A Book of Five Rings
Miyamoto Musashi, was an expert Japanese swordsman. Musashi, as he was often simply known, became renowned through stories of his excellent and unique double bladed swordsmanship and undefeated record in his 60 duels.
Stats for nerds
21recommend
58mentions
50people
2007–2026years
38% recommend55% neutral7% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Wow! Wasn't expecting this to be on HN.
So here's the backstory:
I'd just graduated from BCIT a year before. A friend invited me to visit Japan, so I got a working holiday visa, hopped on a plane, and there I was in a 1K apartment with 2 other people. I had one whole square meter of floor space for my computer (which I'd packed with me) and a donated monitor.
While looking for tech work, I fiddled around with MAME, doing small fixes to drivers and such, but I'd always had a love for the 68000 chip (from my Amiga days), so I looked at what MAME was doing and saw that its 68k emulator was written in assembler.
So I set a goal: Can I outperform the current assembler core with one written in portable C? Spoiler: Yes.
I spent 2 months sitting Buddha-like on the tiny square of floor in between job interviews, writing (and leveraging MAME's debugger). My proudest moment was when I finally saw the title screen for Rastan Saga pop up! (of course it crashed on launch, but still)
I named it Musashi, after Shinmen Musashi-no-Kami Fujiwara no Harunobu (新免武蔵守藤原玄信), commonly known as Miyamoto Musashi, who wrote the Book of Five Rings - a book that had a huge effect on me.
- Dr. Mica Endsley created a model of Situational Awareness that expands on the OODA loop [1]. There are critics, but I've found her model and papers to be outstanding when I've worked on Intelligent Software Agent projects.
Another related topic is the adaption of the OODA loop to military command decisions, what the US military calls the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) [2][3]. I would recommend reading about the MDMP to anyone running a business, or being a technical lead. I'd also recommend the the better known books The Art of War [4] by Sun Tzu and The Book of Five Rings [5] by Miyamoto Musashi.
I've had some chuckle at the idea of a book ostensibly on sword fighting being useful in business, until I mention the 9 basic principles Musashi lays out in the first section:
* "Do not think dishonestly."
* "The Way is in training."
* "Become acquainted with every art."
* "Know the Ways of all professions"
* "Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters."
* "Develop an intuitive judgement and understanding for everything."
* "Perceive those things which cannot be seen."
* "Pay attention even to trifles."
* "Do nothing which is of no use."
The analogy to business is also in the MDMP, as seen from the the 7 top level steps of the MDMP, from Wikipedia:
* Receipt of Mission
* Mission Analysis
* Course of action (COA) Development
* COA Analysis (aka Wargaming)
* COA Comparison
* COA Approval
* Orders Production, Dissemination, and Transition
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/210198492_Endsley_M...
[2] https://militarydecisiongr.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/a-gui...
[3] https://rdl.train.army.mil/catalog-ws/view/100.ATSC/E4166A5D...
[5] http://books.ebooklibrary.org/members/worldebooklibrary/five...
- Those interested in such subjects might also enjoy:
The Book of the Five Rings[1] and Richard Francis Burton's[2] The Book of the Sword[3].
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_five_rings
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton
[3] - http://burtoniana.org/books/1884-Book-of-the-Sword/burton-18...
- This a very personal opinion based on some popular classic book lists like those found on 4chan /lit/ etc. (Note: All books are new and I calculated the price from Book Depository [0], you might be able to purchase more from Better World Books [1]):
- The Holy Bible - Moby Dick by Melville - The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky - The Master And Margarita by Bulgakov - Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - The Iliad by Homer - The Odyssey by Homer - Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandra Dumas - The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler - The Qur'an - The Prince by Machiavelli - The Art of War by Sun Tzu - Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky - The Confessions by Saint Augustine - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo - We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - The Book Of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi - The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric - Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andric - Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun - Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger - All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque - The Divine Comedy by Dante
--- This list totals out at 311.14EUR and has 23 books. [0] - https://www.bookdepository.com/ [1] - https://www.betterworldbooks.com/
- This is the largely case for the Japanese Buddhism as well in sync with Chinese Taoism.
The fifth element is synonymous with "void" or "sky", ie "空".
For a slightly abstract and colorful philosophy of martial arts, you may enjoy Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Void. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Five_Rings
It is more related to Aether in its Sanskrit origins. "आकाश"
If you're willing to make a linguistic leap, you could argue that "nothingness" or "無" constitutes the essential foundation of modern Japanese philosophy or philosophical Buddhism. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/
- In order to be aggressive, you should train yourself to not be afraid of any possible consequences and sacrifices. Thats it!.
Most of the time, our imagined dragons/troubles never come to pass. People imagine all sorts of dire consequences and therefore do not act aggressively when required. You need to learn to push boundaries, keep your stress under control and always remember that the "other party" is as afraid of consequences as you are. The trick is to keep the pressure on until the other side "blinks". Watch any Nature conflict documentaries (eg. Lion documentaries where pride takeover often happens) and the principle should be clear.
Brinkmanship is the name of the game.
A study of Martial Arts texts will help in building up the necessary principles/techniques and "mental fortitude". A Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi is a good starting point.
