Musashi's Dokkodo (The Way of Walking Alone)

Precept 1:
Accept everything just the way it is
“Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it
brings something entirely new into this world. That peace,
a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness.” — Eckhart
Tolle
Monk:
Standing on the front porch of my employer’s home we watched the
hail coming down, slamming into the orchard and ruining the apples
that were his livelihood. Hail destroys the fruit; it makes the apples
unsalable for the high-end market so after any significant hailstorm
all of the unpicked fruit in the orchard has to become juice.
Unfortunately, juice apples get such a low price that the return may
not cover the year’s operating costs, all of which in this instance was
on loan from the growers’ co-op. It was a dire situation.
I stood there next to my boss as the relentless hail showed no signs
of letting up. I was angry that the crop been lost and let it be known.
My boss, on the other hand, was silent and ignored my outrage.
After a bit he shrugged his shoulders, looked at me, and said, “What
are you going to do?” That response made me even more upset. In
addition to raging against what nature was doing I was suddenly
mad that he was not mad. His gaze still fixed on the storm, my boss
ignored my invitation to dance with the anger saying, “There’s
nothing to be done but start to get the most out of what we have left.”
I was stunned by his stoicism.
I’d been shown this lesson many times in life, but as a child and later
as a teen it was difficult to understand how accepting things for just
what they are can actually bring clarity to life. How accepting things

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makes the world simpler. But, I get that now. You see, when you
accept things as they are, it allows you to step into reality. The veil of
fantasy that most of us shield ourselves with is torn into pieces and
we can deal with things as they actually are, good, bad, or
indifferent. The fact of the matter is that the world does not care
about you or me, our hopes, our desires, or our dreams. And, the
world of dreams, hopes, and desires that is constructed between our
ears it is not necessarily a reflection of what is actually going on
around us.
Musashi isn’t the only famous person to point out this fact. Marcus
Aurelius spoke to it in his journal Meditations where he wrote, “If you
are distressed by anything external the pain is not due to the things
itself but your estimate of it.” That is some nice tight writing that
deserves to be taken to heart. Let’s face it, however, it takes effort to
see everything the way it is, a real active effort. Musashi was
anything but a pushover. Removing the idea of what you want
something to be verses what it actually is can be compared to
crossing a river gorge. You have to put aside the imposition of your
will, your ego, and your desire to see something for other than what
it is in order to have any chance of getting across the chasm.
It is a distortion to attempt to see anything for other than what it truly
is. Sometimes this distortion is considerable, other times
insignificant, but it is a distortion all the same. This is similar to the
anthropomorphisms of animal behavior that most folks mistakenly
believe. Animals work on instinct, not logic or higher reasoning, but
we don’t always look at their behaviors that way. For instance, what
we may see as a cute way of showing that they love us that’s not
what’s actually going on, it is truly something else entirely.
Think of a cat rubbing up against your leg. “Awww,” you might say,
“Kitty wants some pets.” What the cat is actually doing is rubbing its
smell on your leg just like it would on a tree trunk. It’s not being cute;
it’s marking its territory. We just think of that behavior as cute.
Everything has its nature and making an effort to see that nature in
its unvarnished glory allows for truth. Truth in turn makes for clarity,

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which leads to good decision-making. With clarity you can chart a
true path and uncover means to a real understanding or resolution of
even the most challenging issues that you face throughout your life.
I drove my son across the country to college recently. The trip took
two days. After a while he became horribly restless in the car, “I can’t
stand this anymore. This drive never ends! It needs to end… How
are you doing this?” He looked at me intently trying to find out what
the secret was, the reason I hadn’t also gone stir crazy being locked
up in the car with him. Not taking my eyes off the road I replied, “To
get from here to there takes this much time and it’s going to be this
much time no matter how I feel about it so I’ve chosen to feel this
way. Getting upset buys me nothing.”
He looked at me in frustration because my statement didn’t quite sort
in his mind, but after a few minutes he decided to try to adjust to the
reality of the long drive. After some more time, he actually began
accepting things as they presented themselves. Soon he was in that
simple place that allowed him to see the land, the sky, the cars we
passed, and the funny billboards along the way. I watched as he
began accepting the world as it was. And, I smiled, realizing that I
was now in a more mature position myself. I had shown my son what
my boss had shown me.