21 Rules for Living from Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s Samurai Philosopher (1584-1645)

Browse the ever-vaster selec­tion of self-help books, videos, pod­casts, and social-media accounts on offer today, and you’ll find no short­age of pre­scrip­tions for how to live. Much of what the gurus of the twen­ty-twen­ties have to say sounds awful­ly sim­i­lar, and almost as much may seem con­tra­dic­to­ry. As in so many fields of human endeav­or, the best strat­e­gy could be to look to the clas­sics first, and as rules for liv­ing go, few have stood more of a test of time than the 21 prin­ci­ples of Dokkōdō, or “The Path of Alone­ness,” writ­ten by the sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry swords­man Miyamo­to Musashi, who’s said to have fought 62 duels and won them all.

What­ev­er the actu­al num­ber was, Miyamo­to clear­ly knew some­thing that most of his oppo­nents did­n’t — and for that mat­ter, some­thing that most of us today prob­a­bly don’t either. It was at the very end of his 60-year-long life, about which you can learn more from the videos from Pur­suit of Won­der above and Einzel­gänger below, that this most famous of all samu­rai con­densed his wis­dom into the prin­ci­ples of Dokkōdō, which are as fol­lows:

1. Accept every­thing just the way it is.
2. Do not seek plea­sure for its own sake.
3. Do not, under any cir­cum­stances, depend on a par­tial feel­ing.
4. Think light­ly of your­self and deeply of the world.
5. Be detached from desire your whole life long.
6. Do not regret what you have done.
7. Nev­er be jeal­ous.
8. Nev­er let your­self be sad­dened by a sep­a­ra­tion.
9. Resent­ment and com­plaint are appro­pri­ate nei­ther for one­self nor oth­ers.
10. Do not let your­self be guid­ed by the feel­ing of lust or love.
11. In all things have no pref­er­ences.
12. Be indif­fer­ent to where you live.
13. Do not pur­sue the taste of good food.
14. Do not hold on to pos­ses­sions you no longer need.
15. Do not act fol­low­ing cus­tom­ary beliefs.
16. Do not col­lect weapons or prac­tice with weapons beyond what is use­ful.
17. Do not fear death.
18. Do not seek to pos­sess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
19. Respect Bud­dha and the gods with­out count­ing on their help.
20. You may aban­don your own body but you must pre­serve your hon­or.
21. Nev­er stray from the Way.

The ref­er­ence to Bud­dha in prin­ci­ple #19 may not come as a sur­prise, giv­en how rich this list is with appar­ent­ly Bud­dhist themes: relin­quish­ment of desire, release of attach­ments, accep­tance of the inevitable. There are also res­o­nances with con­tem­po­rary texts on the art of liv­ing pro­duced by civ­i­liza­tions well out­side Asia: Span­ish Jesuit priest Bal­tasar Gracían’s Orácu­lo Man­u­al y Arte de Pru­den­cia (or The Art of World­ly Wis­dom), for instance, which was first pub­lished just two years after the prin­ci­ples of Dokkōdō.

You might also sense much in com­mon between Miyamo­to’s world­view and that of the Sto­ics, who were lay­ing down their own pre­cepts fif­teen or six­teen cen­turies ear­li­er. Each in his own way, Epicte­tus, Mar­cus Aure­lius, and Seneca reached a form of the same under­stand­ing that Miyamo­to did: that we must first, as he him­self puts it, “accept every­thing just the way it is.” We may devote our lives to sat­is­fy­ing our pref­er­ences, but both the Sto­ics and the samu­rai knew that, as Pur­suit of Won­der’s nar­ra­tor puts it, “it is our abil­i­ty to shift with a world that reg­u­lar­ly oppos­es our pref­er­ences that enhances the qual­i­ty of our expe­ri­ence.” Among Miyamo­to’s dis­tinc­tive con­tri­bu­tions is his empha­sis on focus: that is, “clear intent, devot­ed atten­tion, emo­tion­al con­trol, per­cep­tive­ness, and a kind of men­tal empti­ness and adapt­abil­i­ty”: all qual­i­ties that, hav­ing just last week become a father of two, I’d sure­ly do well to start cul­ti­vat­ing in myself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Be a Samu­rai: A 17th Cen­tu­ry Code for Life & War

What Is Sto­icism? A Short Intro­duc­tion to the Ancient Phi­los­o­phy That Can Help You Cope with Our Hard Mod­ern Times

How to Be a Sto­ic in Your Every­day Life: Phi­los­o­phy Pro­fes­sor Mas­si­mo Pigli­uc­ci Explains

A Mis­chie­vous Samu­rai Describes His Rough-and-Tum­ble Life in 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.