Tea

Recently, I was invited to the Kankyu-an of Mushanokojisenke in Kyoto. I was to attend the most formal of tea ceremonies hosted by the next (15th) Iemoto Designate, Mr. Souoku Sen.
Certain cultural essences never travel far. People might get to have a very faint idea of what a tea ceremony is all about, by coming to witness some of the outreaching events. However, I knew from my own experience so far in life that the essence of certain ancient traditions would be never be known, unless one actually lives and breathes the "heart" of the event at its best.

In my life, a particularly poignant example was the Ise shrine. The essence of its natural and architectural beauty could never be understood, unless one actually visited the sacred place. All the historical, cultural and sometimes political connotations that surrounded this institution did not help, but rather hindered, my appreciation of its jealously conserved merits.

A tea ceremony at Kankyu-an is very special. It is said that even if one dedicates oneself to the teachings of the masters of the school all life, it is not certain whether one would be invited to a ceremony at this important historic site. It was a special consideration on the part of Mr. Sen to grant me, a complete novice in the art of tea and not even a formal pupil of his school, this very rare opportunity.

So here was my chance to get to know the real thing, where my only weapons were the open senses.

During the ceremony which lasted for more than four hours, I was moved by a series of inner discoveries. Although I do not have the time to go into all the details in this journal, I will try to convey the (in my view) most essential elements below.

I think I could understand the historical context surrounding the initiation of this form of art for the first time. I had to travel to Kankyu-an and go through the formal procedures of the classic tea ceremony to come to this realization.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi was the most powerful man at the time of the founder of tea ceremonies, Sen no Rikyu. After many years of warfare between the Daimyos, Hideyoshi united Japan. Being appointed Kampaku by the Emperor, his power was second to none in the earthly sense. After a long period of often brutal battles, in which betrayals by the closest of allies, sometimes even by those of one's own blood were the norm, people were accustomed to the idea of a man in power giving a free vent to his often savage whims. The grave matters of life and death were nothing but trifle movement of a finger for the powers that be.

It was all the more significant, then, that Sen no Rikyu defied the supreme political powers by inventing an art form which requested, for example, the practitioners to stoop as they enter the chasitsu. No weapons were allowed in the small hall of exquisite beauty where all the ceremonies took place. The powerful warriors had to abandon all the worldly glories they had fought all their lives for and obey rules of quite another world, where the most humble and unassuming items were deemed lofty and valuable.

No exceptions were made even for the most powerful of all. Hideyoshi must have felt that his world was being turned completely upside down, his taste for the decorative and rich effectively ridiculed by the tea master. It must have been as if that Hideyoshi's achievements, laudable by any reasonable estimates of history, were reduced to mere nothingness. Hideyoshi was again transformed into a complete novice, where he had to learn everything from scratch in the great universe of wabicha created by Sen no Rikyu.

Here was a creative tension between politics and the arts almost unrivaled in the long history of humanity. It would have been psychologically helpful for Hideyoshi if the cosmos of Sen no Rikyu was something he could reject and ignore. On the contrary, it was so attractive, probably more desirable than being the supreme power of the nation. Hideyoshi must have envied the tea master deeply. Yearning and respect can easily turn into resentment and an urge for a revenge, when it becomes clear that the object of desire is not attainable no matter how hard one tries.

It was a regrettable act of Hideyoshi to order Sen no Rikyu to commit ritual suicide. At the same time, it indicates that Hideyoshi perceived the significance of Rikyu's approach in full, seeing rightly the radicalism behind the seemingly peaceful processions.

Intensity

Everybody is getting busier these days. The internet and the mobile phone are responsible for making us occupied with various things all day long, forcing us to accept miscellaneous contexts simultaneously, in a situation that was inconsiderable some years ago.

If the popular conception about the dog year holds, then more things must be compressed into the same amount of time compared to what used to be the case.

One consolation of the current situation is that there are more chances of different elements making associations with each other and leading to a non-trivial synthesis. In the association cortex of the brain, experiences would be accumulated with higher intensity, and would, during the course of the "editing" and "streamlining" of the various memory traces, lead to the genesis of new things.

The Flynn effect pinpoints the increase of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) scores in industrialized nations in recent times. If this particular effect is due to the changing information environment, then it can also lead to increased creativity among people. Creativity is difficult to give a measure to compared to the general intelligence, but it must be somehow possible to find empirical evidences in support of the increased productivity in the domain of intelligence.

It is as if the average information environment in which a common man finds himself is becoming something similar to the tropical jungle, where miscellaneous factors are compressed into one with an extremely high density.

For me, creativity increased induced by intensity is at least the gospel of the time, if not entirely the case.

Wittgenstein's cat

I have this bad habit of scribing nonsensical things in my notebook during meetings and conferences. Just listening to other people talk seems to bore my brain. I need to do something extra to properly exercise it.

That's how I came up with the idea of volcano whales, which illustration I use for the current version of my name card.

The other day I was attending a conference, and was half consciously "at it" again. After somehow going into drawing a cat, I came upon this idea of revising the fascinating concept of the Schrödinger's cat.

Schrödinger's venerable cat has been doing the scientific community a lot of service by providing a striking illustration of the mystery of quantum mechanics, after its introduction to humanity in 1935. However, as the Gedanken experiment involves the life and death of a lovable animal, some people might express uneasiness from politically correct reasons.

Here's the new version. It is called "Wittgenstein's cat". One Sunday afternoon, when the sky's blue and the sun is shining, the deep thinking philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein begins to lecture his latest theory to his cat. In this Gedanken experiment, the key question is whether the cat will be awake or asleep after five minutes. Would the cat be alert and attentive to what Wittgenstein is saying, or would it be happily asleep, taking a well-earned nap after listening to his mater's intractable ideas?
According to quantum mechanics, there will be a superposition of the awake cat and the sleeping cat. You would not know which until you actually make the observation. This is the Gedanken experiment of Wittgenstein's cat.

One crucial condition for this experiment to make sense is that the philosopher keeps talking philosophy (blah, blah, blah, ....) whatever the attitude of the cat turns out to be. In other words, the philosopher should not care whether the cat is listening or not, and keep talking philosophy anyway.

This particular condition, given the known facts about Wittgenstein and other philosophically oriented people, is quite likely to be satisfied.



Wittgenstein's cat. A politically correct version of the Schrödinger's cat experiment.

Listening

I met with Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google for an interview to be broadcast in the "The Professionals" program in NHK during his visit to Tokyo.

Eric said that in Google, information regarding business and technology is made as open as possible, as freedom of information is one of the necessary premises of a creative company. Eric stressed the importance of listening, as a collection of people is bound to be cleverer than an individual, how gifted and experienced that particular person might be.

In a meeting, after expressing his own opinion, Eric waits for somebody else to oppose him, and then listen to the following discussions among the participants. Eric finds that listening is an essential part of creative management. Without listening, one cannot learn, especially in this era of distributed intelligence of the swarm.

Needless to say, the final decision is his, but in order to make an educated choice, a period of listening must precede the moment of truth.

Future

I met with Mr. Yukio Sakamoto, CEO of Elpida Memory Inc. for interview in "The Professionals" program that I host with Ms. Miki Sumiyoshi for NHK. Mr. Sakamoto's miraculous turning around of the once struggling company is well known.

One of the things that Mr. Sakamoto said and impressed me deeply during the shooting was the necessity to have a clear image for the future. Of course we know that the future is in fact unpredictable, Mr. Sakamoto said. All the same, we do need to have an idea of what kind of person (or company) we would like to be in, say, five years.

The here and now is the only controllable element in life. However, in order to live the here and now fully, we need to have an envisioned future for the guidance. It is admittedly a temporary, mocked-up future, which may not turn out to be the case, but we need to have that vision. And in order to make the vision good, we need to conduct a hard study, think deep, and take action after actions.

This strong urge to envision the future might be one of the key components of a successful entrepreneur. It is also necessary for anyone who cares for the development of his or her own career, coping with the unavoidable in life, but still sailing defiantly towards the promised island of his or her own choice. To know for a fact that the future is unpredictable is compatible with being a self-determined visionary.

Only positive things

Some time ago, I made a half conscious, and half unconscious resolution that I will basically refer to positive things coming from positive emotions in what I write. I have my share of rage and sometimes very fierce criticisms, but I reserve them for the medium of air. I just say it, and let it pass. When you write it down, it remains, and with the passage of time begins to stink. Positive things age into maturity, but negative things deteriorate and leave a bitter aftertaste. I recommend this differential usage of media for anyone with passion, both positive and negative or otherwise.

Thesis in oil

Leonard da Vinci's "Annunciation" is now on exhibit in the Tokyo National Museum. Taking a good look at it, I realized how it is not only an excellent manifestation of the artistry of painting, but also a fine expression of human intellect.

There is this misconception that the natural media for academism are papers and essays. A piece of art, on the other hand, is often considered as something separate from these expressions of human wisdom, something in coherence with the primordial emotions and urges that are rather curbed in the pursuit of excellence in academism.

But such a view is clearly ill-conceived, and Leonard's work is a fine proof in residence. For a starter, in this painting everything looks alive, vibrant, not only Mary and Gabriel, and the flowers at the foot of the angel, the trees in distance, all those which are considered alive in the conventional world view, but also the stone wall, the mountain, the clouds, the air, and even the Bible. Such a spiritual timbre captured on panel can only come from a deep understanding of the coherences and differentiations between life and materials, the mind and matter, space and time, the essence of all living things, and the relation between man and god.

In short, "Annunciation" is an exquisite expression of a deep thinking intellectual that was Leonard, just as Origin of Species was the culmination of Charles Darwin's intellectual endeavors over many years. Leonard was in his early twenties when he did this "thesis in oil"

The tuna night

In a warm night, when the wind is gently breezing around my body, there is one memory that comes back to me again and again. It is about two university undergraduates lying on the banks of the Sumida River in downtown Tokyo at dusk, just like a pair of tuna fish in the Tsukiji fish market. One is Ken Shiotani, the fat (or in other words, "gravitationally challenged") philosopher of temporality and other enigmas. The other is I, his best friend at that time and since, bubbling about everything like a boiling kettle.

In those days we hang out together and talked about difficult things in general, so there was nothing unusual about our killing time on the riverbank. Still, that night stands out as a hallmark in our youthful investigations. We had a can of beer each, with very casual clothing. We may have looked like two homeless people, or aspiring candidates thereof. There were a number of couples strolling along the river. Night was falling, and walking with your loved one was the only sensible thing to do. We talked about science and philosophy instead. We were clearly the odd ones out.

The couples, seeing that there were two shabbily dressed blokes with beer cans, apparently talking nonsense, chose to do what was clearly sensible. Each of them unfailingly made a large detour along the bank, avoiding us in a great circular trajectory, going back to their normal strolling behavior once they were safely distant from the two strange persona non grata.

I don't know why that night stands out so vividly in my memory. Maybe it is a symbol of our youthful misery, or perhaps it is rather that of a sublime glory in deprivation. In any case, I do cherish the remembrance, wishing that I could go back to that very night as an ignorant youth.

Theoretically, we could restage our "tuna night on the bank" anytime even at a mature age. Only stupid social customs and mannerisms prevent us from enjoying the fruits of poignant follies. Maybe I should get a can of beer and call up Shiotani and head for the Sumida River at this very moment.

Forgetting

As one gets along with time in life, many thing accumulate in the brain. You cannot recall them explicitly. But it is all there. Therefrom come life's many blessings, like the growing personality and the nostalgic memories. On the other hand, like a wine that has gone bad due to an ill conceived maturation treatment, traces of the past can kill the vital freshness within the self.

Therefore it is sometimes good to forget. To feel as if one was born today, where everything in the world is fresh, envigorating, and full of surprises. To feel again that everything is possible, where you are provided with potentially infinite future time. You felt like that in your childhood. There is no reason why you cannot feel the same, no matter how old you are. It is just a matter of tricking your brain into an exquisite cocktail of context-formation, pretending, and believing in the potential of the universal elan vital. Everything is bottomless, and therefore infinite.