Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Dan Millman

Notes on Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior: training as a way of living rather than a set of beliefs, and the claim that there are no ordinary moments.

Reading notes in Google Docs, shared with Shambhala.

Dan Millman was a college gymnast, and the book is a semi-autobiographical account of his apprenticeship to a gas-station attendant he calls Socrates. The teaching arrives as instruction and correction during ordinary tasks rather than as doctrine, and the warrior of the title is someone training in how to live rather than someone preparing to fight.

Concepts

• There are no ordinary moments. The claim the book turns on. Attention given to the current moment is the practice, and the search for a more significant one later is the obstacle.
• Training covers body, mind and emotions together. Fitness of one without the others leaves the whole unchanged.
• Unreasonable happiness. Satisfaction held independently of circumstances meeting your conditions, which removes the waiting.
• A warrior acts; everyone else prepares to. The test applied throughout is what was actually done, not what was understood.