MEDITATIONS: DOKKODO; THE WAY OF ALONENESS XVIII.
Principle Eighteen
Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age. (Miyamoto, Musashi)
In keeping with the prior principle, “Do not fear death,” Musashi advises one not to cling to the trappings of life in old age. That is the real motivation of those who horde land and wealth till their dying breaths. In rebellion against the natural course of a human life—that being, to end—they live as though death will never take them, as if it is not their familial duties to pass on the torch to their children and children’s children. And it is not propriety and familial piety which are violated by this vicious excess of cowardice and greed, but the Way itself.
The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao, for what one means when he says the label, “Tao” is that ineffable and undifferentiated realty which human perception dichotomizes. But the dichotomy is false. There is no “Tao and not Tao,” just as there is no “life” and “death” but rather “life and death” together as an irreducible dialectic. One cannot be denied without also denying the other, because one does not exist except for as a perceptual opposition of the other.
That is why one turns against the way when he seeks wealth and land into his old age. He is gathering possessions which he cannot use or take with him in death, possessions which could benefit his family and friends but which instead serve the role as distractions from an inevitable end. In this way, such an elder becomes a vampire, a hollow shell of himself as his body and mind deteriorate along with his relationships. For if such a person has not raised nor found anyone worthy of taking over his lands and titles, that means he has not cultivated virtue in anyone else. This in turn implies that he has not cultivated virtue in himself, that he has none to give, no moral wisdom for guidance. He has only material wealth, and to that he clings like a terrified, petulant child as death drags him into the darkness.
Such an end is anything but peace, love, and harmony within or without oneself. It is the destruction of sentimental bonds and ties of kinship, replacing them with material wealth and power. But power and wealth are finite, fickle things. They must eventually go, and when they do, it is either gracefully and consciously to those who most deserve them, or else they are taken in a bloody feud by vulturous relatives who likewise seek material possession to distract them from their mortality and finitude.
Such squabbling is unseemly and is unfit for a man of self-respect and virtue—virtue being that which enables flourishing, and flourishing being the fulfillment of one’s telos. Man’s telos, purpose, or function is the continuation of his familial line such that it sustains itself across time, which is the same as saying that man’s telos is the harmonization of his existence with that of both his ancestors’ and descendants’ existences with the world and across time. In Christian language, this is serving the will of God. To the Confucian, it is called duty and piety. To the Taoist, is it according with the Way. To the Zen Buddhist, it is what all already know in our natures: we are all part of the Great Coursing river, one body of water ever-changing, ever-flowing.
Miyamoto, Musashi. Dokkodo, translator unknown, 1645.
