Eshin Direct

This week sees the start of a new section on my blog – Meditations. I’m using this section to do what I hope is weekly post on my thoughts on some of the more spiritual and moralistic aspects of my own life through some of the more important books that I read. In a way, these collection of posts are designed to tackle more of the weighty issues and aspects of my life.

The first book that I will focus on in Meditations is the book called Code of the Samurai – A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke translated by Thomas Cleary. This book provides a modern translation of Bushido (or Way of the Warrior) and attempts to put down in writing the core of the philosophies of the ancient samurai of Japan. These values have lived in on in part within the Japanese societal psyche.

For me the book represents an ideal that resonates powerfully within me. It is an ideal of loyalty, duty and prudence to create a harmonious path through life. The book spoke to the warrior within me, one that has always manifested itself by rising to any challenge, asserting aggression and quick to take up arms, both physically and mentally, to any perceived danger. The warrior within brutishly drives me on to fight and win.

Yet the book itself advocates none of these and highlights to me that what I once thought as the strengthening warrior within, I now know as the undisciplined, soul-destroying fighter within me. It is a fighter that anyone can call upon without any undue forethought or greater insight into the principled approach that is required to truly become stronger as a person. I believe that by meditating on what the original treatise advocates, the honourable and disciplined warrior within me will truly be born.

Tags: Readings