Skip to main content

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.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Non-Lifting Workouts

Extra Workouts for Improving Recovery, Enhancing Performance, and Maximizing Gains      When lifters think about workouts, it’s usually either lifting or bust.   It’s either hard and heavy barbell and dumbbell sessions or nothing.   But it shouldn’t be this way.   No matter how “hardcore” of a lifter or bodybuilder you are—perhaps you’re one of those guys that thinks anything over 5 reps is “cardio,” as I once certainly did—you need to do some stuff other than just heavy weight training.   The truth is that the more serious you are about lifting, even more do you need to take advantage of non-lifting workouts.   These extra sessions might very well be the difference between gaining another 10 pounds of muscle or not, or between winning your powerlifting meet or just coming in 2 nd place.   When it comes to being your very best, it is the little things that matter.      I first started lifting as a teenager, more...

Classic Bodybuilding: Don Howorth's Massive Delt Training

Don Howorth's Formula for Wide, Massive Shoulders Vintage picture of Don Howorth in competition shape. I can't remember the first time I laid eyes on Howorth's massive physique with those absolutely friggin' awesomely shaped "cannonball" shoulders of his, but it was probably sometime in the late '80s and early '90s, when I read about him in either IronMan Magazine  or MuscleMag International .  IronMan  had regular "Mass from the Past" articles written by Gene Mozee that had a couple of articles about Howorth's training*, and he was also mentioned fairly regularly in Vince Gironda's column for MuscleMag  not to mention in some of the articles of Greg Zulak for the same publication. There is no doubt that genetics played a big role in just how fantastic Howorth's delts looked, but to claim Howorth's results were just because of genetics or anabolic steroids - as I've read claimed on some internet forums - is a l...

Movements Over Muscles

Muscle-Building Tips and Advice for the Natural Bodybuilder      In my last essay on how to gain mass fast, I mentioned that the secret just might be getting stronger on a handful of exercises.   (This essay, I suppose, is just an extension of that last one.)   In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that I’m right.   If you’re a natural bodybuilder, then the one thing more important than any other is to get strong on a dozen or so exercises, with your strength-focus in roughly the 5 to 10 rep range.      One approach is to achieve this is to focus on movements over muscles .   In other words, instead of going to the gym and “obliterating” or “destroying” (why do bodybuilders always seem to use military-sounding jargon for a lot of their training) your quad muscles with endless sets of leg extensions, leg presses, and machine whatever, how about just trying to get stronger on the squat?   Same goes for the...