Large Fierce Mammal

We’re happy to report that today, our Esteemed Friend Hanshi Stephen F. Kaufman has simultaneously delighted his Friends and dismayed his enemies by becoming 75 years of age! (S. F. Kaufman photo)

Today’s title is taken from the vast body of sage advice that flows from the mind, pen, and lips of Hanshi Stephen F. Kaufman; a treasured Friend to whom I have referred here on many occasions, and will again. I invite you to peruse and reflect on these representative pieces from the LFM Archives that you can revel in by clicking on the titles:

• What You Don’t Know …;
• Art, Science, Life, and Reality – Certified Organic;
• Welcome to the Jungle;
• Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – A Return to First Principles; and
• Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – Death and the Modern Warrior.

Steve Kaufman and I first came to be connected by my (seemingly, but we all know better) serendipitous discovery in a Nova Scotia book store of his The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings – The Definitive Interpretation of Miyamoto Musashi’s Classic Book of Strategy back in the mid 1990’s. I loved it, and have continued a tradition of re-reading it annually since then. The Kaufman bibliography is extensive and growing. His work carries the LFM stamp of approval.

Social networking has proven at times to be a blighted and thrice accursed thing in society, but yet, my relationship with many of the people I value most in my life has been buoyed up; even engendered; by the accessibility intelligent use of such services as facebook provides. It was by this means that we of the LFM Clan first came to know not only his Professional expression of himself, but the Man, and going forward from there, to name it a delight to have to come to know Steve Kaufman to such a personal degree is the mother of understatements.

It grieves us to say that we will be unable to attend your celebratory festivities this time around my Esteemed Friend, but we live in hope for the future because we’re all still young yet! So be it known to all ye presents, and throughout all the lands that today is Steve Kaufman’s 75th birthday, and falling on the 22nd day of April, this auspicious natal day falls on the day before my own. Please join us in wishing him the happiest of days, and multitudes more to follow.

Live forever, or die in the effort!

Source: S. F. Kaufman