Miyamoto Musashi Quotes

It is necessary to know ten thousand things by knowing one well. If you are to practice the way of strategy, nothing must escape your eyes.54 Reflect well on this.

En la práctica de cada forma de vida y de cualquier trabajo, existe un estado de mente del que se dice que está desviado. Aunque os esforcéis diligentemente en vuestro propio camino día tras día, si vuestro corazón no está de acuerdo con él, aunque penséis que estáis en el buen camino, desde el punto de vista de la justicia y de la verdad, no es un auténtico camino. Si no seguís un auténtico camino hasta el final, una pequeña maldad al principio se convierte en una gran perversión. Reflexionad sobre esto.

If you learn "indoor" techniques, you will think narrowly and forget the true Way. Thus you will have difficulty in actual encounters.

What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.Until you realize the true Way, whether in life or in common sense, you may think that things are correct and in order. However, if we look at things objectively, from the viewpoint of laws of the world, we see various doctrines departing from the true Way. Know well this spirit, and with forthrightness as the foundation and the true spirit as the Way. Enact strategy broadly, correctly and openly. Then you will come to think of things in a wide sense and, taking the void as the Way, you will see the Way as void. In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.

Accept everything just the way it is.

Grip the long sword with a rather floating feeling in your thumb and forefinger, with the middle finger neither tight nor slack, and with the last two fingers tight. It is bad to have play in your hands. When you take up a sword, you must feel intent on cutting the enemy. As you cut an enemy you must not change your grip, and your hands must not "cower". When you dash the enemy's sword aside, or ward it off, or force it down, you must slightly change the feeling in your thumb and forefinger. Above all, you must be intent on cutting the enemy in the way you grip the sword.

Men use equipment to sell their own selves.

To win any battle, you must fight as if you are already dead.

Do not let the enemy see your spirit.

The gaze should be large and broad. This is the two-fold gaze, perception and sight. Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.

Generally, I dislike fixedness in both long swords and hands. Fixedness means a dead hand. Pliability is a living hand. You must bear this in mind.

Teaching people a large number of sword techniques254 is turning the way into a business of selling goods, making beginners believe that there is something profound in their training by impressing them with a variety of techniques. This attitude toward strategy must be avoided, because thinking that there is a variety of ways of cutting a man down is evidence of a disturbed mind. In the world, different ways of cutting a man down do not exist.

...stoga, kad naučiš kako, postaje lako rukovati oružjem.

Do not sleep under a roof. Carry no money or food. Go alone to places frightening to the common brand of men. Become a criminal of purpose. Be put in jail, and extricate yourself by your own wisdom

You should not have any special fondness for a particular weapon, or anything else, for that matter. Too much is the same as not enough. Without imitating anyone else, you should have as much weaponry as suits you.