We all value something. Each person may value different things, but very rarely is that thing hidden from the people around us. What we do, how we conduct our lives, shows what we value. Our ideals — what we profess to value — may differ from our practical conduct. In that case it is our conduct which reveals what we value. If we observe a discrepancy between our ideals and our actions, if we are honest, if we are courageous, we have an opportunity to correct our behavior and recover our values.

 

If we look around, we will see acts which reveal that people value money over other things. We will see people running after financial security, or status, or physical comfort, or pleasure. They will rig the system, steal the wealth and destroy the work ethic of a nation for their own greed. They will justify it, argue for it, even call it good. But that will not disguise what they value most.

 

People will sacrifice their own children if this will provide them with something they value more. This is commonplace, not rare. People will overthrow the wisdom of ages, their own beliefs, the values of their parents, the well being of their friends, communities or nations, cause great suffering, in the pursuit of what they value most.

 

So it is worth examining what we value. Not just because great harm or great good can come from our actions, but because our lives, our time to act, is short. And because once we have taken action, like a bullet fired from a gun, although we might later repent, we can never take back what we have done.

 

We all face this challenge at all times. I have faced it starkly in law enforcement settings as well as in the dojo.

 

I did not create a dojo to offer a recreational activity. Recreational activities were already available in 1987, and they still are. I created a dojo to provide a furnace for the alchemical transformation of body and mind.  A place where we could immerse ourselves in a process by which, through the persistent and skillful application of our own will, we could strengthen our minds, make our bodies more intelligent, fuse our body and mind into a single coherent being, and dedicate ourselves to putting an end to suffering, for ourselves and others, forever.

 

In law enforcement, the challenges to being consistent in ideals and practice are similar to those presented in operating a dojo, or any other walk of life.

 

We live in a decadent society. That is to say, the institutions of society are often failing to achieve the objectives for which they were created. In the martial arts dojo and in law enforcement, we preserve values which are out of style. Values like honor, discipline, diligence, self sacrifice, courage, humility and duty.

 

To live these ideals, on the street or in the dojo, is a difficult, countercultural, but essential, mission.

 

As a law enforcement officer, I took an oath to protect and serve. Do I think I am protecting Las Vegas, pornographers, drug dealers, Hollywood, Big Brother, subprime mortgage lenders, evildoers, and the other destroyers of virtue?

 

People involved in these things use the same justification for their acts: “If I didn’t do it someone else would,” “People enjoy it,” “That’s my money in their pocket,” “It is what people want,” “I don’t judge, I am a businessman,” “We all need to eat,”  "If people are stupid enough to get involved with this, they deserve what they get." They all say these things.

 

Those are not the people and institutions I serve.  To the best of my ability, I am taking care of people who are in fear, who are being taken advantage of, who are being threatened or harmed.

 

But this service is not only the objective of the mission; it is also a means to achieve it.

 

This understanding is similar to the way I ran my dojo.

 

The point is not that we can succeed in permanently eradicating evil or weakness or vanity. The point is that we give our best effort to restrain them and combat them throughout our lives. To the degree that all our skill, effort, energy, lifetime, is devoted to this in practice, we live a noble human life.

 

If we get side-tracked, if we succumb to laziness, self centeredness, careerism, pleasure-seeking, we will eventually lose all the things we did wrong to attain. And then the story of our short human life is, at the end, a story of total loss.

 

If we dedicate ourselves to the transformation of body and mind through virtuous action, we will take our deeds with us forever.

 

Good luck with your training.