Continuing with our sonic exploration of the ten qualities of the mind necessary for inner warriorship, Howie B has detailed in sound his expression of the third quality: Dignity. Listen along to the guided soundscape below and consider how to accept quiet confidence.

Dignity is the ability to maintain one’s integrity, without creating harm to others. Dignity in one’s own way of being means developing inner confidence without shouting it from the rooftops, balancing the individual with the harmony of the community.

Dignity, as it is implied in Buddhism and other consciousness disciplines, has been misunderstood in popular thinking and organized religions. In the consciousness disciplines, dignity is viewed as a functional skill necessary for mental training—and exists separately from externally-imposed moralism or sanctions.

All who find themselves deep in intensive mental training must ignore the detrimental effects of undignified behavior on mental activity and control. The practitioner will soon recognize that undignified behavior is motivated by powerful emotions—such as greed, anger, or dislike—which grip the mind and render it hard to control. Undignified behavior comes from these motives, conditions and reinforces them, and leaves the mind trapped in counterproductive conditioning, which produces disruptive states such as agitation and guilt.

Dignity, as a practise, is designed to reverse this process—and to extinguish those attachments and emotions which produce it.

Dignity is a clear example of the synergistic nature of the ten qualities of mind necessary for inner warriorship. They serve both the practitioner and others to render meaningless the dichotomies that govern our external selves: selfish or sacrificial, you or me, zero sum, and win-lose.