MEDITATIONS: DOKKODO; THE WAY OF ALONENESS XII.
Principle Twelve
Be indifferent to where you live. (Miyamoto, Musashi)
Nearly everyone, at one stage of life or another, has suddenly awoken one morning as if from a deep and dream-dreary sleep. And what a rude awakening it was to open one’s eyes, as if for the first time, and see naught but chaos, discord, idiocy, cowardice, corruption, and malice in each and every corner of each and every edifice.
Everywhere once familiar was rendered fresh with spiritual lesions: there is no money, no opportunity, or maybe every prosperity comes at the cost of stabbing somebody in the back; vices are celebrated; virtues are punished; the only escapes are drink, drugs, and gambling supplied by the politicians, businessmen, and landlords.
“I have to get out of here,” become the mantra and motivation of the newly awakened. And then, after a time, whether he flees to a new location or gets nowhere, running like a spiritual rat on Samara’s wheel, he comes to realize that the place in which he resides isn’t one place. It’s everyplace. It is in fact the ethical ground interwoven with the essence of human existence from which the awakened thought he could run.
He thought it was the place when really it was his very own soul, along with the souls of others.
To the man who realizes this, that morality and fortune do not lie within the bounds of a city or nation or continent but in the human heart, it no longer matters where he lives.
Wherever he goes, he knows he must face the same inner and out demons. The particulars may change in superficial ways, and it may be the case that some place in particular must serve as the battleground for his own redemption, ascension, and the redemption and ascension of others. But the place itself is happenstance to the struggle and self-overcoming. For no matter where one ventures, that obstacle will always follow—the self, the ego, that aspect of consciousness which takes credit for more than it deserves, all while refusing to see when it is the one at fault. Instead, it looks outward into the environment.
“If only the city spent its tax money more wisely...”
“If only the taxes here were lower...”
“If only the people here valued art and education...”
“If only somebody could get these drugs off the streets...”
Maybe, if all these complaints and more were addressed, things would be better. That they aren’t is evidence that the people involved have decided otherwise. They have made their moral decisions, decisions which belong to them and to no other, decisions which are ultimately outside and other individual’s control.
Focusing on changing where one lives is a method of moving focus away from the self. It should not serve as one’s primary motivation nor any ultimate end for oneself or one’s family. Moving somewhere new will not bring fulfillment, and blaming where one lives will engender resentment—worsening an already bad situation.
So, “Be indifferent to where you live.” Realize that time and place are but arbitrary circumstances, contingent things which can only and continuously change. An individual’s power to influence the direction of such a great and primordial force as the flow of time is proportionate to how well he fits into his place in it. The more one accords with the Way, the better he serves his telos—his function, purpose, and end as a subject to the divine objective with whom one can exist in harmony or else in denial of.
“Be indifferent to where you live,” and make your part better or else desire to change it and be part of its self-destruction.
Miyamoto, Musashi. Dokkodo, translator unknown, 1645.
