Irini Rockwell, of working with the wisdom quality of our emotions and our relationships on the Tantric Buddhist path. If you haven't already done so, please hit subscribe on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks so much for tuning in, dear listener. Enjoy my conversation with Susan.

Susan’s New Book And Its Title

Silas Rose 1:11

Susan, uh, it's been a long time, and uh welcome back to Awakened Relationship.

Susan Gillis Chapman 1:16

Oh, thanks, Silas. It's really wonderful that you keep inviting me back. I really enjoy our conversations.

Silas Rose 1:22

Yeah, me too. So it's kind of an exciting time for you because you have a new book coming out. And uh, you know, we're gonna do uh a more in-depth interview on that probably in a couple months. But uh can you give us a little teaser about what this one's about?

Susan Gillis Chapman 1:41

Uh yeah. So it'll be it'll go public on June 4th. Um yeah, so in this book, I'm using my personal story as um, my story of having cancer and chemotherapy and so forth as a, you could say almost a metaphor or a um a way of describing what all of us go through in one way or another when our life is disrupted. And I'm bringing the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism into that um process so that people will have the support of uh greeting fear with loving kindness and compassion. So it's um yeah, hopefully it's something that would be relevant to anybody and everybody who's going through any kind of upheaval, which could be collective or individual. Yeah. Yeah. So uh that's it's it's 22 short little vignettes, but each one of them is about the relationship between fear and love. And the um short answer is love conquers fear. It's like the scissors, paper, rock game, but you know, love always is winning out over fear. But it's a lot of different um examples of how that my experience with that.

Silas Rose 3:06

It has a really interesting title, and I'm wondering about the meaning of that.

Susan Gillis Chapman 3:11

Which way is up? Yeah, and I love the cover of the book, which is the reflection of clouds in uh in water. So there is this uh uh and you know, when when we go through a crisis of any kind in our life, everything flips upside down, it seems. You know, we suddenly drop out of what we thought of as normal. Um, and then we're in what I call or what is sometimes referred to as a bardo, an in-between gap. And so um this is uh it's like I want my book to meet people there in that moment of not knowing which way is up. You know, and that there's something really transformative about that experience because what we used to think of as normal is actually can actually very be very um um unhelpful. And sometimes being flipped out of it is the best thing that ever happened to us. I don't want to be overly up, you know, Pollyanish about it, but it's true that these gaps can be extremely valuable in our life.

Silas Rose 4:25

How did your uh Buddhist training sort of prepare you for your diagnosis, do you think?

Meditation As Training For Crisis

Susan Gillis Chapman 4:31

Oh, a hundred percent. You know, a hundred percent, because for 50 years now, um, I've been practicing meditation where the the main practice is to rest in your body, rest in your posture, uh feel the natural confidence of just being a human being. But when, you know, when thoughts and emotions carry you away into different stories and imagined scenarios, the the meditation practice is training to pop that bubble, let go, and come back to the present moment. And so that in some ways, I mean, that's like the microscopic version of what it's like to suddenly um hear, you know, you have cancer. Uh that pops your bubble in a very big way. So you at that point you have two choices, either to rest in that space for even a moment or two, um, or to quickly try to exit. And so the meditation training really trains us to trust the space. And if we can do that, the space of our own intelligence and our own natural compassion for ourselves can have room to begin. You could say the healing process begins right away. Uh, and then in my book I talk about kind of allowing other people, and and a lot of us think that we have to have these lifelong friendships and um so forth. But in the book, or my experience is that I was nourished by the kindness of strangers over and over again. It was during the pandemic. And so, you know, just the kindness and gentleness of an interaction with someone whose name I never knew, you know, a technician. But it's just a proof that we can have a supply chain in our world of kindness that comes through these small gestures and that we can be nourished by that. So that also came, I think, from my Buddhist training of learning how to recognize that we don't have to individualize or solidify our idea of what love looks like, that it can actually um it's present everywhere. There's basic goodness and beauty everywhere that can nourish us if we are just simply willing to open to that space.

Kindness As A Supply Chain

Silas Rose 7:12

And sometimes it's hard to have that trust, especially as you know, we get more kind of um sucked into the news feed. It seems like there's an absence of compassion and wisdom.

Susan Gillis Chapman 7:26

Yeah. If you think of it, going back to this image of nourishment, you know, and and it's interesting you say the news feed, right? You know, what kind of nourishment are we taking? Like we a lot of us are really trying to avoid uh junk food, right? But um it's very well established that um there's a certain kind of news feed that feeds on anger and fear. And the more anger and fear that's cultivated, the more addicted we get to um what I call toxic certainties, right? So um I'll feed you anger and fear, and here in as a result, you can buy my product, you know, and that product will rescue you from the anger and fear, but all of that is a big con job.

Silas Rose 8:22

And then the product is ego.

Susan Gillis Chapman 8:25

Yeah, exactly. So so again, uh I think we all have to take some responsibility, especially during times uh of you know cultural crisis, to really f nourish ourselves properly. You know, nourish our souls, nourish our beings. Um and and you know, we don't have to take this on blind faith. We just simply nourish yourself with love, nourish yourself with kindness, nourish yourself with wisdom, you know, healthy skepticism, um, curiosity, willing not to know. And by nourishing ourselves that way now, what does the world look like? You know, when you when you have re-established a healthiness, what does it look like?

From News Feeds To Nourishment

Silas Rose 9:16

So that really brings us to the topic of spiritual worship, which you know, it takes a lot of bravery to kind of turn towards that that kind of open space of vulnerability.

Susan Gillis Chapman 9:28

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that would distinguish spiritual warriorship from our usual view of a warrior as being in conflict with. And in this case, the definition uh that my teacher in my lineage, uh Trumper and Bche and the Shambhala lineage, uh defined the spiritual warrior as about um being beyond conflict or uh raising us to, you could say, uh a level of awareness that is beyond aggression. But the pathway is about turning toward those very things. So again, like for instance, using that example of being nourished, you know, so the con artist is um feeding us this bad food full of fear and anger. And we um, if we bite that hook, just to mix metaphors a little bit, but um, so you know, we get hooked by that and we get pulled away. So the the path of the spiritual warriors to reverse that process. And so from that point of view, one would um instead of eating the food, would turn toward it and say, Oh, what is the nature of this fear?

Defining Spiritual Warriorship

Susan Gillis Chapman 10:56

You know, you're feeding me fear. Let me let me get into that, let me bring some intelligence, let me bring inquiry into that. Why are you afraid of it? Why should I be afraid of it? You know, just being curious. And likewise with anger, like um anger really feeds on or depends on this notion of blame. And so, you know, the path of the spiritual warrior is like it's like being the ultimate sort of mediator or negotiator. You go, okay, I'll take the blame. Like, give me that hot potato. And what happens is that totally disarms the whole process. Um so, in some ways, you know, the path of spiritual warriorship is is a gentle but confident path of being willing to continue to investigate what's being offered, you know. Um, and and not necessarily what's only being offered by other people, but what's arising in ourselves. So when I have my episode of anger or my episode of fear, instead of just going with it and solidifying it, I could actually, you know, investigate it. Like, what is the nature? Like, and and I think that's one of the characteristics of bravery in this case is that um if we can be willing, and this is what the meditation provides, is the ability to let go of the story and then just come to the energy and feel it in our body, you know, then that that's one of the steps. So I I go to the fear and just allow that fear to be there and just stay with the fear rather than the stories. Or the same with the anger, I come back to the just the energy of these um emotions and and but it's bringing curiosity, bringing acceptance, bringing and bringing self-compassion. And and then we discover that that can be transformative. And once we discover that, then we have our only concern

Investigating Fear And Anger

Susan Gillis Chapman 13:19

at that point is how to provide that space for others.

Silas Rose 13:24

It seems like medicine for the times because so many of the conflicts that we hear about now are really kind of being waged uh out of some sort of religious zealotry or or certainty. And you know, it's it seems almost impossible to penetrate uh you know on that scale. So in some sense we we kind of have to come back to our practice. But even in ourselves, you know, we can develop uh certain, you know, kind of logic or um philosophies that sort of validate our aggression towards others.

Susan Gillis Chapman 14:05

Yeah, and my teacher coined the term spiritual materialism and he normally, you know, was pointing to us so that we could notice our own spiritual ambition as being different from resting in our natural goodness. But we could also say that um the more we see how we use spirituality as some kind of escape, the more we might be able to have some understanding of how how that occurs for other people. Um and how kind of dangerous it is that you know, when when people are so disempowered as to believe that um it's God that is justifying causing harm to someone else, you know, or the it's God that's telling that you're better than everybody else. You know, uh that I mean that's a very disempowered form of uh what is it, toxic food.

Silas Rose 15:17

Yeah.

Susan Gillis Chapman 15:18

And yet, and again, it's a suspicious cycle because the more people are disempowered, the more likely they are to be lured into that kind of uh patriarchal authoritarian view, like, you know, trust me or trust God. God knows everything. And therefore, I mean I remember those experiences as a young, you know, Catholic girl when I would ask questions about the catechism, you know, like, you know, why is God a man or something like that? And the answer would be, it's a mystery. You're not supposed to ask that question. Um, you know, and later on I I did get introduced to a more contemplative and um

Spiritual Materialism And Zealotry

Susan Gillis Chapman 16:02

form of Christianity, which was very empowering, but that's a very disempowering message. Like, don't ask those questions, don't be, you know. And I I really feel, and I know that this is totally central to your view, Silas, that um when we look at what is a pathway, it's all about dialogue. It's all about, you know, being willing to engage in conversation where you never turn the other person into an object. Even if you disagree with them, you don't objectify them. Um, even if you realize that there's no way the conversation can continue, you still hold them with regard. And um and to me, that's a really, you know, that that practice of meaningful dialogue or being willing to engage is the key to restoring, you know, the sanity. Um back to, you know, just the village idea of people sitting on a bench chatting with each other in the afternoon sun somewhere. You know, it's like any form of exchange human to human is like the antidote to all of those um yeah, trends towards tribalism and disempowering and authoritarian views of uh, you know, now that I've established the anger and the fear, now that I've disempowered you, here's the solution. Um, and God is telling us to take up our swords and fight the enemy. And it it's so scary and creepy that that that's actually becoming a dominant voice anywhere.

Silas Rose 17:54

Yeah, well, it's it's a contagion.

Susan Gillis Chapman 17:57

It's very contagious. It's like the worst virus. It's worse than COVID-19, you know, it's because it's like taking over our brains and our hearts.

Silas Rose 18:08

I want to be, you know, very kind of practical here. Uh in the sense that, you know, we are all kind of under a lot of stress right now. There's a there's a lot of uncertainty in our world, you know, with wars and uh the climate crisis. A potential orange man back in the

Dialogue As Antidote To Tribalism

Silas Rose 18:28

uh White House, the most powerful office in the land, uh in the fall. There's a lot of there's a lot of stress. And as we already talked about, there is we kind of have two sort of default modes in response to stress. One is you know, to kind of turn away from uh whatever we fear or the source of tension or to armor up and go into battle. What is the you know, for someone stepping onto the path, what is the first step of training in being brave?

Susan Gillis Chapman 19:07

Well, traditionally um one begins by a practice called the Four Reminders. And actually everything you described is is the perfect fuel for that practice. Uh the four reminders, which you could do every day, uh, begins by starting coming at home. Like right now, at this moment, I have a human body. I'm healthy enough to be able to, you know, to function, to meditate. My country is not at war, so I'm not having to worry about my house collapsing. Um, I'm not, you know, like you come back to what is what are the um what is the safety zone that I'm in right now? And how fragile that is. You know, so someone in Ukraine a couple of years ago might have had that same feeling and now it doesn't feel that way, or someone in Gaza might

First Steps: The Four Reminders

Susan Gillis Chapman 20:18

have had that feeling and now it doesn't feel that way. In other words, first of all, you come back to all the resources that I have, and then we come to the fragility and impermanence. Um, I could die at any moment. Um it could all fall apart at any moment. And so contemplating the impermanence, uh, and those two together make for a pretty healthy mix of motivation, you know, if we really contemplate it. Um because that's sort of a don't waste your time message. And then you move on to kind of what is the the cause of suffering? Um, and you know, of course, we look at climate change, we look at war, we look at um uh fascism, you know, we look at different political movements. What is it that they all have in common? And so, you know, deeply investigating what are the causes. And and what the Buddha described was that the word dukkha or suffering is like being out of balance, being out of balance. And um, it's sort of like uh when your joints are rubbing against each other with arthritis. There's like it's the pain that's caused from being from something being out of balance. And so we look at climate change, we know how human misuse of power and resources have resulted in harming the earth. We look at wars and we look at how territoriality and disinformation and aggression. Russian has caused wars. We look at fascism and we see how much that depends on propaganda and stirring up in a state of disempowerment, you know. So we go back again to see what the causes of suffering are. And then what are the causes of happiness? And they're not about consumerism, they're not about having more. The causes of happiness are harmony and connection and a supply chain of kindness and love. So once we start to investigate that, then it's like, what am I going to invest in today? So that's kind of the starting point, is the Mahayana path depends a great deal on cultivating what's called prajna, cultivating an intelligence that cuts through confusion. And prajna can be cultivated in dialogue. It could be cultivated through study. It could be cultivated, but ultimately you take whatever

Causes Of Suffering And Happiness

Susan Gillis Chapman 23:07

kind of insight you're having, and then you bring that to your meditation cushion. And you say, okay, I'm going to look at my own mind and continue to investigate, like, what are what are the causes of my own anger? What is my the cause of my own habit of so by bringing it home to ourselves, we tend not to be, you know, it brings us back to uh we're all in this together. But if we don't see it within ourselves, then most of what we try to do is going to be somewhat blind because we're going to be trying to avoid the discomfort rather than sinking right back into it. Yeah, so if we talk about the warrior and the image of the sword, which I have heard recently as being, you know, grossly misused in some of the white Christian nationalism, this notion of a sword of Jesus, you know, but um but in the Buddhist tradition, the sword represents the clarity and precision of the intelligence that cuts through dualistic thinking. The thinking that's that thinks that that what's good for me is, you know, that this kind of um either-or thinking that we do when we put up a barrier between ourselves and others. So cutting through that barrier and resting in that open space where it's both and. Um so that's, you know, and and I would say just for myself that um because I have been like many people during the pandemic and even now, uh tend to get isolated. I think one of the bodhisattva practices is walking out the door, walking down the street, smiling at a stranger walking by, patting a dog, getting on a bus instead of getting in a car. Because, you know, if I'm in a car, then I'm just in my little thing. But if I'm on a bus, I'm sitting with other people. These are just practices I like to

Prajna And Everyday Bodhisattva Acts

Susan Gillis Chapman 25:12

do. I sit on the bus or on the train and I I just look around and I just try to feel like here, everybody on this train has a basic heart of goodness. Everybody wants to be happy. Those are just little practices that get us out of get me out of my little cocoon.

Silas Rose 25:32

So I want to conclude with uh kind of a curveball. It's sort of a thought experiment that I've been really bashing around in my head uh particularly in the last few months with everything going on, particularly in the Middle East. You mentioned that, you know, in Canada we are we have a peaceful and prosperous land. We're we're not concerned about being bombed or losing our homes. But I'm wondering if there's ever a possibility of necessarily the thought experiment Imagining, you know, how I would personally respond if uh, you know, my home is attacked, if uh my home is invaded. For the spiritual warrior. Like what are the rules of engagement in a time of war?

Susan Gillis Chapman 26:23

I'd have to pull out my copy of the art of war. But um, you know, it's interesting. I I was never trained this way, but Trunk Barimpache selected some students to practice kind of enlightened um military action. Um and, you know, trained them in all kinds of defensive maneuvers, you know, like it was like taking the protector principle and um acting it out in uh kind of ways like that. Traditionally it is said that um, for instance, if somebody entered my house and tried

Rules Of Engagement And Motivation

Susan Gillis Chapman 27:05

to kill me, if I was a total bodhisattva, which I'm not, but if I were, I might actually kill them first because that prevents them from becoming a murderer. I know that that's obviously it's a very tricky thing to say something like that.

Silas Rose 27:22

That's why it's a Kernpaul question.

Susan Gillis Chapman 27:25

Everything depends on motivation. It's a hundred percent about motivation, and that's one of the practices that a spiritual warrior has to engage in is being very clear what motivates everything I say and and do and think. Um so if the motivation is love and protection of that other person from causing harm, um you know, then whatever you do to restrain them is a way of protecting them. However, if motivation is to how dare you enter my territory, then you're committing a terrible act of you know, karmic consequence. So um one of the tragedies right now, whether it's looking at Ukraine or Gaza or Israel, whatever, one of the tragedies, and something for us to really think about, and and I've I've been watching some videos about the Second World War, too. You know, it's like pulling ordinary people out of their lives, getting farmers and plumbers and getting people out of their lives and putting them into the role of soldiers. You know, it's just so horribly tragic. And we see the aftermath, like the Vietnam bats on the street, and the, you know, it's just the horrible trauma we inflict on each other when we force people into this role of having to kill or be killed. Um, it's just, as you said, it's like the worst, it's the worst kind of form of human societal cancer there can be. Um, and yet it's happening. And so in the traditional, again, I keep saying traditional, the way the Mahayana teaching is explained is that there's four stages of compassionate activity. The first stage is to pacify. Do whatever you can to pacify the situation. Um, and if that doesn't work, then you move on to try to enrich the situation. Like again, if you are a mediator, like what do both sides need in order for them to get to a place of peacefulness? You enrich. And if that doesn't work, the next stage is magnetizing, which really is about empowering. Like you bring in power. You might have to empower yourself so that you have the power

Four Powers Of Compassionate Action

Susan Gillis Chapman 30:01

to gain their attention in a positive way. So empowering. And then the final stage is as needed, you have to have the ability to destroy what needs to be destroyed, which hopefully would not involve taking a human life, but it might be destroying an infrastructure, destroying a belief system, destroying a but it's like knowing the right moment to cut through. You know, so in my book, I I tell that story of Antoinette Tuff, who knew the exact moment in Georgia when the, you know, the gunman was there in the elementary school and he was saying, you know, it's too late. I've already planned to kill. And she she found the right moment to say, no, that's not how the story ends. And she cut through. So it's it's actually the best form of destroying is cutting through a narrative at the right moment where a person can wake up. And that's really, I think, ideally, if we can engage those four powers in the form of conversation, you know, and that we know that what happens a lot of times is conversation is frozen. Um, I'm right, no, I'm right, I'm right, no, you know, wait a year, you know, when you hear what I say, you'll know what's true. But instead, if we can find those four, you know, pacifying, enriching, maybe just come over and eat together. Um, magnetizing, and then if there is a moment of being able to say exactly the right word at exactly the right time, so that both of us fall into that open, warm space together. Not like I'm proving to you that I'm right, but like let's together discover our human goodness.

Silas Rose 31:51

Well, it's probably a great place for us to land. Um I don't think we've solved all the world's problems in this one conversation, but I think it happens one conversation at a time.

Susan Gillis Chapman 32:02

So Exactly. Yeah, thank you, Silas.

Silas Rose 32:07

How can uh people learn more about your books and and can get in touch?

Susan Gillis Chapman 32:13

Well, I finally um perked up my website.

Resources, Links, And Closing

Susan Gillis Chapman 32:18

So uh SusanGillischapman.com has information about both the new book, um, which can be pre-ordered through a number of different sites, including uh Shambhala Publications and Amazon, and uh and also the five keys to mindful communication, which actually has a lot of this other um view of how to work with our um conversation. In fact, in in the five keys, there's a chapter um that begins with the story of uh Dr. Abalish, who's a Palestinian doctor living in Gaza, and his um daughters were killed in an Israeli bomb. And he wrote a book called I Shall Not Hate. And uh so it's interesting how timely that particular chapter is right now. It's a chapter on speaking gently and using that he's an amazing example. He lives in Toronto now. Um so that book might not be it's not out of date and it's still available on you could check it out through the website.

Silas Rose 33:30

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Susan. And if you did, I'd really appreciate it if you took a moment and left a quick review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to connect more with Susan's work, head over to SusanGaillis Chapman.com, and I'll also post some links in the show notes and awakenrelationship.com. That can be found on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Substack. If you made it this far, dear listener, thank you so much for tuning in. Till next time, stay connected.

Outro music 34:17

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