Who is a Warrior?

"No one has the right to take another life. A warrior for us is different from what you think of as. The warrior is not someone who simply fights and kills. 

The warrior, for us, is the one sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenceless, those who cannot provide for themselves and above all, the children who are  the future of humanity."

 - Sitting Bull

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Sitting Bull  (1831 – 1890) was a holy man and tribal chief of the Hunkpapa Lakota people, who led the Sioux Red Indian Nation against the American government which mainly constituted of Europeans who had settled in  America

While two thirds of who died were due to diseases imported by the settlers a third of the native American Indians were simply exterminated. It is estimated that approximately 18 million Red Indians died for the sake of 'freedom' and 'progress' of the settlers in North America.




It is estimated that the number killed in South America or what we also call Latin America was still higher at over 50 million native Indians killed.

It marks one of Humankind's greatest tragedies and depicts Man at his possible shameful worst.

The American colonisation of the West, and the dispossession of its indigenous peoples was carried out under the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Europeans believed that they had a superior culture, and that it was their God-given destiny to occupy the land and to extinguish the culture of its original inhabitants. 

Manifest Destiny - American Progress by John Gast (1872)

In this illustration, we see Progress leading the settlers across the prairie, Bible in hand, stringing telegraph wires with the other, while the “savages” flee ahead

Heaven and Hell

Many people search all their lives to determine if there is hell and heaven and if so where they exist.  The following story might help us to find out.







Long ago in Japan,  a big burly Samurai (warrior) came to a Roshi (wise man) and said, “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell.”

The Roshi looked at him in the face and said: “Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you?”  The Samurai's face turned purple and his hair stood up, but the Roshi appeared not to notice and continued, “A miserable worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?”

Consumed by rage, the Samurai drew his sword, and was just about to cut off the head of the Roshi when the Roshi said, “That’s hell.”



We all are inherently good, we just seem to have lost touch with our pure selves.  The Samurai suddenly realised, that he had just created his own hell. He had permitted himself to be filled with so much arrogance, and anger,  that he was about to kill someone.

Suddenly aware, the Samurai's eyes filled with tears he put his palms together and bowed to the Roshi.

The Roshi said, “That’s heaven.”

Thanks to my friend Sangeeta Karkhanis for this piece