Written by BJ Lea
All levels of Jedi train with California Jedi, from those who have been on the path for decades to those who joined mere months ago. No matter your experience, everyone has a valuable opinion on Jedi philosophy. Enjoy BJ Lea’s analysis of the Jedi Code, and tell us what you think in the comments!
There is no emotion there is peace.
If you let emotions get the best of you, you won’t have a clear enough mind to attain peace in any given situation. For conflicts to be resolved or even interpreted, one must have a rational thought process.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
When entering into a debate (or argument if need be) or any task, ignorance is detrimental. Ignorance is 100% avoidable. Ignorance means a lack of knowledge of any given topic whether a Padawan, a knight, or master, a Jedi is always a learner. When you remove ignorance from your mind by learning, or from the minds of others or by teaching, knowledge prevails and makes any task much easier to accomplish.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
This seems similar to line one of the code; there is no emotion there is peace. At first glance it seems redundant, it is not. Passion is an extreme emotion like love or hate, or it can be an extreme of an emotion such as attachment. Passion can be a fine thing as long as you are mindful of it and where it takes your mind, but when one is in danger of losing something they are passionate about they start to fear. Fear of loss can quickly lead too hasty actions or reactions . Those reactions or actions can take us and those around us to the dark side Jedi don’t react we respond.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
Chaos is disarray or a lack of organization. If your mind is cluttered with thoughts with no type of organization, your decision making capabilities will suffer. If your mind is sound and quiet your harmony will lend itself to all that you do.
There is no death, there is the force.
Energy never dies, it takes new form. When a body dies it is only a vessel ceasing to function our life force takes a new form, it keeps going, it continues to affect the universe. We are the force.
Do you agree with BJ on the code? Why or why not?
BJ, I love your code analysis! It’s concise and very solid. I particularly like where you say “If your mind is sound and quiet your harmony will lend itself to all that you do.” People often just focus on the universal application of this line; that everything seems like chaos, but there is pattern and harmony everywhere, but you took the line and personalized it, made it functional and useful for your own Jedi path, which is awesome! I’m going to think about this line differently after reading this for sure. :)
Under line two though, you say “Ignorance is 100% avoidable.”. Is it really? Is there a way to always know everything you’ll need to know for any situation you encounter? I don’t believe so. I think this line is more about knowledge as a tool; if you see a tool that might be useful lying around, why would you not pick it up? Obviously in real life we can only carry so many tools, but when the tool is knowledge, we can continue to pick up new information until we die. If there is something that might help us as Jedi, it is worth learning.
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