Why a Hut Won’t Make You Happy... (The Unsettling Philosophy of Hōjōki)

The world seems to move faster every year. And  lately, it feels less stable… as if everything   we rely on could shift or disappear at any  moment. Each morning brings new headlines   of crisis and collapse, keeping us on edge,  worried about what the future might bring.   Over 800 years ago, a Japanese poet watched  his world fall apart. Natural disasters,   societal chaos, and a life that turned out  to be nothing as he had hoped. Like us,   he was forced to face a difficult truth:  that safety and stability are fragile,   and perhaps never truly existed. But unlike most people, he decided he   had enough. From his perspective, there  was nothing lasting to be gained in the   world. He saw everything was subject  to change, loss, and decay. And so,   he turned away from it all and built a small  hut, where he spent his days in simplicity.   Living as a recluse, Kamo no Chōmei  wrote his famous essay Hōjōki,   reflecting on a world in decay, and what it might  teach us about how to live. This video explores   the wisdom of Kamo no Chōmei’s Hōjōki. My name is Stefan. If you enjoy my work,   you can subscribe to my newsletter on  Substack. You can also support me on Patreon,   and my books are available on Amazon. Thank  you, and I hope you’ll enjoy this video.

Kamo no Chōmei grew up in Kyoto, studying  poetry and music from an early age. Born into   a well-connected Shinto family, he had high  expectations of life. But the world around   him was already starting to fall apart. As a child, he witnessed the city consumed   by fire, along with famines, earthquakes, and  violent storms. In the years that followed,   the turmoil only got worse, as the capital was  suddenly relocated, causing widespread chaos,   and rival military houses fought for power. The introduction to a recent translation of   Hōjōki, written by Matthew Stavros,  explains how environmental disasters   and social instability led many to believe the  world had “entered an age of karmic degeneracy. ”   This came from a Buddhist belief in a final  stage, a period of decline in which true practice   and enlightenment are nearly impossible. Meanwhile, Chōmei prepared himself to follow   in his father’s footsteps, a high position  within an important Shinto sanctuary. But   when his father fell ill, withdrew from his  position, and passed away not long after,   his future became uncertain. Even though ready to take his   father’s place, Chōmei was passed over, and  the position was given to his cousin.   This key moment in Chōmei’s life confronted  him with the fact that life doesn’t always   work out as one expects or hopes. And  that his life was not an exception.   The trend of misfortune didn’t stop, though. In  his thirties, while living in his grandmother’s   house, he was forced out. Why exactly he lived  there (and why he had to leave) remains unclear,   but likely related to his social status. So he left and built a small house near the   Kamo River. Rather than mingling with others  in the city, he spent his days in solitude,   writing poetry. He began to retreat from  the world. And the life he once belonged to,   one of high status and wealth, defined  by rank, prestige, and honor, faded.   Chōmei wasn’t attached to society by marriage or  fatherhood. He was free to leave the world behind,   and so he did, as he felt it had nothing to  give him. By the time Chōmei was nearing sixty,   his gradual withdrawal reached its final stage: he  built a small hut and retreated into solitude.   Chōmei finally had the space to reflect on  everything that had happened: the misfortunes he   had witnessed and experienced, the suffering they  caused, and why he had walked away from society,   and what he learned in his hut, where he made  solitude his home. He put these thoughts into   a short work now known as Hōjōki, which  translates to ‘An Account of My Hut’.

The flow of the river never ceases, And the water never stays the same.   Bubbles float on the surface of pools, Bursting, re-forming, never lingering.   They’re like the people in this  world and their dwellings.   Looking back on the many adversities  and disappointments he had faced,   Chōmei came to see how fragile the world actually  is. And so, the reality of impermanence became the   central theme of his reflections. When reflecting on his experiences,   one thing stood out to Chōmei: circumstances are  always changing; nothing remains the same.   The prologue of his poem suggests that  while buildings may appear eternal,   most are neither very old nor destined to last.   And the same goes for people. It may feel like   those around us are everlasting, but in reality,  people come and go, and before you know it,   most of whom you knew, let’s say, thirty  years ago have already passed away.   The destructive reality of change becomes apparent  in Hōjōki when Chōmei begins to reflect on the   adversities he experienced, including great  fires and earthquakes, full of death, pain,   and despair. Misfortune is all around  us. It is inevitable and spares no one,   rich or poor, young or old. No one is immune. His reflections resemble the Eight Worldly Winds   in Buddhism, which describe how we are constantly  swept along by changing conditions, both pleasant   and unpleasant. Sometimes you gain, sometimes you  lose. One day you are celebrated, the next cast   aside. In one moment, you are praised, in another,  blamed. Today brings pleasure, tomorrow pain.   After witnessing so much misfortune and  destruction, and realizing how transient   everything is, Chōmei came to see human efforts  as pointless. He saw it as especially futile to   invest wealth and energy in building houses  in a place as unstable as the capital.   Yet, he observed that people kept engaging  in all kinds of vain pursuits, be it success,   status, belonging, or reputation, which  is hardly surprising, because these are   precisely the things society praises, back  then and today. Chōmei then concluded that   participating in society means that one deals  with these attachments in one way or another.   And it doesn’t matter if you’re  rich or poor, powerful or weak;   every position comes with its own problems  and forms of suffering. As Chōmei wrote:   Wealth brings great anxiety, while with poverty come fierce resentments.   Dependence on others puts you in their power, while care for others will snare you in   the worldly attachments of affection. Follow the social rules, and they hem you in;   fail to do so, and you are  thought as good as crazy   To Chōmei, the problem was obvious: the  society he had been part of for so many   years was a source of suffering for everyone  entangled in it. Regardless of where you stand,   you’ll always end up cheated. And so, he wondered:   Where in this world should one live and how? Where can one find rest,   And peace in their heart? We already know his answer. What   better response to a losing game than not to play?   What better solution to a toxic environment that   only brings suffering than to leave it? But as Chōmei became a recluse, hoping to   finally find the peace he was longing for,  he arrived at a troubling realization.

Chōmei learned an important lesson from his  experiences: the danger of clinging to what cannot   last, and resisting what cannot be changed. He came to see that external circumstances are   unreliable, constantly shifting beyond our  control. Suffering, he realized, arises not   from misfortune itself, but from our attachment  to this “world of dust,” as he called it. We have   hopes and expectations. We hold on to things we  want to keep, and try to avoid circumstances we   don’t like. We desire things to unfold as we  wish, inevitably leading to disappointment,   which Chōmei experienced firsthand. Now, what’s the logical solution for   the pain of attachment? Detachment. By living in a tiny dwelling in the hills   of Southeast Kyoto, just enough for one man to  sleep and sit, he sought to disconnect himself   from the sufferings of the regular people. And the  idea made sense. Because if you don’t have much,   you also don’t have much to lose.   You won’t be stressing about wealth,   possessions, or social status, because  you don’t have those to begin with.   Moreover, if all you have is a small hut,  there is little to maintain or protect;   you live simply, in peace and quiet,  without the stresses of conventional life:   chasing status and material possessions, having a  family, and all the effort necessary to maintain   these things, and the fear of losing them. Chōmei enjoyed his small hut. He relished owning   a little. Observing nature and seeing the  seasons come and pass became his delight.    He felt free… and even pitied those in the city  for missing out on what he so deeply enjoyed.   But in the light of the Buddhist teachings  he followed, something began to bother him.    Chōmei realized he had become attached to  his hut and the pleasure it gave him.   As Chōmei understood from the teachings, if you  want to relinquish the suffering of impermanence,   letting go of your attachments is the key.   After all, if you don’t hold on to anything,   nor harbor aversion to things, then the  changes of the world will not affect you.   But Chōmei’s ways gave rise to a new problem. Even though he successfully detached from a   myriad of worldly things by renouncing them and  embracing the hermit’s life, he now held on to his   aloneness, his hut, and the simple life he was  living. He had jumped from the frying pan into   the flames. He scolded himself for describing the  useless pleasures he found in solitude, saying:   In the quiet dawn, I ponder this and question  my own heart: you fled the world to live among   forest and mountain in order to discipline  the mind and practice the Buddhist Way. But   though you have all the trappings of  a holy man, your heart is corrupt.   Chōmei asked himself if his past karma had led him  astray. Or if his critical mind drove him mad? He   concluded he wouldn’t get any answers to these  questions, and so he meditated and prayed, and   then remained silent, which is how Hōjōki ends. The story of Chōmei and his hut doesn’t end on a

positive note. Chōmei’s grave disappointments  with life led him to seek solutions, which   ultimately ended in more disappointment. But he  also arrived at a profound realization, almost   a cautionary tale: in trying to free ourselves  from worldly attachments, we may become attached   to the very means we use to escape them. I can only imagine that people who, like Chōmei,   seek out solitude as a means to disentangle  from the world, such as hermits and monastics,   run the risk of clinging to their seclusion.   Similarly, minimalists who make an effort to   detach from useless stuff risk becoming attached  to the very idea of minimalism. And when this   happens, aren’t they overshooting the goal? Whether we’re minimalists or hermits, if we’re   attached to our ways of life, be it a decluttered  living space or a hut in the woods with minimal   human interaction, we’re still watering the seeds  of suffering. For as the worldly winds shift,   we may find ourselves in cluttered environments  again, or lose the solitude we depend on. And as   we’re attached to what we lost, we suffer. Personally, I can relate to Chōmei, as I also   began to seclude myself around ten years ago,  after many disappointments and setbacks in life.    Bitter and hurt because of all that happened,  I retreated to my apartment, spending most   of my time in solitude for many years. After  all, the fewer people you let into your life,   the less likely you are to be hurt by them. Many good things happened during those years,   though… My financial situation improved, I  drank less and less, I reflected a lot on life,   I immersed myself in philosophy, and I started  this channel. I finally found some peace after   a life of chaos. I fell in love with my  apartment, like Chōmei with his hut.   Solitude can be addictive, the silence, being  in your own company. And from my own experience,   I need more of it than before, and without my  ‘alone time’ I tend to become irritable.   So, it seems that solitude has become a  condition for my happiness; I desire it,   I seek it wherever I go, at home or while  traveling. Now, is there something wrong   with that? Perhaps. It suggests I may struggle  when solitude is no longer available. And when   the dependency on it becomes too great, a  proverbial hut turns into a prison rather   than a path to freedom. Thank you for watching.