Samurai Miyamoto Musashi Quotes

I dreamt of worldly success once.

There is even rhythm in being empty.

The sword has to be more than a simple weapon; it has to be an answer to life's questions.

Becoming the opponent means you should put yourself in an opponent's place and think from the opponent's point of view.

As you get the rhythm you discern how to win.

What is essential is to suddenly make a move totally unexpected by the opponent, pick up on the advantage of fright, and seize the victory right then and there.

Per otto anni ho vagato, senza accorgermi dell'avvicendarsi delle stagioni. Sono solo una foglia che appassisce, secca, muore, eppure l'albero rimane: modello di vita.

See to it that you temper yourself with one thousand days of practice, and refine yourself with ten thousand days of training.

Musashi and Takuan both believed that the great mistake was being slowed or rendered immobile by what one sees, hears, feels, or thinks.

Thus the student leaves by the same door through which he entered, and is no different than before. Yet, having internalized all of his practices, he is totally changed.

In my school, no consideration is given to anything unreasonable; the heart of the matter is to use the power of the knowledge of martial arts to gain victory any way you can.

When the Mind is correct, the brush will be also.

do not let your frame of mind be any different from your everyday mind.

We must be careful not to create our own fetters or our own inflexibility.

What, really, do we do with our lives?

Musashi and Takuan both believed that the great mistake was being slowed or rendered immobile by what one sees, hears, feels, or thinks. For them, even an instant’s preoccupation could be fatal. Both body and mind must be free to flow and to respond to whatever the situation demands.

Your real intent should be not to die with weapons uselessly worn at your side.

The teacher is a needle, the disciple is as thread. You must practice constantly.

Musashi could teach his techniques and give advice, but in the end each disciple was required to assess his own strength, find his own Way, and make that Way truly his own.

The other schools get along with this as a performance art, as a method of making a living, as a colorful decoration, or as a means of forcing flowers to bloom. Yet, can it be the True Way if it has been made into a saleable item?

Think without any dishonesty. 2. Forge yourself in the Way. 3. Touch upon all of the arts. 4. Know the Ways of all occupations. 5. Know the advantages and disadvantages of everything. 6. Develop a discerning eye in all matters. 7. Understand what cannot be seen by the eye. 8. Pay attention to even small things. 9. Do not involve yourself with the impractical.

Intorno a lui, le tranquille risaie riflettevano le stelle come lastre di ossidiana, e lui smaniava dalla voglia di sfoderare la spada e squarciarle; tagliare le stelle e tagliare il cielo e l'universo, solo perché sapeva che era in grado di farlo.

Miyamoto Musashi’s actual burial ground was in close range. According to legend he had been buried in full samurai regalia clutching his faithful sword. The last line of the translation: He died lonely. The Japanese liked loneliness. It had a different quality than our dreaded isolation. More like one with the void, alone with the Alone, no longer separate from anything. It was the final compliment to describe him this way.

My dear friend and colleague Chris gave me the novel Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, translated by Charles S. Terry. It’s about real life seventeenth-century samurai Miyamoto Musashi, who wrote The Book of Five Rings (which my father had in his library), and I came across a passage in the novel that I think captures the living void beautifully:

We are samurai, Lord. Death defines us. We must become a master of dealing it to our enemies, yes, but most of all lose all fear of our own.

Nansen was asked by Joshu, ‘What is the Way?’ He replied, ‘Your everyday mind is the Way [Heijoshin kore do].

The sixteenth-century Samurai swordsman Miyamoto Musashi won countless fights against feared opponents, even multiple opponents, in which he was swordless. In The Book of Five Rings, he notes the difference between observing and perceiving. The perceiving eye is weak, he wrote; the observing eye is strong.

The sixteenth-century Samurai swordsman Miyamoto Musashi won countless fights against feared opponents, even multiple opponents, in which he was swordless. In The Book of Five Rings, he notes the difference between observing and perceiving. The perceiving eye is weak, he wrote; the observing eye is strong. Musashi understood that the observing eye sees simply what is there. The perceiving eye sees more than what is there.

In strategy, your spiritual bearing must not be any different from normal. Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased. Even when your spirit is calm do not let your body relax, and when your body is relaxed do not let your spirit slacken. Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body influenced by your spirit. Be neither insufficiently spirited nor over-spirited. An elevated spirit is weak and a low spirit is weak. Do not let the enemy see your spirit.

By the middle of the 17th century in Japan the concept of focus had evolved to a high level of sophistication and had taken on the psychological overtones that we will examine later in this chapter. In his classic on strategy, A Book of Five Rings (1645), the samurai who is best known in the West, Miyamoto Musashi, removed the concept from the physical world entirely by designating the spirit of the opponent as the focus: Do not even consider risking a decision by cold steel until you have defeated the enemy’s will to fight.59 This is a revealing statement by a man reported to have won some sixty bouts, virtually all of which ended in the death of his opponent (not surprising, when you consider that the samurai long sword, the tachi, was a four foot blade of steel, sharp as a modern razor, and strong enough to chop cleanly through a water pipe.) Once you accept Musashi’s dictum as a strategic principle, then you might ask how to carry it out, how to actually defeat the opponent’s spirit. Musashi was no mystic, and he grounded all his methods in real actions his students could take. We will encounter him and his techniques many times in this book. The ability to rapidly shift the focus of one’s efforts is a key element in how a smaller force defeats a larger, since it enables the smaller force to create and exploit opportunities before the larger force can marshal reinforcements.