Go Buddhist or go home!
Are you manly? Buddhism for you!
Are you girl? Go be Christian. Girly man? Hinduism.
Buddhism now, crying in your pillow later.
Buddhism Kicks Ass: The Four Karmas & Mahakala [protector principle; transmuting aggression].
Buddhism is all about peace, love and understanding. Generosity, Discipline, Patience, Exertion, Meditation and Wisdom. True, true. Still, there’s a long proud tradition of warriorship in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, full of stories about cutting off folks’ heads and burying them upside down. Is this just a barbaric hangover from pre-Buddhist Tibetan days? Or is there a place for ‘kicking ass’ within a peace-focused life?
We all know and understand the notion of “tough love”—a momma hollering at a child about to touch a hot oven. That kind of aggression is with the benefit of others in mind. Conventional aggression—my temper tantrums, for example—rises rather out of confusion, neurosis, frustration, klesha.
In my days as a Dharma Brat, growing up in an American Buddhist family, we studied the Four Karmas. Karma, in Buddhism, simply means action. The four actions, which are sequential, are:
1. Pacifying. If that doesn’t work, you move on to…
2. Enriching. If that doesn’t work, you move on to…
3. Magnetizing. If that doesn’t work, you move on to…
4. Destroying.
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