Musashi's Dokkodo (The Way of Walking Alone)

Teacher:
I often comment to people that they need not take me seriously. I am
not a serious person. In the words of Alan Watts, “I am often quite
sincere, but only rarely serious.” And here I am reminded of the line
from G. K. Chesterton who said, “The angels fly because they take
themselves lightly.”
This is true for me.
Not calling myself an angel, such irony would be too much for me to
take. But I do find it easier to get along with other people when I do
not take myself too seriously. There are times when I find myself
thinking that I know a lot, and at these times I go and look at some of
the greats in my field of study and am quickly and justifiably
humbled. Not taking myself seriously allows me to learn more from
everyone, to hear an insult without taking it personally. When a
student insults me, mocks me, or lies to me, or a peer lectures me
on a subject he or she knows very little about, I do not see the action
as something personal. This prevents my emotions from hijacking
the entire event and also allows me to stay more peaceful and keep
my blood pressure under control.

---

This precept is one I can get 100% behind and say that it ranks
among the best advice that can be given. In our modern society, so
much could be cured so quickly if people understood the importance
of thinking lightly of themselves and deeply of the world.
On February 14, 1990, the Voyager I space probe was about four
billion miles from Earth, just past Neptune. The team of scientists
turned the cameras on the probe back toward Earth to get a look at
our world from the edge of the solar system. The image captured
has been named, “The pale blue dot.” It is a tiny dot, little more than
a pixel. Dr. Carl Sagan noted that from there earth didn’t look like
much; but every human who ever lived, lived out their entire life on
that dot and called it, “A mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”
This thought is humbling if we are the type to allow ourselves a dose
of humility from time to time. If people could take themselves lightly,
they might be able to think more deeply of the world. People commit
horrible atrocities on one another. People kill over religious doctrines,
country borderlines, natural resources, pride, and emotions in part
because we have forgotten how tiny we are. We puff up with pride
and self-importance. We think too much about how we look and how
we think we are judged by others, but we forget that everyone has
problems and struggles. We lose sight of the fact that our problems
are the biggest in the world to us, but that every person feels the
same about their own problems.
Worst of all, we hate others for doing the same things that we do.
Setting aside self-importance is a good thing. Seeing the struggles of
others helps, but understanding how we are all stuck in this together
would go a long way toward getting to a better place. If we were to
understand that we are in this together, just maybe we might start to
help each other instead of hating and killing each other over what
are usually differences in opinion or perspective.
If one looks rationally at the social issues that are thrown at us by the
news, they will see that both sides have their valid points and that
none of the issues have a simple resolution. Our emotions are what
tell us that there are simple answers, but our emotions also tell us

---

that anyone who disagrees with us is our enemy. Rational thought,
on the other hand, is our friend.
An attitude of understanding that we are all in this together would
allow us to look at solutions of compromise, you know, that thing that
grownups do.