Two Valuable Books to Read in Life

Although I do read many books from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Shakespeare and Frost, there are two books that I believe everyone should read during their lifetime. Now I am not a Book Reviewer like some but I did find a two blogs that did a review of one of the books. Those blogs are Jissen Budōka and Blog @DrBenFung.

The first book is The Book Of Five Rings
by Miyamoto Musashi
Translated by Ashikaga Yoshiharu
is a descendent of a Samurai, and teaches English at Tokyo University. Edited by Rosemary Brant.

A wealth of philosophy can be found with this roughly 200 pages of text and imagery. Although the book is meant for the martial arts and fighting with swords, many leaders of our nation and I heard that Tony Robbins the motivational speaker once read it as well. There was a quote I found pertaining to this gem of a book, ”

“You must train day and night in order for you to be able 

to make decisions quickly.”

 

Successful people from Napoleon Hill to Andrew Carnegie; from Henry Ford to Anthony Robbins all say that the most successful people are those who make decisions quickly and change their minds rarely, if at all.  The ability to make decisions quickly in battle, of course, can mean the difference between life and death.  This is definitely a skill that must be acquired.  But this skill very much spills over into other areas of life as well.“

Source: http://www.craikido.com/Aikido_Book_of_5_Rings_Musashi1_Samurai_Sword_Introduction.html

The next book that I try to utilize in my daily life as well is a book titled: Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, translated by James Legge though I heard the Stephen Mitchell  does a better job at the translations. The philosophy within this book can be used for both leadership and for daily life, one of the philosophies to paraphase, is that we may enjoy certain beverages because they taste good, but to intake these beverages in moderations.

From theguardian.com,  Tao Te Ching by Laozi: ancient wisdom for modern times has one famous author David Foster Wallace photo with a quote, “The mysterious Laozi’s ancient wisdom may be hard to translate, but the meaning is clear – learning to be self-aware could improve modern life” I for one resonate with this quote.

This site Shows one How to Read Tao Te Ching:

http://tao-in-you.com/and_taoism.html

And

http://taoism.net/tao/what-is-tao/