This episode is about Miyamoto Musashi, a traveling samurai who lived during the 1600s in Japan.

I think the best way to think of Musashi is take Leonardo da Vinci, now make him Japanese, now remove the science and the inventing, and replace it with martial arts.

Okay, so he is a great painter, great artist in many different fields.

And then instead of also being a great scientist, he is a great fighter, great warrior,

great martial artist, great swordsman.

He wrote a classic book called The Five Rings that shares the lessons he learned from going 60 and O as a dualist and becoming a master swordsman. He wrote a classic book called The Five Rings that shares the lessons he learned from

going 60 and O as a dualist in becoming a master swordsman. These lessons are often interwoven

with ideas from Zen Buddhism. Now before I started this episode, I knew nothing about Miyamoto

Musashi. So if you were in the situation I was in, I want you to imagine what the five rings

is like and what Musashi was like.

You probably think it will be very mystical, very profound. It will seem obscure at first,

but after months or years of deep contemplation and focus on seemingly useless basics,

a great technique will become clear to you. You are about to discover a secret

way, a hidden gate that you must walk through. Once you do, everything will fall into place.

You're probably imagining like an ancient Mr. Miyagi, right? You must learn to wax on and wax

off before learning a single useful bit of martial arts. I think that's what I imagined.

I think I had the stereotype of a far eastern wise man who helps you reach profundity by studying

the very obscure and the very basic.

But that isn't what Miyamoto Musashi taught at all.

In fact, he was a realist.

He made a career exposing phononies who had all these

elaborate techniques, promising that you would never lose another fight if you would just use

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