> The process of transcending fear begins with the encounter with fear. Fear
> is not evil. Remember that the Warrior's root is in the basic goodness of
> everything. Thus we must find the basic goodness of fear. As the time of
> battle approaches, the Warrior's body prepares itself for peak performance.
> It turns on all its emergency systems, energizes its muscles, increases
> blood flow to the vital organs and away from areas likely to be damaged,
> heightens visual perceptions, decreases tactile perceptions, and so on.
> The body prepares for war.
>
> Yet, if the mind is not also prepared for war, the experience of the body's
> preparations are perceived as extremely uncomfortable. This is when our
> fear becomes our enemy. The real battle is forgotten as we start a phony
> battle inside ourselves. By trying to stop our body from activating its
> emergency systems appropriately we debilitate ourselves such that, when the
> real battle does begin, we are no longer entirely prepared. Thus we cannot
> do as good a job as we might. We're setting ourselves up to lose.
> "Fear is
> failure and the forerunner of failure."
> ...

>
> Up to the end of chapter four, putting aside the weird definitions of
> words like "fearless" and "heart", there is a development from how
> developing an appreciation of "basic goodness" leads to a "genuine heart
> of sadness" which in turn leads to "discovering fearlessness". But at
> chapter five, as Tom suggests, he begins to recover the same ground using
> different labels.

> When I first read the book I found it misleading. It's easy to think that
> a "synchronized mind and body" is unrelated to "discovering fearlessness"
> and "the vision of the Great Eastern Sun" -- allowing the reader to build
> a complex system around something that in reality is very simple -- but as
> I understand it they're all pretty much synonymous.