Warrior Philosophy in Game of Thrones (11 page)

“Duty is as heavy as a mountain, death light as a feather.”
[xli]

I think Robb Stark feels the burden of his duty a great deal as we head into the second part of the series of Game of Thrones.  There is a clear moment where this shift begins to happen, when Ned has been attacked by Jaime Lannister and Stark men have been killed.  He and Theon Greyjoy are talking about it and Theon says:

“It is your duty to represent your house when your father can't”

To which Robb replies:

“And it's not your duty because it's not your house.”
[xlii]

This comes across from Robb as a dismissal, and Theon, ever spiky about such things takes it that way.  But I think something else is going on for Robb.  He is feeling the full weight of his Duty, and where Theon sees a glorious and righteous march against an enemy, Robb has more of a sense of the potential enormity of taking up arms and calling the banners.  This is not the first time Robb has come face-to face with the weight of his growing duties, indeed, by this point he has been wrestling with it for some time.  There is a beautifully played and very sad scene where Lady Catelyn has been sat beside Bran, who is still unconscious after his fall, for days and is ignoring and rejecting her duties of running Winterfell.  Robb has started to pick these up already and steps in at this moment to say that he will resolve the issues that Maester Luwin has brought to Lady Catelyn.  Robb challenges her though – and that is no small thing to challenge your mother!  She is understandably distraught, but her emotion has blinded her.  She thinks she is in service to her son by sitting by his bedside night and day but what about her other son?  What about all the people who are dependent on her leadership as Lady of the keep?  For that matter, if the Keep ceases to function, what will happen to Bran anyway?  Catelyn's life is not simple and her duty is heavy to bear, the heavier with Ned having left for King's Landing to serve as the King's Hand, but in sitting by Bran for so long I think she is in service firstly to her emotions, not to Bran.  This is what Robb alerts her to by challenging her as no-one else can, and in that he steps into manhood.  No child could challenge his own mother like that.

I had a personal encounter with a substantial choice where duty and service were not clear a couple of years ago.  It was not a matter of life and death, but for me and my family it was a big deal.  My wife was pregnant with our son (now born, beautiful, very loved and called Samson), and I was not really happy in my job.  I had been working slowly towards being able to go freelance for a while but it still felt like I was a little way off from being ready for that.  I'd started to look at other possible jobs but that didn't feel right really.  I chose to quit my job and set up on my own.  To leave a secure job with a child on the way was by many people's standards pretty crazy and may have seemed a selfish act: I was, after all, following my dream.  But it was actually thinking of my wife and son that made the decision clear for me.  I didn't want to be a dad that comes home from work unhappy, frustrated, and bent out of shape.  I didn't want to set that example for my son, or be that man for my wife.  It is sometimes the case that if you want to be truly in service to your own sense of the greater good, then you have to do counter-intuitive things.  I have to live with the consequences of my choice for good or ill.  It still feels like it was the right choice for me, and for us as a family, but it has been tough along the way and I have needed to hang on to that sense of higher purpose – not just my own personal mission in life, but the higher purpose of being the best man, husband, and father that I can.

What I hope you can see from all this is that service and duty are complex and just as present in our lives as the lives of those in Westeros or the medieval world.  Duty and service can be gifts if we can embrace them that way, but we must be mindful of the costs both to ourselves or others lest we become mindless servants, or fanatics of the cause.  It is this caution which enables us to intelligently embrace a warrior's path of service to a higher purpose rather than enslaving ourselves and others to a dogmatic set of rules.

Death

Syrio: “Do you pray to the Gods?”

Arya: “The old and the new.”

Syrio: “There is one God and his name is Death.  And there is only
one thing we say to Death: “Not Today.””
[xliii]

Death is avoided in the modern world.  That may seem a strange thing to say, or an obvious thing to do but I mean it more than just as a consequence.  We mostly avoid talking about it, facing it, planning for it, or indeed embracing it when it comes.  It is the one completely inevitable event of our lives and yet we work so hard to avoid it.  Even though Syrio Forel in the scene I have quoted above is speaking of denying death, he does so with a familiarity.  He does so with Death as his God, and a God he is familiar enough with to say “No” to!  While he will keep saying “No” as long as he can, he has no fear of death and he faces it bravely, even with a sense of humour.  I like this kind of relationship to death and in some ways it seems psychologically healthier to me than avoidance.  Just as life is suffering (one of the core teachings of Buddhism I touched on in Chapter 2), life is also going to end.  I would rather meet Death as a familiar friend than as an implacable enemy.  In terms of illness, we tend to try and fend off death by any means and for as long as possible almost regardless of the quality of life that can be had.  I don't think all medical professionals think this way (I've met plenty who don't) but many do, and certainly I'd say the prevailing Western cultural view is that death should be avoided at all costs.  I find this sad, and in many indigenous shamanic cultures there are and were practices of healing people into death.  I'm not talking about euthanasia as the monstrous abuse of authority that it is so-often painted as in the press.  I'm talking about compassion.  Sometimes someone is just on their way out of this world and the most compassionate thing we can do is help them to leave us with as much as possible dignity, grace, and peace.  Whether they go on to another life in another form is a matter of belief, but it is my faith that death is a transformation, not an ending.  That's part of how I have made my peace with it.

As with Service in the last chapter, the matter of facing death resonates strongly with Samurai culture.  It is considered by some, and George Leonard
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spoke of this, that the reason why the Samurai were so feared in battle is because they faced it as if they were already dead – they had nothing to lose.  This quote from the Hagakure illustrates the mindset well:

“Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.  Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master.  And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead.

There is a saying of the elders' that goes, “Step from under the eaves and you're a dead man.  Leave the gate and the enemy is waiting.”  This is not a matter of being careful.  It is to consider oneself as dead beforehand.”
[xliv]

Although this has a much more serious tone than Syrio's “Not today” it has a similar feel to me.  Syrio knows he is dead, just not today!  He belongs to Death but he is not suicidal.  Neither were the Samurai, though their philosophy could be mistaken for it.  As I talked about in Chapter 1, it is a well known phenomenon that a nearness to death, brings out a desire to feel more alive.  I believe that it is also the case that if we embrace the reality of death, we can more readily embrace the reality of our lives.  By knowing death we can live more fully.  In the Toltec tradition
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this is sometimes referred to as 'Death as Advisor.'  We bring death closer to our lives that this may inform our living and encourage us to live more fully, with greater presence, and a clearer sense of what is really important to us.  To quote Casteneda:

"Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything so he tries, without craving, all of everything."

The quality of non-attachment when embracing death in this way is also explored in the Hagakure:

“If a warrior is not unattached to life and death, he will be of no use whatsoever.  The saying that “all abilities come from one mind” sounds as though it has to do with sentient matters, but it is in fact a matter of being unattached to life and death.  With such non-attachment one can accomplish any feat.  Martial arts and the like are related to this insofar as they can lead to the Way
[19]
.”
[xlv]

It is another commonly observed phenomenon that when people know that they are going to die soon, at some point a kind of peace and clarity may set in.  They can accept it and they make very deliberate and clear choices about how they want to spend their last days.  I'm not talking about blowing their savings on a spree, I'm talking more about appreciating life's simple pleasures and having their loved-one's about them.  Where before choices seemed muddy and complex, now the right course seems very clear.  King Robert Baratheon has some of this kind of clarity when he lies dying, having been gored by a boar while hunting.  He asks Ned to stop Daenerys Targaryen's assassination if he can and acknowledges Ned's wisdom in opposing the killing in the first place.  He realises that he hasn't spent time being any kind of father to Joffrey and asks Ned to teach Joff to be a better man that he (Robert) is.  He can see very clearly the ways that he has not acted responsibly as a King.   Imagine if you could live every-day with that kind of clarity, presence and peace.  If you could see yourself and your life so clearly that your every decision becomes a simple one.  I believe that, that is possible if we really embrace this aspect of the warrior's way.  Death can be our advisor on how to live our lives more wisely. 

In a way, the words of house Stark are a grimmer version of this kind of embracing of death.  As Maester Aemon of the Night's Watch says:

“The Stark's are always right in the end:  Winter is coming.  This one will  be long and dark things will come with it.”

Like so many of us with death, the people of Westeros are often in denial about Winter.  In many ways it is symbolic of the forces of death in their world.  The inexorable march of winter and the dark creatures that come with the cold.  The mass denial of the existence of the White Walkers is part of this.  It has been a very long time since they were last seen, but it is one thing to think they may have been vanquished for good and quite another to dismiss them as fairy-tales, like Tyrion Lannister.  I'm sure he is only representative of the majority of those who live in the South though.

I think facing death is vital for living a full life.  At one point Renly Baratheon says:

“My brother thinks anyone who hasn't been to war isn't a man.”
[xlvi]

I don't agree with King Robert on that, but I might go so far as to say that anyone who hasn't faced death isn't a warrior.  I don't mean you need to have faced a life-threatening situation (though arguably every day is that, if we did but know it!), I'm talking about dealing with the reality of death in our lives.  In some ways that is almost easier when someone near to us has died.  I know for myself that I faced death in a way I never had before when my mum died, for instance.  But I don't know whether even that is necessary to find it in ourselves to really accept the reality of death.  I feel confident that I was more prepared  than I would have been otherwise for my mum's death by  the fact I had faced death in a shamanic
[20]
burial ritual (where I was buried in the ground overnight in a ceremonial act while studying shamanic healing and initiation). The fact is that things are dying all the time.  Any ending of anything is a little death.  A moment emerges, happens and then is gone – it will never return in that form ever again.  That is as conclusive as death gets.  Just as I think we have learned to avoid the greater reality of death in the modern world, I think we do pretty well at avoiding facing the truth of these little deaths
[21]
.  We either want to try and make something last forever, or we want to throw it away as soon as it looks like it's coming to an end so we can pretend it never happened.  Either is an avoidant strategy.  We need to learn to face our endings, to face the many deaths that occur in our lives and to find the gift in them, otherwise we are destined to repeatedly be battered by misery.  Would you rather meet death as a familiar friend or an implacable enemy?

Another gift that embracing death can give us is bonding.  When we face death together with others, we are connected by having shared the experience.  This is well documented as a psychological phenomenon amongst soldiers, police officers, and firemen – when you have literally faced death together, there is a trust that transcends whether you like each other or not.  There is a moment when Ned Stark and Ser Barristan Selmy subtly acknowledge this.  They are walking together speaking about Ser Huw of the Vale, there is a clear sense of the respect they have for each other and they are speaking like old friends.  Ser Barristan says: