What is "Seiondo"?
Over the years, a few visitors and friends have asked about the name of our household (and this site): “Seiondo”.
Where does it come from? What does it mean?
In this post, I’m going to introduce the concepts that went into creating it, why it was created in the first place, and share a little about its current structure.
Foundation
First off, let me confess: in my younger years, I was a man in turmoil.
I grew up in a dysfunctional household of emotional violence. My parents tended to resolve their disputes with the philosophy of “who shouts the loudest, wins”, and my siblings and I could only be described as “adversarial”.
Couple that with what living in poverty does to the psyche, and you get a basic picture of what my formative years were like.
So it should come as no surprise that, as a young man, I struggled with my identity, my confidence, my father’s anger, codependent relationships…
Throughout my 20s and early 30s, it could be said that I was busy re-creating the environment I grew up in.
But I knew I wanted something more. I wanted to be better than that.
Over the first two decades of my adult life, I slowly learned what that meant, and the philosophy of Seiondo evolved.
Philosophy & translation
First and foremost, Seiondo is a philosophy.
It means “the way of harmony of the spirit”, and it’s made of two parts: “Seion”, which my vast online research (translation: I read the first few hits from a Google search) indicated was the name of the Japanese kanji meaning “serenity or tranquility of the spirit”, and “-do”, which means “the way of”, as in bushido, the way of the warrior (the code of the samurai).
The principal philosophy of Seiondo is simple to state, but challenging to live:
We believe that the purpose of life on Earth is to learn how to love unconditionally. In order to express love, you must be in harmony with yourself, your surroundings, and those with whom you share your journey.
- We believe in living deliberately. We should live our lives as the result of deliberation and introspection, not by accident. We respond deliberately to the things that happen to us. To simply react is to elevate ourselves no higher than simple microbes.
- We believe in generous communication: in active listening, or listening with the intent to understand, not just to respond.
- We believe we must learn to control and manage anger and other negative emotions. Anger is an energy. It is a reaction to other feelings we may or may not understand. Feelings of helplessness, frustration, violation and similar emotions, when not analyzed and responded to, generate anger.
- We believe in giving generously, from a place of abundance.
- We believe that, for us, consensual authority exchange relationships are powerful expressions of our freedom, but that they’re not for everyone. And that’s okay.
All of these, bundled up into a way of life, are what we practice at Seiondo, our M/s lifestyle poly household.
Household
While Seiondo was designed as a philosophy, it was also my desire to have a communal Master/slave poly household that lived this philosophy 24/7 and, as much as possible, under the same roof.
Origins
To that end, Seiondo was founded as a household in 2011 in Denver, Colorado, based on the philosophy described above. It has evolved and resolved over time.
There were four original members: myself (Master Koi), Master Patrick, slave xiaoyi and her husband Dominic. Master Patrick left after about a year, and xiaoyi and Dominic after three years.
The current members of the household are Master Koi, slave lexi and slave lessli.
Conclusion
I hope this gives you a little understanding of who we are, what we’re doing, and why.