Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Book of Five Rings Part I

I have recently read the Book of the Five rings. It is a comprehensive yet almost esoteric form of learning hand to hand combat strategy. Miyumoto Musashi is the writer of this excellent exercise of learning, my copy was translated by Stephen Kaufman. In such a straight forward manner it is hard to believe it is so deep. In this writing the creator makes even the simplest of statements mind blowing. It is a short book but one that takes many hours of thought. I have read it through once to get the basic concept and am working on my second time around to actually begin the understanding of his message.

I was brought to this book as I am studying Tae Kwon Do, I am a middle belt and just beginning to see the theory of strategy at work. In hand to hand combat it is a quick game of skill, knowledge, confidence and lack of fear that will give you the edge, I have only begun this journey. In many ways I want to jump to the end and know all the moves and be able to perform them with precision, but I know that to master any of this is going to take many hours of practice. I have an incredible instructor who is able to perform feats I could only imagine and that really keeps me going. As we were sparring one day in practice I realized he had a much better plan for his fighting and style than anybody else did, in watching him I knew I had to research strategy much further. Surprisingly enough the very next class we started working on strategy a little more, but I had already picked up the book and was glad I had done so.

There is quite a lot to the book of the five rings, it is broken into a course of 5 chapters encompassing each aspect of the authors theories on strategy. Broken into Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and No-Thing each section has it's own intricacies that extend far beyond basic thought of strategy and combat. Each element is extremely useful for everyday life. I will be going through this book as a series of posts, to keep my thoughts in tact and also as an easy reference for the future.

-JB

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