Community Concepts (March 2022)

03/06/2022

Dojo Philosophy for Everyday Life

A lot of the job of a martial arts instructor is about helping people grow up. Not just kids growing into adults. There are also adults learning how to stand up for themselves, people lost in the maze of anxiety, people looking for something greater than what they are experiencing in their lives. All of this is growing up, no matter how old we are when we start working on it. It’s easy to get turned around, so we use philosophy to have markers and guides along the way.

Philosophies like the Five Steps are deceptive. When we see a short list of positive words, our ego can easily brush them aside and tell itself that it already knows all that. The practice of philosophy requires us to be still, quiet our ego, listen, and digest. This particular philosophy can be discussed as it relates to a single issue or to stages of life in general.

When I tell a teen what it means to be an adult, I tell them that the clear line is when they can take responsibility for themselves and their actions. It is the day when they take charge of their lives and don’t need help (though they often still get it). In the philosophy above, that’s “Living.” The first step up is knowing where you start and end and being able to keep your own existence together.

Giving begins a stage where a person either creates more than they need (money, time, work) and chooses to share it, or when a person determines to need less and shares despite having what seems like just enough for themselves. Waiting until you have enough to give tests your resolve to give. More always feels like barely enough as you approach it. Realizing that wherever you are, you have something to give teaches a lesson deeper than generosity. It teaches seeing yourself as existing in abundance instead of crisis.

The stage of Caring is when you spread your responsibility out to cover others, especially those that cannot yet care for themselves. This can come in the role of a parent, a teacher, an employer, but is by no means automatic. If a person in these roles hasn’t learned to be responsible for themselves or to give selflessly, they will do as much harm as good. The best examples of all of those have fully embodied the previous stages, and joyfully embrace the added responsibility with gratitude and enthusiasm.

Sharing is even bigger. At this stage, the impact of the individual has grown to the level that people come to seek their wisdom. They share when they attempt to pass on what they’ve learned through leadership, speaking, or writing. As with the stages before, unless this stage builds on healthy stages below it, it leads to a hollow, false result that gestures towards the truth without embodying it.

Loving is highest on the list, but luckily for us, requires none of the previous steps. It can be accessed as the result of a life climbing these stages, or after a ruinous, egotistical romp. One can learn about love at any time and in any place. It is always waiting just behind the dark curtain of the ego. It can be gained through nurturing or through painful perspective. It comes to us through our gratitude for a chance to live this life. It stays with us when we hold that feeling and forgive ourselves for mistakes and chances not taken. It grows stronger when we see that our mistakes teach us often better than our success and pass that forgiveness and acceptance to others. From there, we can begin or begin again the path that starts with living.