Fujiko Suda / Reflection

Learning from my sensei

Tonight, I had dinner with one of my favorite Senseis. He is an executive at a globally prestigious company. I have known him for two years now, and I meet with him only about three times a year. Yet every time I talk to him, I learn things I can't from books or other people.

Sensei doesn't read much. He learns from intensely observing the world around him, capturing images in flash, contemplating deeply on information he gained through his five senses, relying heavily on visual images. I really admire the way he thinks, the insight he acquires from observation. It seems that he sees the world as they truly are, instead of being lead away from reality by words that are not precise or untrue.

Sensei told me of his latest thoughts on business management. He said he never liked consultants, and he still doesn't feel entirely comfortable with the new development of his thoughts. But, he feels it is the way he must pursue to innovate his company. That is, a company may have very deep knowledge about whatever that is relevant to their products, but the situation now is that many companies do not have the capability to innovate, capability of how to interpret what the customers are saying, what the business partners are saying. That is where consultants come in. Consulting companies that have proven method of drawing out these issues and interpreting them in real and correct way are highly valuable. Sensei felt that many companies work with consultants with such methods in order to learn where they stand now, in order to learn these methods and integrate them into their work process. And through this collaboration, consultants will gain further insight and learn to develop better method and process and help other clients as well. Hiring consultants will only work if it produces win-win result. Sensei is vigorously working to integrate such system into his company.

We talked about Gorin-no-sho, and The Day Seagull Soared. About Gorin-no-sho, Sensei commented, well, you know they say that the book was written by Miyamoto Musashi. But the concepts in Gorin-no-sho "feels" to him as though something out of late Edo-era school of thinking. I commented, well, it is a known fact that the original Gorin-no-sho written by Miyamoto Musashi does not exist, and it is also a known fact that the Gorin-no-sho known by all today was written three generations after Musashi's death by Musashi's deciple's lienage. Three generations after Miyamoto Musashi brings the era to the smack in the middle of the Edo era. So my mind churns. Edo era's samurai concept may have seed of Miyamoto Musashi, but maybe he never wrote Gorin-no-sho?

When we were talking of how what people say and what people do are two different things, I told Sensei of what I read today on The Day Seagull Soared. How Marxism was so hot among college students after the end of World War, and as General MacArthur disbanded zaibatsu and freed feudal landlords' lands to peasants, with intension of promoting democracy in Japan, students movements with strikes and boycotts affected the Japanese government in their employment laws and policies. Sensei said, the socialism system makes a country efficient for production and that may have been good, but for other matters, Japanese government probably wanted to do things in different ways. Then I commented, I guess they had to obey MacArther, because after all, Japan did lose the war. Now that I think about it, maybe as a country, Japan might have been ripe for Marxism, but the Americans prevention worked.

Sensei's sense of humor, clear view of the world, candid speech always give me so much to think about, so much to learn. Since I rely heavily on reading books to think, to learn, I am fascinated of his ability to learn strictly from observation, and I admire him so precisely because he is so different from me, from anybody else I know. I am so fortunate for having met him in my life.

Gorin-no-sho

I am finally reading "Gorin-no-sho", and I love it! The concepts, logic of what I read so far feels right to me, natural to me, these feelings, thoughts expressed simply in explicit ways.

The way he lived, how he pursued the thing that mattered to him in his life, how later in his life he wanted to pass on his experience, his learning to a deciple, but going back to his belief that no one can pass on experience,
that one must learn in his own way, in domain of his life situation, with his own natural ability.

I have been struggling with the fact that I am not able to learn from someone else's experience but reading <u>Gorin-no-sho</u> shed light onto my predicament.

Happy

First time in over 4 weeks, that I actually have no super urgent work that I must finish over the weekend.

Yipee!! It feels great!

This morning, I was half asleep hearing the interacion between my husband and my kids, and one at a time, Kenzo and Kanta jumped into the futon giving me boyish hugs and kisses saying, "Good morning mom! I love you! I love you the best in the world!" Just as soon as they jumped in, they bounced out going about with their play.

The secret of this morning's happiness. I feel happy because I have bases for comparison. I experienced years in childhood that there was no one at home when I woke up in the morning. No one to say "Good morning!" to. I experienced years that I had to wake up early in the day regardless of how I felt to change daipers, to household chores. I experienced these days that I had tasks that required hours of concentration, despite of temptations of staying in futon....

I feel happy because I know both sides.

Pearl

I can't believe it was only one week ago that we were visiting Mito! Not being able to go into the Aiki Shrine with the group is still on my mind, feeling of regret. But then I know my choice was right, because by not going in, while waiting for the group in the car, I did get a whole lot of work done that I needed to do to keep my promise with my client.

One must choose sometimes. And sometimes, either way, the other choice remain with feeling of regret, even if the choice was right. I guess this is what adds subtle flavor to a person. This is something that was discussed in our training session in US when I was there. Living with such aggrevation is like a grain of sand that gets into oyster that eventually becomes a pearl. By living with regret, working it out with sincerety, in time, it becomes something beautiful.

To move on

My trusted advisor said to me, "You must kill the ideas, that is, to put behind things that you have developed and made your own, by writing a book." Yes, I have done a bit of living over the past 43 years, and have a few ideas that I embrace and would like to share with others. The ongoing thoughts and ideas, I now share in this blog. But those ideas that took me years to come to, some professional, some personal,which might help some people, especially young people, who are going through certain difficult experiences in life, the best way possible to do that while continuing on with my professional development, may be to write books.

My buddy has been encouraging me to write a book for over a year now. And as things got crazy over the past month, it is beginning to seem more of a practical solution than something noble to do. It would allow me to move on.

To move on! Sounds so exciting, so thrilling!

Become un-self conscious

Ever think about why people change, become? I do. And only because I am so self conscious of myself. Over the last few days, I have been a bit overwhelmed with meeting with so many great people, and once again I wondered, why are they the way they are?

It's frustrating that I am only capable of learning from my own mistakes, my own experiences. It's amazing the kind of work I have started to land over the past few months, that these are kind of work I've always thought that I will be most appropriate for, but for many years, they did not come.

Why? Because I wasn't ready for it. You can read it in the books, see it in the movies, hear it in songs, but it didn't sink in to me until I lived it. We rant and rave about unfairness of life, of chances that never come our way. Once again, I had to learn it the hard way, why things are the way they are.

I started getting these work, simply because
1. There are such projects out there
2. I have the capability to do it right, after all I've learned over the years, arming me with the skills I need.

I seem to be still at "ri" of "shu-ha-ri" cycle in creation of my own "kata". And so am still self conscious.

Features of beauty

So much fun over the past three weeks, full of intense work, travel, training for performance enhancement, accomanying French guest to meetings and visits!! In a way, I was stressed out about my bad performance due to overload on one of key report I was to produce, but I knew it was one of the lessons to learn, so even though I was stressed out, I was okay.

Great thing about accompanying non-Japanese guest on visit is that Japanese people try to explain the special features about whatever they are trying to explain in as simple way as possible, often making comparison with non-Japanese examples, and because I did not receive higher education in Japan, it is wonderful way for me to learn.

One of memorable learning I had last Sunday is that of learning the features of beauty by Japanese. We visited Kiki-Rakuza, and there, Yamaguchi-san explained to us the difference between Japanese ceremics and Chinese and European ceremics. Chinese and Europeans pursue perfection in their work, thinner plates, symmetrical shape, flawless painting on the plate. Japanese purposefully bring in warp and uneven texture to their work, painting simple but not repeated.

Features of beauty in ceremics. Yamaguchi-san said, Japanese don't like perfectness in ceremics. They don't like perfect people. I had a glimps of buddahism when I heard her say that, because nature is really not perfect. World is not really perfect. Nothing happens in planned, neat, clean way. But it is in this uneveness, this imperfection lies beauty of life, through imperfection one learns to appreciate other imperfect things. I fell in love with the concept of Japanese ceremics, because it is such true expression of all living things, perhaps all of universe. Yes, people are same, like all plates are same. But like Japanese ceremics, people are each so unique, so different, so imperfect, so beautiful.