In my martial career I have had the great fortune to train with extraordinary individuals; people who excel on a number of levels in multiple capacities. An inevitable price of these gifts is the inevitable loss of contact which occurs as training partners move away, die, or lose touch with the martial way.
Due to the nature of the martial way as a form of personal development which cannot by its nature be possessed by others, the losses incurred in this way of life were also never possessed in the first place. In reality, what is lost was never possessed, but merely shared. The only literal possession is one's life, which means that loss is itself impossible, as no one is alive to grieve for their lost life and the only ones who do grieve are others, who might incorrectly equate their sharing of one's life as a possession.
Grief grips those who lose money, dignity, love, or respect, but to what effect? In reality, one shares their money, their dignity, their respect with others and has the responsibility to share and withhold those things fairly. But if one begins life without money, dignity, love, and respect and then ends life without those things, they cannot be said to have lost anything more than their life. (With relation to love, this view may be contentious, but do remember that virtually every child is conceived before any mother is aware of them).
Hence, the proper way to deal with 'loss' is to let the shared experience drift away with appreciation.
For those who have taken the life of another, or unjustly deprived them, either purposefully or accidentally, the cure to the justifiable guilt is not to continually self flagellate, but to take concrete steps to never allow those events to occur again. One should appreciate the guilt as a painful lesson and respect that guilt enough to change their life permanently. The only justifiable guilt is when one is unwilling to change a destructive course of action. Those who kill or harm others are not defined by those actions, but by their response to those actions. Those who avoid repeating those outcomes for the rest of their lives are redeemed. Those who repeat them have surrendered to a cycle of destruction and will perpetually suffer for it until they insist on changing.
When a shared experience drifts away, the false feeling of loss can become addictive. This can be seen in those who seem shackled to cycles of conflict. Instead of acting to reduce conflict, or ride the high and low points of the conflict wave with skill, they insist on revving conflict out of control whether purposefully or nonpurposefully by splashing around recklessly. Those who pursue these coping strategies become forces of destruction who allow their need for conflict to infect their romantic and business relationships such that otherwise peaceful interactions become conflicted when that individual takes part. These individuals cannot communicate tactfully, choose friends appropriately, nor otherwise take constructive steps to reduce conflict. They revel in cycles of destruction and cannot feel fully satisfied with peace, silence, or contemplation. These sort of people, whether they are intentionally or otherwise geared for that approach must be avoided or counseled toward peace by those who seek to maintain the martial way. Determining these types of people is easy: avoid anyone who interprets your silence or stillness as an attack.
The way to peace is never through further conflict. The reader is encouraged to meditate on ways of restoring their stillness and tranquility and to share that peace with others.
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