The Way of the Modern Ronin, Part 11

Essays and Thoughts on The Dokkodo

Part Eleven

Do Not Allow Yourself to be Guided by Feelings of Lust or Love

The Dokkodo in its original handwriting. (Courtesy of Wikimedia)

The further along we get in the Dokkodo, and the more we realize how different was the view of the ancient budoka compared with the mind and thought of the modern martial practitioner. Here, we find a maxim that seems more harsh than all the others that came before it, cold even. In our society (or I should write "societies" - for this goes for the East as well as the West), we are taught that romantic love is to be prized. In fact, there are many whose entire life revolves around acquiring romantic love.
But love is fickle. And fickleness is not a feeling that the serious martial practitioner can rely upon. Upon this very subject, Roshi Richard Collins has this to say, "We have all perhaps made unwise decisions in our lives based on what we thought were the dictates of the heart. We are taught, in fact, in countless works of literature and popular culture that we should be guided by the heart, or rather by sentiment. Afraid of being accused of heartlessness, we sometimes accede to unwise actions or decisions that will actually in the end cause not only ourselves but also others more harm than good." The warrior who follows the Way must only rely upon those feelings/emotions/things that are solid - and therefore the only things that are truly true! Truth is solid in the sense that it is unchanging, and, therefore, can be relied upon. And we learned from the previous maxim that the only thing we can truly rely upon are dharmas - eternal truths - and romantic love is not a dharma.

If you are familiar with Buddhist thought - or just Eastern thought in general - then at this point you may ask (and rightly so), "What about the Buddha's teachings on metta (loving-kindness; sometimes just translated as "love") and karuna (compassion)? Are these not two emotions - along with joy and equanimity - that the Buddha encouraged his followers to develop?" Well, yes... and no. When the Buddha spoke of metta, what he espoused could best be translated as not just "loving-kindness" but as "universal love." In the Christian tradition, we refer to this as "agape," the love that God has for all of Creation - and that followers of Christ reciprocate in return. So Musashi here is not going against traditional Buddhist thought on this matter.

Notice, too, that Musashi doesn't say, "Do not allow yourself to have feelings of lust or love." He is simply saying to not be guided by those feelings. You could even argue that Musashi is allowing a bit of liberality here, since many Buddhists since the very time of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni have espoused having NO feelings of lust or love toward the opposite sex. Buddhist monks in Southeast Asia to this day do not even allow themselves to touch a member of the opposite sex. No, what Musashi is trying to protect against here is what we might call (in modern parlance) an addiction to sex, whether that addiction is to the brothels of his day (lust) or to relationships (love). If he was writing the Dokkodo today, he would probably have to admonish his followers to stay away from pornography, for instance, because it's a modern problem that can detract the budoka from his/her path, and the warrior's path is to follow his/her particular martial way, not feelings of lust or romantic love.

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