Why is The Book of Five Rings important?

Miyamoto Musashi was a famous swords man and martial artist who lived in the years 1584 to 1645. Back then he was unrivalled in the realm of martial arts and revolutionized the art of fighting with the sword. In his last year just before dying he wrote the “Book of 5 Rings”, which is a manuscript of how to use his martial arts. One might think that this is a book in which complicated movements of using the swords are told in much detail, but nothing could be further from the truth. Musashi keeps the book very broad. He does not only describe martial arts on a technical level, but also from a spiritual and a psychological standpoint. There is an immense amount one can learn from this book - especially for strategic thinking and outmanoeuvring your opponent and in anything where you might have to “fight” against somebody. Be it martial arts, management or a bar brawl look no further and the Book of 5 Rings has valuable lessons in them.

Before we start, I would like to list the 9 ground rules for studying Musashi’s martial arts, so you get a feeling what kind of man he was.

1. Think without 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.

Frame of mind

The 9 values above give a good foundation for the mindset that one should develop. We have all heard about having a growth mindset where you are not stuck in the believe that you cannot learn or improve through hard work and study. A fixed mindset will hold you in the believe that you are born with talents and that is as good as it gets. Musashi has a great passage on the frame of mind which is needed for martial arts:

“In both every day and military events, your mind should not change in the least, but should be broad and straightforward, neither drawn too tight nor allowed to slacken even a little. Keep the mind in the exact centre, not allowing it to become side-tracked; let it sway peacefully, not allowing it to stop doing so for even a moment. The mind should not be distracted by the body, nor the body distracted by the mind.”

A stress/crisis scenario is essentially a roller coaster, and this can affect our mind. The worst that we can do is to sway with the situation and let the situation affect our emotions. It is important to keep the goal in mind and to keep vigilant, but not to start getting paranoid or overly exerted. As Musashi describes, one needs to try and get his mind and body in the “centre”, which means that focus and relaxation are in balance with each other. In modern times especially with our reachability being very different to back when Musashi lived, his advice is even more important, albeit much more difficult to keep aligned with. This essentially means, one needs to take time to calm down and let out the stress, in order to be laser focused and calm when stressful situations and important decisions arise. Just so you read it one more time, after probably reading it a hundred: Eat healthy, do sport, and carve out time to relax!

“learn the good and bad of all things”

It is important to have an opportunistic mindset. What do I mean by that? As Musashi describes it is important to keep in mind that everything that happens has negative and positive sides to it. With anything that seems incredibly negative in the first instance, there are positives to take away. This is where reframing comes in. Reframing helps you to try and see each problem as an opportunity to improve something and with this mindset it becomes much easier to solve perceived problems and to make difficult decisions. This will make it much easier for you to look forward to your workday in a time of crisis or any stressful period at work.

Try all arts

His first lesson is, that he is of the opinion that you need to keep a broad mind and try out all arts. Musashi himself practiced many different arts from pottery to carpentry and incorporated his learnings in his martial art. Back then in Japan the complexity of the arts was of course not as high as it is nowadays. Still the mindset of taking a look at everything is to this day immensely valuable. At its core, any career you want to learn will require a similar process and similar skills to performing well. He preaches that no skill you learn is useless, on the contrary any skill you learn can be applied in any situation.

Along those lines goes one of his mantras, which is that one should not keep a narrow mind. Do not overly focus on things. You will overlook openings and opportunities, or you will choose the wrong strategy. Sometimes people tend to become a one-trick pony, which works well for as long as the perfected strategy fits the situation. As Warren Buffet said: “An idiot with a plan can beat a genius without a plan”. But this works well only as long others do not have a better plan. Always keep an open mind and observe everything and keep your strategy slightly flexible.

Musashi also teaches that “there is a rhythm to everything” and you should really get to know this rhythm. When you watch experienced people at their work they are in a sort of rhythm and are at it. You want to be able to perform your tasks in this rhythm. Moreover, knowing your opponent’s rhythm will give you an edge in defeating him. The more different arts you try, the more different rhythms you will have experienced and seen.

Study your opponent

The next important step to ensure victory is to study your opponent thoroughly. Musashi teaches that you need to have perspective and understand your rival inside out. If you know him better than he knows you, there should be no reason why you would not win an encounter. You should really know his mind and be able to predict his next move and be prepared for it. Even better: do not even let him take the move and disturb him already in his preparations.

To know your opponent well, you will need to do your research properly. In the world of martial arts, you would study the martial arts of your rival and look for weaknesses or cues. Sometimes a certain type of attack will start with a certain movement of the foot. This would be a cue to know what is coming and counter before it comes up. Some martial arts use predefined combinations. If you know them by hard, it gives you an edge in a fight as you can predict what is coming.

In modern life this applies just as much. If you end up having a dispute in business, you should study your adversary thoroughly and use any weaknesses you find to your advantage (all within legal boundaries of course). With this will come another important point that Musashi makes about knowing your opponent. You need to know what “his collapse” looks like.

When your rival is just before a complete collapse, it is crucial that you do not stop. You need to push on and make “the collapse” happen. Otherwise you will give him the chance to recuperate and come at you again. Moreover, the moment of collapse is the best moment to strategically settle things (also legally). If the opponent knows he is about to lose everything, he will be open for negotiations. But be careful, he might use the negotiations to catch his breath and rebuild himself. Do not let him trick you into useless negotiations (this is a typical strategy). If the opponent suddenly offers negotiations he will often play for time. But it is also a cue that he is about to collapse.

Rules of Engagement

Throughout his book he describes a bunch of things that we can summarize as “rules of engagement”. Musashi being a martial artist his main purpose in life was to best his opponents and to proof his martial art to be the greatest out there. Musashi had to face countless life and death situations, which he overcame till he died of an illness at an old age.

In any engagement the first thing is to take the initiative. What I really like about Musashi’s teaching on the topic of taking the initiative is, that he sees three different types of initiative. Usually we are taught that we have to be proactive, which many understand as being the first one to do something. This often leads to people thinking they need to do something just for the sake of doing something. In reality you can just as easily decide to be proactive in a given situation, you can decide to do nothing, or you can decide to move only when the opponent moves.

1. The initiative of attack is when I attack my opponent.

2. The initiative of waiting is when my opponent attacks me.

3. The body-body initiative is when both my opponent and I attack at the same time.

Essentially it is more about taking the initiative in the mind rather than in the body. It is more about conscious decisions than movement. Therefore, one of my favourite tactics has become deciding to do nothing and to observe first - with my strategy and actions planned out and ready to move at a moments notice. Often one is so eager to attack, that you might end up attacking the wrong people.

The next step in an engagement Musashi calls “pressing down the pillow”. Basically, this means that once you go into an engagement you should keep your foot on the gas pedal. Keep the pressure up and do not leave your rival any breathing space. Musashi also urges us to agitate our opponents. Especially when you are keeping the pressure on, it may be of great value to do things just for the sake of agitating the other party. Agitation leads to emotional decision making, which in return is error prone. At the same time you should use this lesson from him to make sure you do not let your opponent agitate you and to be sure to spot such tactics and inform your team when you do.  

Along with agitating your opponent you also want to impose fear. Try to analyse your opposite and see what they are scared of most and use that to your advantage. Musashi says that everyone fears something, but not all of the same thing. Therefore, it is paramount to find the right pressure points.

Finding out the rival’s fears will be helpful with the next advice that Musashi gives in his book. He is very clear on the importance of causing confusion within the ranks of your enemy. Make the other party think and try to guess what your next steps are. If you can accomplish this, it will cost them a great deal of resources in money and time, which gives you a strategic advantage. If we take this into the organizational level you have fears at the company level, the department level and on the individual level. By agitating individuals and causing fear to individuals you can cause a good amount of confusion.

Now to add even more confusion to the situation it is very useful to make yourself seem weaker or stronger than you are. He explains that if you are the weaker party you should work on seeming stronger than you are. While if you are the stronger it is of great advantage to be underestimated. I can relate to this from personal experience - from when we had a crisis in our family business, and I managed it. Due to my young age of 25-27 I was generally greatly underestimated. This was helpful, since when we were actually stronger than it seemed. On the other hand, if you are the weaker party, being underestimated even more is not so helpful. 

Many martial arts have favourite stances and styles, just as many people have a favourite strategy that they will try to always use. Musashi is opposed to such a habit. He writes, that if you have a favoured strategy you will be easy to read and set yourself up for losing the engagement. It is important to have “no ultimate stance” and use whatever tactic is best in each moment. Nevertheless, you should make sure that when attacking you “cut with conviction”. If your attacks or movements are half backed, the opponent will be able to get the better of you. Never attack if you are not sure of it. If you worry it is the wrong decision, do not do it. If you know what the collapse of your opponent looks like, use that chance and attack with full conviction, to finish the engagement there and then.

Strategy

There are also a lot of teachings about strategic decisions in his book. One would think that as a martial artist one is solely focused on a one on one fight. But as Musashi teaches, military strategy is an extension of martial art (if practiced properly). What applies to the single fighter applies to whole armies. Facing several opponents at once is not something uncommon nowadays. And it can be quite the pickle. Musashi often had to face more than one person in his fights. Most famously he defeated a force of about a dozen from the Yoshioka Clan. They tried to get revenge for him defeating the head of the family in a duel. Musashi would always arrive late to duels to anger (remember it is one of his advices) his opponent. In the case of the revenge duel however, he arrived a few hours early. Thereby he managed to surprise the clan when were about to set up a trap for him.

When facing several independent opponents, he suggests that you drive them into the same direction like a flock of sheep. By moving them into each other, you can cause confusion in their ranks and they will end up tripping over each other’s feet. We can translate this to modern days in a company setting. Try to make your competitors focus on the same goals, so that they are in each other’s way.

To start of with strategic decisions though, it is paramount to “become your opponent”, which means “thinking as though your body has become that of your opponent”. Essentially you try to see and feel things through the perspective of your foe. If you do this well, your counterparty will start to feel despair as you will see through his moves and strategies. Once you instil the thought of losing in him, he will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

At the same time Musashi teaches us to act in a way “that your opponent cannot understand your mind”. From my own experience in a crisis this is of uppermost importance. The strategic value of not acting in a way that is expected of one is immense. It not only adds to confusion for your adversaries, but also it makes them doubt their knowledge about the situation and you. This will slow down their decision making and can sow discontent with their ranks. When your opponents do not understand you properly, they will engage in pointless activities. Musashi suggests, that you should just let them do that. If on a strategic level a certain action will not bring any value to your contender, then let him do it. As an example, he might try to forge an alliance with someone in order to apply more pressure to you. Now if this alliance would not pressure you in the slightest, you might as well let him forge it and not waste any resources and time on hindering the alliance. Choose carefully what you try to stop and when to act.

Musashi proofed in many of his duels that he takes his strategic thinking to a whole new level, compared to the other martial artists. In his book he writes about the importance of choosing the place and time for a duel. When his opponents’ martial arts style was inferior to his in slippery conditions, he would choose a time when it rained and a place which would become slippery. If his opponent utilized a long-ranged weapon, he would choose a place where he was in the advantage with his katana. He stressed that you need to know “where your opponents flourish or fall” and engage them accordingly. He also suggests that you spend some time observing your challengers to learn all this valuable intelligence beforehand.

Musashi also covers the topic of patience, something that is preached in many philosophies. Still many do not remember the value of patience. “No matter what a well-trained person does, he never appears hurried” and “it is bad to go fast” sum up the essence of patience well. He is clear on not forcing anything. He uses the following example: when you hit too forcefully with your sword and the blow gets parried, your sword might break, which in a life and death battle would be a disaster. Often we try to force things and overstrain ourselves. By doing so, not only the thing we want fails, but the consequences are severe.

Emptiness

To finish off his book Musashi explained his concept of true emptiness. A good martial artist needs to be like an empty vessel and acknowledge that he knows nothing. In many situations we believe we know so much already and oh boy how often have I fallen for this. Long before Musashi Socrates already proclaimed that “I know that I know nothing”. Keep this in mind and never stop sharpening the saw as Steven Covey urges in his book “The seven habits of highly effective people”. The martial artist “polishes the two hearts of his mind and will and sharpens the two eyes of broad observation and focused visions”.  Take the world at large and look at things in detail. Remember to keep learning your whole life and that discipline and willpower are at the core of achieving anything.

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