

Miyamoto Musashi's Final Work - rgrieselhuber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dokk%C5%8Dd%C5%8D

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zach
Could you imagine coming to interview at a company that had these "core
values" on a brass plate on the wall?

    
    
      * Accept everything just the way it is.
      * Be detached from desire your whole life long.
      * In all things have no preferences.
      * You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honor.
    

I would say I forgot something in my car, then 15 seconds later they would
hear screeching tires. No thank you.

~~~
stcredzero
You have to understand that Musashi is a _swordsman_. Understand these
precepts in that context first, _then_ generalize.

For example, the precept against preferences makes perfect sense for a
swordsman. If you prefer a particular attack, then this becomes a weakness.
You will tend to see openings for that kind of attack instead of seeing a
better opening for a different attack. You also become more predictable.

In the west, a non-swordsman would instead say, "If all you have is a hammer,
then everything starts looking like a nail."

Applying the above to computer programming: Sometimes people will implement
something in their favorite language despite another being vastly superior for
the particular purpose.

The correct analysis and generalization of the other precepts are left as an
exercise.

~~~
zach
No, actually, that goes double for me showing up for an interview as a feudal
swordsman. Replace the sound of screeching tires with galloping hooves.

So lack of preference is a strictly tactical precept then. Well, who cares? If
someone's supposed to sacrifice their body for your cause, is it because you
use the best tactics? Hell no. It can't be passion, nor excitement for change,
nor desire for something greater -- he's already disclaimed those.

The presumed motivation is strictly honor, which takes us back to "do what is
expected of you," which even then was hardly a new message in Japan. These
precepts at best struggle to transcend their cultural trappings.

~~~
stcredzero
I would not say that Musashi disclaims a "desire for something greater." His
later life seems to be all about that, as do these precepts.

I think these "precepts at best struggle to transcend their cultural
trappings" in our case because the cultural trappings are particularly
difficult. After all, most of us do not have real experience as warriors.

    
    
        * Accept everything just the way it is
    

I don't think that's the best translation. How about, "You must deal with what
is."

    
    
        * Be detached from desire your whole life long.
    

How about, "Don't be ruled by your desires."

    
    
        * You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honor.
    

This one is difficult to translate from a warrior context to a non-warrior
one. But it can still be usefully translated to the coder's context. Zed
Shaw's talk posted to HN recently makes the same point:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=420650>

A translation to our context might be "Be true to yourself, no matter how
surreal the workplace gets." The same idea is also embodied in the "Just Leave
Pattern."

<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JustLeave>

A drama program undergraduate classmate of mine once noted that Shakespeare's
Hamlet was far from "universal." After all, many places in Africa, marrying
your widowed sister-in-law is the right and proper thing to do! To get to the
universal, you often have to dig. It strikes me that this is as it should be.

------
mark_h
Thanks for posting that. I read Book of 5 Rings a couple of times when I was
younger and still obsessively practising martial arts. I hadn't come across
this though.

I don't stack up well against #13 unfortunately! (Unless that's intended as an
extension of #2 perhaps; "don't be a glutton")

------
bprater
"Do not seek pleasure for its own sake." What do you think he was trying to
say?

~~~
amix
I think he meant don't peruse pleasure for the pleasure's sake - e.g. like
having sex with a women only because of sex.

~~~
stcredzero
When you do something like that, you're ignoring lots of other factors that
often turn out to be very important.

------
jballanc
Soooooooo....basically just Tao-ism?

~~~
stcredzero
Sooooooo...just a bunch of precepts to turn you into a nihilistic Bushido
robot who can make for an efficient killing machine?

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signa11
i would highly recommend the beautiful mushahi-miyamoto samurai trilogy by
hiroshi-inagaki. very, very nice indeed. it has the feel of 'siddhartha' by
herman-hesse, but with samurai scenes.

~~~
jcl
Or read the epic novel "Musashi" by Eiji Yoshikawa, on which the movie is
based. Or the "Vagabond" series of graphic novels. All first-rate
entertainment, if you like samurai stories.

------
cubix
_In all things have no preferences._

Even when it comes to lists of precepts?

~~~
hsmyers
The 'many ways to the top of the mountain' precept covers the existence of
other valid precepts.

------
mhidalgo
1\. Accept everything just the way it is.

Not a big fan of that one, I think some situations are out of your control
however nothing would have gotten done in this world if everyone followed this
moto.

~~~
tokipin
i don't think he meant it as "do nothing." rather, he meant something more
like accepting the world as it is given to you, accepting the truth instead of
rationalizing, etc

acceptance is a big part of moving on

this isn't just an idealist guess on my part. just from the little I've read
from his "Book of Five Rings" it's clear he was a pragmatist. his
style/philosophy was essentially "do the best thing in the given situation,"
not different in spirit from Bruce Lee's style

~~~
Prrometheus
>"i don't think he meant it as "do nothing."

But then again, a lot of eastern ascetics and mystics mean _exactly_ that.

~~~
stcredzero
Those are the mystics who didn't "get it." They were fooled into inaction by
others who profited by being able to deal with the world as it was.

