Ten Titles

Mark Twain  -  The adventures of Tom Sawyer / Huckleberry Finn

Dee Brown  Bury my heart at wounded knee

Terence H White  Arthur The Once and Future King

Robert M. Pirsig  Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance.

Dogen Kigen  Shobogenzo

Chozan Shissai  Tengu Geijutsu Ron

Chu Hsi & Lu Tsu –ch’ien  Reflections on things at hand

Ivan Morris  The nobility of failure

Motohisa Yamakage The essence of Shinto

Baltasar Gracian The Art of Worldy wisdom

It is not difficult to list ten titles of favourite books, the problem is that for every list of ten I could make another list of ten that I favour just as much.

For one thing; I did not mention any Dutch authors. As many of their books have not been translated I left them out this time, but some did make a big impression on me.

There have been periods that I would read the books of one particular author; C.S Forrester, Agatha Christie, Robert van Gulick (Judge Dee), Hermann Hesse,  Stephen Pressfield, Patrick O’Brian. And there have been periods that I would read only about history, about nature, about art.  Philosophy has always been a major subject in many of the books I read. But I could not decide if I should put Plato or Cicero on the list, or Wittgenstein, Spinoza or Kant, or ...

No books on Bonsai, bees, wolves, classic sailing ships, the art of fencing or pottery, nothing on modern dance or theatre, no books about movies, permaculture or forestry.  I had to make a choice.  

So I tried a different approach.  I choose titles that are favourites, but that also stand for several other books in a similar category.

For instance;  Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were my heroes when I grew up.  Once a teacher demanded that I would make so many handwritten copies of a chapter in a book  by way of punishment. It would keep me busy all weekend. I did copy it a few times, but most of the copies came from other children at school in trade of things like pens or candy. Just like in Mark Twain’s book. There were many books like that in that time that made an impression on me.

Dee Brown made a deep impression on me because of all the struggle and suffering the people had to go through. All because of one word; manifest destiny. It may have been the first time that I became conscious of ideas that had a deep and painful impact on the world. I could have mentioned titles as Anne Frank’s Diary or Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and many other books that are about the suffering that humans inflict to each other solely based on thought, on a single idea or a rigid opinion.  I have Dee Brown’s book represent those books.

Terence White’s story about King Arthur is adventurous, hilarious and serious, it is about knights, but also about nature and magic. I imagined meeting Merlin and being transformed into a falcon or an ant. It seems to me the perfect way to learn everything about nature.

Pirsig’s book is not about Zen and not about motorcycle maintenance either. And despite the use of the name Phaedo it is not about Plato. I liked the book a lot – found only years later the similarities  with Chu Hsi’s Neo-Confucianism. These similarities can be found in the anthology  Reflections on things at hand.

I did have a growing interest in Zen Buddhism and Dogen Kigen’s Shobogenzo represents that. One of the books that I really loved was Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind - Beginner’s Mind. The books of Thich Nhat Hanh were a genuine discovery.  

The nobility of failure stands for my interest in history, the attraction of Japanese culture, and a different outlook on life.

The Tengu Geijutsuron is a philosophical work and a book on Budo. A Tengu is a bit like Tom Sawyer; there is goodness and even wisdom, but there is also something mischievous in him.  A true Aikido master has something of a Tengu in him.  Tengu Geijutsuron is one of my favourite books on Budo, along with other titles such as Fudochishinmyoroku and Taiaki by Takuan Soho, Budo Shoshinshu by Daidoji Yuzan, Go rin no sho by Miyamoto Musashi and Heiho kadensho by Yagyu Munenori.  

Nature and a sense of magic is to be found in Yamakage’s book on Shinto. It explains the philosophy and psychology of Shinto and its deep relationship with nature.  

My interest in philosophy has changed since the time I went to the University. It is not so much an academic study anymore, but rather a ongoing investigation in ways of thinking, in observing how people hold on to opinions or come up with irrational argumentations to explain their behaviour. It is looking into my the mirror of my own self to see how my own thinking has changed. It has become a return to the search of wisdom, to the path of life itself.  The Art of Worldly Wisdom represents the kind of philosophical books that I tend to read nowadays.  

All the mentioned books had an impact on me at one point in my life, and in many ways still influence me in life, in being in nature, in practicing Aiki, in ways that are not always noticeable for those that do not know me well.