This is somewhat a book report on one of the earliest books I read during my formative years, which was from around the ages of 16 to 23. While I must admit that I couldn’t make much use of a sizable chunk of the text, I still got some good stuff from The Book of Five Rings that has stuck with me to this day. The most notable part is the nine principles that a warrior must live by.
The Book of Five Rings was written by the renowned Japanese duelist Musashi Miyamoto at around 1645, which was near the end of his life along with Dokkodo (The Path of Aloneness). He had been living as a hermit after a life of fighting, taking in students who then kept his teachings and sword style alive.
Over 30 years before, he fought and won in 62 duels to the death, including his legendary showdown against Sasaki Kojiro on the island of Ganryujima. After retiring from dueling at the age of 30, he fought for the Tokugawa army during the tailend of the Sengoku Jidai — Japan’s Warring States period.
His undefeated dueling record and his writings made him the most famous kensei (sword saint), mostly because his legacy goes beyond swordsmanship. The Book of Five Rings is still being read to this day, sold in bookstores throughout the world alongside Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
I read this book back in my martial arts weeb phase in the mid to late 2000s, and I still stick with Musashi’s nine principles to this day.
The Book of Five Rings (Go rin no sho)
In this martial treatise, Musashi detailed his thoughts on both swordsmanship and life as a warrior. The ‘five rings’ are:
- Earth: overview on martial arts, leadership, and training
- Water: manual for the Ni-ten Ichi Ryu two-sword style, detailing basic techniques and fundamentals
- Fire: intricacies of fighting, from preparation and mindset to different forms of timing
- Wind: more thoughts on the martial arts and critiques on different schools of swordsmanship
- Void: epilogue featuring his thoughts on Zen — cultivating consciousness and correct mindset
Much of its contents, especially the sword-fighting parts, may not be that applicable for most people. However, the Earth and Void scrolls are great for those who are looking more into Eastern philosophy and spirituality. Musashi put them in such practical terms that even after almost 380 years, you can still find them valuable for your daily life.
But if you’re not willing to read everything all the way through, you should at least take a look at the nine principles he listed down and look to apply each of them into your life however you can. The point isn’t doing exactly what Musashi says, but finding out for yourself how you can specifically apply it to your exact needs in your own life.
They are said to be complemented by the twenty-one spiritual principles he listed in Dokkodo, his final work. Perhaps I’ll also write about them in the near future.
The Nine Principles
His Earth scroll ends with nine basic principles to help the samurai live accordingly as a warrior, develop a strategic and tactical understanding, and keep his skills sharp.
Various translations word them differently, and I tend to write them down differently as well according to my own interpretation of each principle.
As they are my interpretations of these principles, don’t take this blog post as a definitive guide. There are other guides out there that go more into them such as this one. What follows here is how I’ve come to understand them as I continue to work on applying them in my life.
1. Think honestly.
This is often translated as ‘Do not think dishonestly’, but I prefer the more positive version as this is perhaps the most life-changing principle for me out of the nine. Learning to think honestly was how I was able to course-correct as a young man who was confused and dishonest, which then helped me mature and actually become the kind of person I once tried to pose as.
Even if you can lie to others, you cannot lie to yourself. The more honest you are to yourself, the more honest you can be to others. That’s generally how I interpret this principle.
By thinking honestly at all times, you’re able to properly track your own progress, admit to mistakes, and learn from your experiences. Self-honesty is an extension of humility, which can then result in more empathy and less selfishness. You’ll be a lot less willing to manipulate people’s feelings and be more straightforward with your intentions and actions.
It’s not to say that you must become naive — on the contrary. By thinking more honestly, you become more privy to other people’s manipulation because you’re more willing to face inconvenient truths and not just sit on your hands when bad things happen. Self-honesty is not just a convenient virtue, but also a strategic position.
2. The Way is in training.
‘The Way’ with a capital W denotes the path to mastery in a given skill, artform, or discipline. That Way is not a set path, but the unique route an individual finds for themselves on their journey. That path can meander wherever and can even end abruptly when they decide to slow down or quit. Wherever that path goes and ends, the lessons learned along the way are always worth it.
However, what cannot be avoided is the training that goes into walking that path. The Way is all about doing that thing — deliberate practice. If you don’t practice, you don’t progress. That path only keeps going if you keep going, and you take those steps by practicing. You may learn more efficient ways of practicing, but you still have to practice nonetheless. There are no real shortcuts.
Unfortunately, most people seem to not understand this. They’re too beholden by the idea of the fortunate few who are gifted with talent. They seem to not need to work as hard, so there doesn’t seem to be a point in trying to be better than them. This way of thinking only leads to sadness, failure, and ultimately nihilism. Nothing worth doing is easy.
3. Become acquainted with every art.
Being a warrior does not mean only focusing on combat and warfare. That’s a meathead who only specializes in violence; a true warrior has to deal with things outside of fighting. The concept of a warrior-scribe was something I naturally latched on to at a young age, and it continues to be a mold I try my best to fill as best as I can throughout my life.
Creative pursuits are not mere distractions. They’re not a waste of time as many uncultured boneheads like to think simply because they only understand the world around them in terms of what’s immediately profitable and what isn’t. A purely transactional life is a mostly empty life, going from exchange to exchange and establishing relationships only to facilitate such exchanges.
That results in intention and action rarely matching as manipulation and exploitation become the main modes one lives by.
The modes to counteract them and the cynicism and nihilism they bring are creation and expression. A warrior practices both hard and soft skills to balance out the violence and calculation with sensitivity and nuance. Whether you choose to draw, write, build, or perform, having such outlets alongside your ‘marketable’ skills help make you a more well-rounded human being.
4. Know the Ways in all professions.
This is done by being proficient in many other skills and being acquainted in many more. Having a general understanding of subjects outside of one’s specialization allows you to connect the dots between seemingly disparate fields, thus giving you more options to answering questions and solving problems. You may not be an expert in those subjects, but you’ll be aware of them enough to know where to find the experts.
For instance, leaders like Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Justinian, and Napoleon Bonaparte understood the importance of finding experts in various fields and bringing them in to help them enrich their holdings and innovate their capabilities. We know from history that leaders who only cared about military conquest tend to be incompetent in domestic leadership.
Their deficiencies in ruling during peacetime ultimately leads to losing power through either conspiracy within their court or rebellion by the people, especially if they’re unable to go back to war and conquer more territory. The same can be said of professional fighters who are unable to hold onto their wealth and find other avenues outside of fighting after retirement.
Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness — it’s slow death.
5. Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.
Whenever people hear about gain or loss, they tend to think about it in a financial context. Nowadays, in this capitalist society, people have little to no choice but to sacrifice tremendous chunks of time on the road and even more at the workplace. They have little to no time to work on themselves, giving their lives to their employers in order to support their families. The labor must be respected, but its heavy stipulations must also be given serious consideration.
Gain and loss are not limited to money and material value. There’s also time, energy, and one’s motivation to live and pursue their interests. There are those who see altruism and charity as waste because you gain nothing back, but it’s obvious that plenty need help. Seeing the world as a zero-sum game is a common perception, albeit a misguided one because it disregards the feelings of both those in need and those who earnestly wish to help and reach out.
This then leads to the proper assessment of risk. You have to be privy of the difference between and cost of short-term results and long-term results. In many serious cases, prioritizing immediate rewards can lead to squandering long-term success and stability. What most would think of as not worth bothering with because it earns no money or entails significant risk may actually be beneficial as it can yield rewards beyond monetary or material value.
There’s fulfilling one’s hierarchy of needs, then there’s understanding and fulfilling one’s purpose and meaning. There’s also stumbling, failing, and making mistakes along the way. Life is a struggle, and it’s impossible to go into anything worth doing without the risk of failure. Some become so afraid of failure that they end up doing nothing at all, then patting themselves on the back for never failing. Nothing good comes out of doing nothing, but such passivity can allow for bad things to happen. Fear and ignorance blind one’s vision of what’s good or bad.
There’s also seeing the good and bad in everything you may make use of. Musashi made a metaphor with timber — wood unsuitable as a pillar may be perfect as a decorative piece. It’s all about being able to distinguish between characteristics and situations, letting you maximize your tools, materials, and resources for every endeavor.
One man’s trash may be another man’s treasure, but knowing what to look for can mean you’ll never have to consider anything as trash. Focusing only on what’s trash can obscure one’s sense of what could be truly good. After all, value is a positive thing, and looking only at the negative means you’re not looking at value at all.
6. Gain an understanding for everything.
Curiosity about the world will sustain you. If you feel you have nothing else to live for, at least be curious about everything you see and hear. Make it a mission to learn whatever you can, looking into one little thing at a time. Soon enough, you’ll acquire a good amount of knowledge that you can then connect together like stars in a constellation. Over time, you can gather enough constellations to form a galaxy. That becomes your knowledgebase — a well full of water you can draw from.
Of course, this comes with some caveats. For instance, with how the Internet is these days, you have to double-check the information you encounter on a daily basis. More and more of that free information turns out to be misinformation and fake news, which a lot of people have been falling for.
What separates scientific fact and conspiracy theory is verification through primary sources, peer-reviewed studies, and other vetting processes. Many of those people who don’t care for those processes see them as propaganda by powers-that-be that they don’t trust.
A major part of that understanding for everything is accepting the fact that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Our science was built by our predecessors who spent their whole lives studying the knowledge their predecessors found and learned, and they in turn add to that knowledge what’s better or more accurate and remove what’s worse and false.
They’ve also given us the tools necessary for creating that understanding, like literacy, critical thinking, and the scientific method. Lacking these tools, which everyone should be taught in school, can result in bitter rejection of scientific facts and enthusiastic acceptance of bunk.
7. Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
We are beholden mostly to what can be seen, touched, tasted, and heard. Our experiences are shaped by the tangible, the material, the physical. That’s not an indictment, but merely an observation. It’s understandable since our lives are dictated by what our resources allow us to attain and accomplish.
Without money, we don’t get to survive in this capitalistic society. Without work, we can’t make more of that money. Without tools, we are unable to do work and make things. Even that black rectangular thing in your pocket — the smartphone — we can’t live in this 21st century world without its power and convenience.
However, many of those things are then affected by what can’t be easily seen. They include the relationships that pave the way to higher tiers of access, the politics that happen behind the scenes which affect the lives of ordinary people, the laws — both written and unwritten — that keep society in check, the social rules that dictate behavior and silently indicate to you what you can and can’t do as soon as you walk into a room full of people.
These intangible yet all-encompassing factors hide details that reveal themselves only when you take the time to read between the lines and think critically about why things aren’t always what they seem.
Those dynamics drive every interaction, every transaction, every conflict, and every resolution. Mental health is a major example. One’s stress levels, morale, reward mechanisms, and emotional regulation can dictate their ability to get things done and how they maintain their relationships with other people.
We are wary of red flags, so it’s something people are aware of. But looking for flaws and warning signs are not enough. You must also see the positives and determine if they’re real or merely fabricated. There’s also what you have to sense within yourself. You must sense where your energy level is at, how much stress you’re under, whatever may be ailing you, and what situations either make you anxious or help you thrive.
While it’s important to perceive what can’t be seen, you can’t be too focused on just looking for them either. Hypervigilance can stress you out, so having to actively look for those signs all the time is counterproductive. It’s all about being attuned and aware, and the best way to do that is to cultivate mindfulness at all times.
8. Pay attention even to small details.
How many times have you or another person dismissed something that didn’t seem to matter, only to find out later that it actually did and missing out on it would bite you in the ass? It happens more often than you’d like to think. While it doesn’t mean you should be obsessive compulsive with covering every single tiny detail in whatever you’re doing, it’s still good practice to be mindful of them.
There is a balance between focusing on the things that matter and paying attention to the small details, and achieving that balance is what separates the good from the truly great. Cumulative error happens when you make a tiny mistake at the start of a process, which then adds up as you make more errors until those tiny mistakes become a big gaffe that sneaks up on you.
For example, you’re putting up a picket fence. Every picket must be spaced evenly so you don’t get big gaps and be able to put up a whole fence with the number of pickets you have. But if each gap is off by even a centimeter too little or too much, you’ll only notice it when you’re putting down the last few pickets. Taking your time to get it right the first time is much faster than hurrying up and then having to take another hour or so to correct it.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Another example is a ship veering just one degree off course. It may not seem that bad, but that single degree can become hundreds of kilometers away from your destination as you keep going. You could be making a financial transaction, and you miss a zero, which can be the difference between a hundred thousand and a million.
Therefore, you can’t just respond to every reminder to be careful with “I don’t care” or “I know what I’m doing” like an insufferable child. Set aside your ego, bolster your patience, and stop aiming for quick wins. Pay attention to the details and get closer to mastery.
9. Do nothing useless
This seems presumptuous as it vaguely tells you what you should not do. However, in a lot of cases, what people get wrong is not necessarily doing the wrong thing, but simply doing too much all at once. Sometimes, the best solution to a problem is to simplify. Keeping both your life and your approach to doing things as simple as possible can make you more effective in everything you do and solve problems with greater clarity.
As Bruce Lee once said as the core philosophy of Jeet Kune Do, “Take in what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is essentially your own.” That rejection and reduction of what’s useless is a crucial step in that process as it distills and simplifies your skills, which then open them up to further refinement and actualization — when they truly become your own.
It’s also about refraining from doing anything that either gets you nothing significant in return or actually sets you back in the long term for the sake of pleasure and entertainment in the short term. We’ve seen plenty of screw-ups who absolutely can’t get out of their own ways, no matter what happens to them and what you tell them.
They’ve become too habituated with doing those things that are no benefit to them and the people around them because they’re too used to doing those things. They’re no longer thinking at that point and just responding to dopamine hits. You have to watch out for yourself so that you don’t end up doing something similar.
Never mind drugs and alcohol. There are shopaholics who can’t stop buying stuff they don’t need, serial cheaters who can’t stop looking for other people even when they’re supposed to be in a committed relationship, morbidly obese people who can’t stop eating themselves to death, and even ordinary people who can’t stop bed-rotting and just put the phone down for even five minutes to do chores and errands.
In this increasingly ADHD-ridden world, we are at the mercy of constant stimulation. Meditation is a powerful tool to reduce the effect of these nonessential stimuli. Learning to meditate is one of the most important skills we can have in this day and age.
Once you’re able to stop being distracted by quick dopamine hits, you’ll be better able to just focus on one thing for long enough to get important things done, like I did with this blog post.
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