Design Kompany is working on a new project: coming up with a new brand identity for a very cool company that does very intricate and not-quite-publicly-known things. Patents are involved. I can’t go into details. But I want to. The feeling of wanting to spill is definitely pressing.
I mention this because the series of In Search of Meaning posts is 98% inspired by Design Kompany’s clients. I threw in that one about a lecture at Kane Hall just because I thought you’d like it.
As part of our branding process, we ask each of our clients for book recommendations.
That way, we get to know how you think. And what’s important to you. In a different way than just asking, “So, tell me about you.” And you going, “Sure, read my Facebook.”
This cool company we are working with told us to go read Miyamoto Musashi’s text, The Book of Five Rings.
Akira went, “Oh, yeeeahh…” because it is about a samurai. And secretly, Akira is a samurai.
Okay, he’s not a samurai. But he is from Japan and knows all about the Way.
More on the Way in a minute.
Business executives like Warren Buffet and Seattle’s own Bill Gates have become zillionaires because they read up on the method written by the superstar 16th century samurai warrior by candelight in a cave on how to defeat your opponents.
Miyamoto Musashi was all about winning. Beatin’ ‘em. Every time.
Of the five rings (or “aspects”)–the most engaging is the last.
After Earth（地）, Water（水）, Fire（火）, and Wind（風）, Musashi writes about…
Ku.
The great blankness.
The Void.
The empty.
All of these are different ways it’s been described in English. But really, it’s so hard to translate from the ephemeral and purposefully philosophical and vague Japanese character: 空.
Here’s an excerpt from The Book of Five Rings, as translated by Thomas Cleary (Shambala: Boston, 2003):
The way that is practiced by warriors is not obscure in the least.
Without any confusion in mind, without slacking off at any time, polishing the mind and attention, sharpening the eye that observes and the eye that sees, one should know real emptiness as the state where there is no obscurity and the clouds of confusion have cleared away.
As long as they do not know the real Way, whether in Buddhism or in worldly matters, everybody may think their path is sure and is a good thing, but from the point of view of the straight way of mind, seen in juxtaposition with overall social standards, they turn away from the true Way by the personal biases in their minds and the individual warps in their vision.
… thinking correctly, clearly, and comprehensively, taking emptiness as the Way, you see the Way as emptiness.
In emptiness there is good but no evil. Wisdom exists, logic exists, the Way exists, mind is empty.–Musashi
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Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot has some of this stuff in it, too. So does Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s book, In Praise of Shadows.
Read these and more posts from the series of commentary and thoughts provoked by books, In Search of Meaning
Do you know where else I can read more about the Emptiness? And where being conscious of it comes in really handy?
I’d ask Akira, but he is flexing his samurai muscles and waving around a sword.
More from the series In Search of Meaning
“Do you know where else I can read more about the Emptiness? And where being conscious of it comes in really handy?”
In reply to your above query and with reference to your excerpts from Miyamoto Musashi, you may find the book “Who Am I?” and other works by Ramana Maharishi to be of particular interest and enlightening.