MEDITATIONS: DOKKODO; THE WAY OF ALONENESS XI.
Principle Eleven
In all things have no preferences. (Miyamoto, Musashi)
All human beings have desires. It may even be more accurate to say that all human beings are in the possession of their desires, for one does not choose his preferences or opinions. They emerge from his essence and are as inextricable from it as are his eyes, ears, nose, and tongue. It can be done but not without irreparable damage.
What, then, could Musashi possible have meant when he prescribed having no preferences in anything. A first and superficial reading suggests an impossibility. Mankind must prefer somethings to other things, or else how can he decide to do any one thing over all the other things he could choose at a given moment? Said concisely, value hierarchies—read as synonymous with preferences—are a necessary inevitability.
However, if one assumes that Musashi was also aware of this when he wrote the Dokkodo, which he would have been, given the influence Zen Buddhism had on him, then one is obligated to understand the maxim such that it transforms his preconceptions.
Reading the tenth principle again and from the beginning, Musashi starts, “In all things.” Remembering that this is a translation, it may be the case that “in everything” or “universally” might likewise serve as approximate understandings. These alternative conceptualizations carry with them slightly different limitations, but they all point to a kind of universal scope, God’s-eye point-of-view, or perspective of the Way.
If one may venture this far, the maxim changes. Rather than being a redundant iteration of a general principle covered in specific elsewhere in the Dokkodo, it become a specific proscription at a certain level of analysis. It says, “have no preferences,” from the point of view of the universe. This is a much more understandable warning. For when one’s head gets too big, his ego so inflated full of itself that he ascends beyond even the tallest Tower of Babel, he begins to mistake himself for God. He asks questions and makes assertions from a perspective beyond the ken of men. And worse, he casts judgements.
This is what Musashi is warning most strongly against, having preferences in regard to the nature of the universe. To prefer that the Way be any way other than it is, is to desire for the Way not to be in the first place. It is the opposite of harmony and accordance—discord, conflict, and strife, not even within the self, but between the self and being.
This understanding resonates with the seventh chapter of Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching.
the universe you perceive has always been here and will be here after you are no longer present to perceive it
because it gave birth to you and not the contrary to which you cling (Lao-tzu)
And now one is returned to the first principle, “Accept everything just the way it is.” No man stands in a position to criticize the world. The reality is that it is his duty to transform himself, a feat achievable only by one who is willing to work from the position in which he stands. Here in the west, we say that a man must play the hand he is dealt, for he is not the dealer but a player; and if Shakespeare is to be believed, he plays his part on a stage grander than he can ever imagine. His part comes and goes, but in his playing, the mortal man takes part in the narrative’s immortality.
Perhaps one’s part is small—perhaps it is large. Regardless, “In all things have no preferences.”
Lao-tzu. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014.
Miyamoto, Musashi. Dokkodo, translator unknown, 1645.
