If you want to learn the craft of war, ponder over this book. The teacher is as a needle, the disciple is as thread. You must practice constantly.
Miyamoto MusashiRead
Do not act following customary beliefs.
Interpretation
Challenge traditional beliefs and think independently.
This quote by Miyamoto Musashi encourages individuals to question societal norms and not simply follow them due to tradition. It emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and personal conviction in forming one's beliefs and actions, advocating for a life led by personal understanding rather than blind adherence to custom.
In practice
In a discussion about personal values in a seminar.
If you want to learn the craft of war, ponder over this book. The teacher is as a needle, the disciple is as thread. You must practice constantly.
If you fail to take advantage of your enemies' collapse, they may recover.
One must make the warrior walk his everyday walk.
To cut and slash are two different things. Cutting, whatever form of cutting it is, is decisive, with a resolute spirit. Slashing is nothing more than touching the enemy.
You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect.
In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.
What would it be like if I had something to defend - a home, a country, a family - and I found myself attacked by these ghostly men, these trusting boys? How do you fight an enemy who fights with neither enmity nor anger but in submission to orders from superiors, without protest and without conscience?
In the end, the art of hunger can be described as an existential art. It is a way of looking death in the face, and by death I mean death as we live it today: without God, without hope of salvation. Death as the abrupt and absurd end of life
On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.
The Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?
It is an item of faith that we are children of God; there is plenty of experience in us against it. The faith that surmounts this evidence and is able to warm itself at the fire of God's love, instead of having to steal love and self-acceptance from other sources, is actually the root of holiness: It is a fatal mistake to think of holiness as a possession which we have distinct from our faith... Faith is the very highest form of our dependence on God.
Like our attitude to love, truth and goodness, we seem to be confident about knowing what beauty is - certain, even dogmatic - until we think hard about the idea, whereupon all confidence flies away.
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