The Way of the Modern Ronin, Part 2

Essays and Thoughts on the "Dokkodo"

Part Two

Accept Everything Just the Way it is

Miyamoto Musashi kills a shark fish (Yamazame) in the mountains across the border of Echizen Province, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (public domain)

The very first "principle" of the Dokkodo is to "accept everything just the way it is."  But what does this mean for the warrior, and why did Musashi place so much emphasis on it?  For he must have placed emphasis on it, otherwise it would not have been the first principle of his last work.

Many years ago - as in MANY years ago; I was a teenager - my sensei told this anecdote one day at the end of class.  After a couple of hours of hard training, we sat down to do zazen.  This is paraphrasing, but he told us: “The glass is not half full.  And the glass is not half empty.  It simply is what it is.  Because if it’s half-full, then it’s ALSO half-empty, which means that it’s also neither half-full nor half-empty.  It is simply half.”  I will be honest, I wondered what in the world he meant by it at the time.  (I rarely understood many of his utterances, such as his oft-quoted dictum to "fight without fighting, and to think without thinking", so this wasn't much different.)  But after many years of practicing Zen, I began to "get it", and I think my sensei was trying to get his pupils to see things exactly as they are, without fantasy or delusion.  And as I've trained in martial arts for many years, too, I can see the wisdom.  Many practitioners live in their heads, thinking they are better than they actually are.  They don't see reality as it is.

For Zen, there is nothing outside of the present moment.  Only in the present moment can “presence” Itself be attained.  And in the present moment, everything is just the way it is.  There is nothing you can add to the present moment to change it.  But in the present moment, you CAN strive to make the future different.

I once heard this phrase twenty years ago, when I was beginning to take more than just a “passing interest” in Zen, and I can’t remember where I read it, or in what book, but it has stuck with me: “The key to happiness is accepting your life as it is… and detaching for the need for it to be different.”  And I think, whoever the author was, Musashi would agree.  Because this doesn’t mean to NOT DO ANYTHING in the present moment.  What it means is that the present moment has already been decided.  For Musashi, who was Buddhist, even though he was clearly immersed in other philosophical schools, this would have meant that the present moment was shaped by past karma.  It could not be undone.  But it also didn’t mean that life was simply left to fate, and that one shouldn’t strive.  Because what karma also meant is that the future can be determined by the present.  And it’s in the present that one must strive.  So in this context, detaching for the need for it to be different means understanding that you are responsible for the present life.  There is no reason to bemoan your current circumstances, but you CAN strive to make your future – in life and in martial arts – “better.”

This is also where the Zen idea of “not fixing on concepts” is to be utilized, and to “stop thinking.”  Thoughts are just that: thoughts.  They have no REAL reality other than what it is that we assign to them, and assigning reality to something means that it doesn’t exist in itself.  Once again, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t think or plan.  If your training is to be successful, then it MUST be planned.  At least at first, for there will come a time when even “planning” will fall away and the true warrior simply lives in the present moment, and lives freely and spontaneously, and does what must be done when it arises.  This is MUSHIN, or “no-mind”, but no-mind (and/or NO-Mind) cannot be “practiced.”  The martial warrior simply realizes it, and lives in that realization.

Mushin also has a lot in common with SHOSHIN, or “beginner’s mind”.  And beginner’s mind can be practiced.  It can be practiced by “letting go of fixed concepts” while training.  To quote Shunryu Suzuki: “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities.  In the expert’s mind, there are few.”

Here’s a practical teaching of this based on my own life.  After almost 35 years of practicing traditional Karate (along with some Hung Gar, but not enough to call myself an expert), I began to practice ITF-style Taekwondo with my current grandmaster.  In order to truly understand and learn from my sabu (Korean for “teacher”, equivalent to “sensei”), I had to “let go” of my “expertise” in Karate, so that I could see Taekwondo with fresh eyes.  When I first started practicing TKD, this wasn’t hard.  But as I began to improve, and adjust to the differences in style, my ego began to take hold, and before long, I started to think that I knew something or understood a teaching when, in reality, I didn’t.  Why?  Because once I started to think I was knowledgeable about something – even if I didn’t openly call myself some sort of TKD “expert” – I lost “beginner’s mind.”  And without shoshin, how could I be truly open enough to learn?  The answer, of course, is that I couldn’t.  So it’s a constant battle we must fight within ourselves – we must strive to improve, to become expert without thinking (there’s that word again) that we are expert.

Just keep in mind to accept everything just the way it is... and to strive like hell for the future!