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Precept 12:
Be indifferent to where you live
“A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers.” —
Aristophanes
Monk:
The truth is that for the most part most people don’t put too much
thought into where they live. Much of the thought process is built
around comfort or pain. If the comfort level is adequate and needed
resources are available most people tend to stay where they are.
This is nothing new. For most of history tribal identification aided in
survival, reinforcing the need to stay together in small communities
for comfort and safety. Movement for most of man’s time on earth
meant risk. For example, hunter gatherers were at more risk than
their brethren who made more permanent camps, but their search
for food outweighed the risk of starvation, so they moved about but
traveled in packs to assure a minimal level of safety.
Lack of vital resources is enough to make most people move, at
least those who are able to do so. For example, between the years
of 1845 and 1855 the great potato famine in Ireland caused mass
starvation. About a million people died, while another 1.5 million took
a risk and sought out a new life in America. They were willing to risk
a perilous sea journey, disease, and even indigenous prejudice upon
arrival because all that peril outweighed the near certainty of death
by starvation.
Sometimes opportunity leads folks to move as well. In the middle of
the Irish potato famine, during the winter of 1848, United States
President James Polk announced that gold had been found in
California. Suddenly the California gold rush was on. While famine
pushed people from their homeland, the Gold Rush pulled people on
to new lands. This combination caused the non-native population of
California to swell to about 100,000 inhabitants, up from a mere
1,000 before the influence of these forces came to play, all in about a
year’s time.
With this precept Musashi is telling us that it makes no difference
where we live. Of course he is not talking about extreme situations
like leaving crowded, plague-infested towns for the safety of the
countryside during the Black Death or escaping famine in 19th
Century Ireland. Supporting life is essential and foundational.
Nevertheless, Musashi was saying that he didn’t care if he had
prestige address, a master bathroom, or a walk-in closet. These 21st
Century amenities would have been absurd to his utilitarian
worldview.
Let’s face it, a bathroom is not a necessity from a comfort standpoint,
but it is important from a sanitation standpoint. Even in feudal Japan,
placing 20,000 samurai on a field in preparation for battle required
proper sanitation to avoid disease, so they dug latrines, assured
adequate sanitation, and kept their cookpots clean. Similarly, a
Neanderthal’s wooden peg driven into the wall kept his furs out of
the mud on his cave floor just as well as any walk-in closet keeps our
clothes off the floor in modern homes. It’s all a matter of degree... In
other words, utilitarian sensibility lightens our load in life and frees us
to explore other, more meaningful aspects of existence.
This is a time-honored tradition. Looking at all the great religions you
will see that their mystics all lived lightly. In secular society most
great artists live a Spartan existence too, keeping only what they
need for their artwork plus, perhaps, a little extra for comfort and
convenience. It is a focus, a clarity that only gets sharpened by the
divestment of worldly importance of “things.” An address, on the
other hand, means little, it is nothing more than a function of the
residence. The real question is whether or not the address we have
chosen provides access to needed resources, adequate safety, and
friends or family. If so, a move is unlikely. Moving is a disturbance,
oftentimes a risky and time-consuming one, that’s best forgone
except to escape danger such as famine or disease or to move
toward significant opportunity such as education or employment.
I agree with Musashi. In the end it makes little difference where we
live, so long as we can live our lives with the qualities that make for a
good life.
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