“You May Abandon Your Own Body but You Must Preserve Your Honor”

Miyamoto Musashi's philosophy, the Bushido, is a cornerstone of a necessary code of conduct

followed by the Samurais. The Bushido is a set of virtues that one might follow in order to

live a moral and noble life. This philosophy has 7 main virtues: Integrity, Respect, Heroic courage,

Honor, Compassion, Honesty, and Loyalty. While this code requires a whole episode of its own,

it is fair to say that the image we have of Samurais; their heroic behaviors, honorable

deaths, and noble demeanors were all powered by the Bushido. While honor is specifically

cited as just one of the seven virtues, when you consider it, Bushido is all about honor.

Honor is the glue between all other virtues in the code of conduct. Honor is self-respect,

and when you respect yourself, you carry yourself with honesty and integrity. Honor is defending

what's right, so when you're in such situations, you don't shy away and instead, act with courage.

Honor means not stomping over weak or vulnerable people, that when you're in a position of power,

you're compassionate. And finally, honor is being ready to risk everything to preserve the dignity

of those you care about; in other words, it is to be loyal to the bone. Honor and discipline

are both cut from the same cloth and developing one often leads directly to improving the other.

For example, imagine you work a typical desk-job and you’ve been in the same position for a couple

of years. By now everything is routine and you barely have to think about your day to

day processes and you’re getting bored, so you find shortcuts and workarounds,

start arriving late and taking longer breaks, trying to minimize the amount of consideration

you’re giving your work to avoid feeling bored. Meanwhile, your colleague is in the same position,

hired at the same time has been doing the exact same shortcuts but then using that extra time to

develop new ideas and strategies and now you’re getting looked over for that promotion. When you

ask why, you’re told that you lack discipline. In your misery, you decide to get proactive and take

the Musashian approach - You decide to be on time, to do your best to deliver quality work,

spend time trying to find ways to improve your work, and to generally behave in an honorable way,

with no cheating or underhanded behavior. And here’s the interesting thing - by

behaving in an honorable way like this, you’re actually becoming disciplined! In our example,

there are some keywords and they are being on time, delivering quality work,

and behaving well… Don’t these virtues all fall under the banner of consistency? And isn’t

consistency a cornerstone of discipline? And once that is done, you’re living an honorable life.

It’s important to make sure that one doesn’t stray from the path, and stays disciplined,

but it’s just as important not to punish yourself when it doesn’t work out. Acknowledge this is how

things are and work towards improving things instead of beating yourself up. Wasting time

and energy on punishing yourself is no different to distracting oneself with

immediate pleasures - They are both ways of avoiding doing the honorable thing. And

living honorably and living with discipline is the remedy to our greed, covetousness,

and selfishness.

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