It was heartening to hear that many people turned – or returned – to poetry or a favourite writer or certain stories for solace during lockdown. I too found comfort in the words of others. Pulling old favourites from the shelves felt like warming the home with protective light, as the encroaching blackness of Covid-19 grew darker outside. I called upon Lorrie Moore’s stories, my Poem for the Day collections, the essays and notebooks of Albert Camus, and the collected columns of Jeffrey Bernard.
Books of such differing styles sparked many thoughts; primarily, is it better to read for range or depth, or can we achieve both? Is there even enough time in one lifetime to do so, unless you are (say) situated in an academic field dedicated to intense scholarism? Such musings, though, are for another page.
I also read books again on the samurai and their philosophy – titles that I had first encountered more than 20 years ago. You might doubt the value of reading books dealing with martial arts, discipline, strategy and so on, if you have little interest to begin with. These subjects are covered in detail, naturally, but there is much gold to be mined here in terms of thinking about how to live, and how we approach that looming, inevitable leveller: death.
Pondering living and dying is to the samurai’s mind what breathing in and out is to ours; their terse writings offer teachings on how we can embrace existence, and how we face up to eventually letting go. The books contain many scenarios that can be used in times of trouble, or for the plain mundane of everyday. Take this from the Hagakure, which means “hidden by leaves”, for example:
“There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking.
“This understanding extends to everything.”
It truly does; especially to our present circumstances. We are all suffering something of a soaking, heavier for some than others, in our lives at the moment as we negotiate our way through a global pandemic. But if we set ourselves true to the task, we can come out the other side relatively unscathed, albeit exposed and vulnerable as many of us are feeling right now.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, who wrote Hagakure, began studying the concept of Zen at a young age, and at 22 he had a “ritual funeral of the ego” – something we should all do at that stage of our lives, perhaps, especially if we have exhausted our Smiths records (“With that death, though, we have at last become free”).
Yamamoto’s work stresses many values: family; routine; parenting; the huge joys to be found in small rituals such as tea making, letter writing, sleeping, even. He regularly states the importance of art for a balanced mind, advising the calming of one’s thoughts with the aid of a poetry collection: “concentration on one affair”.
The writing also focuses on compassion:
“What is called generosity is really compassion… there is no limit to the breadth and depth of one’s heart. There is room enough for all... the wisdom and courage that comes from compassion are real wisdom and courage.”
Often the writing in Hagakure is both humble and funny: “When I was young, I kept a ‘Diary of Regret’ and tried to record my mistakes day by day, but there was never a day when I didn’t have 20 to 30 entries. As there was no end to it, I gave up... Living without mistakes is truly impossible. But this is something that people who live by cleverness have no inclination to think about.”
Hagakure also offers acute perspective that some of our political class and their spinners could heed:
“It is said that one should not hesitate to correct himself when he has made a mistake. If he corrects himself without the least bit of delay, his mistakes will quickly disappear. But when he tries to cover up a mistake, it will become all the more unbecoming and painful.”
Here too, is a sagacious judgment of Yamamoto’s with a phrase – “injury from intelligence” – that could be applied to our modern age of misinformation and conspiracy:
“People with intelligence will use it to fashion things both true and false and will try to push through whatever they want with their clever reasoning. This is injury from intelligence. Nothing you do will have an effect if you do not use the truth.”
If you have seen Jim Jarmusch’s excellent film Ghost Dog (1999), then you will already be familiar with Hagakure as one of the foundations of samurai philosophy. If you prefer tales of Japan’s ancient lineage of swordsmen grounded on a more historical footing, however, then it is worth reading Samurai by Michael Wert (Oxford University Press), which is an enjoyable concise history published in 2019. Interestingly, Wert says that “the samurai might have numbered no more than 8 per cent of the national population” during the height of their powers in the Edo period. Nonetheless, the creation of the samurai ideal penetrated popular culture and remains to this day.
Shambhala Publishing has a range of titles to draw philosophical enrichment from the samurai well. Tuttle Publishing also has a strong selection. Samurai Wisdom Stories: Tales from the Golden Age of Bushido by Pascal Fauliot is full of revealing nuggets of wisdom and knowledge. Even though each tale is only a few pages long, they cover ideas from morality to spirituality. Budoshoshinshu (Teachings on the Way of the Warrior) is a more muscular collection compared with the Hagakure, but it is still worth your time as it possesses its own idiosyncratic view of the world.
Legendary 17th-century warrior Miyamoto Mushashi put his practices to pen when he wrote the punchy The Book of the Five Rings, which is still relevant to the modern reader on other levels aside from the subject of combat (“Let the teacher be the needle, let the student be the thread”).
Miyamoto left us a simple, yet eloquent, daily goal to consider as the new light of day sweeps away the dust of sleep: "Determine that today you will overcome yourself of the day before". Most of us have renewed gratitude for each dawn in the current circumstances; now, with the aid of a little enlightened reading, let's express it.
Many of these titles can be found in quality editions published by Shambhala, with sterling translation work by William Scott Wilson shambhala.com
