In 1645, dying in a cave above Kumamoto, the undefeated swordsman Miyamoto Musashi set down the things he did not want to die without saying. This book takes him at his word.
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The legend remembers Musashi for his sixty duels. His own writings reveal something more valuable: a complete philosophy of how to perceive, decide, work, and live, worked out by a man for whom getting it wrong meant getting killed.
Stance Without Stance takes Musashi at his word, drawing only on what he actually wrote and rendering his passages freshly from the original Japanese. It follows the arc of his own thinking, from the concrete skills of attention and discipline, through the conduct of a whole working life, to the cleared mind and the acceptance of death he reached at the end.
Musashi was a solitary, difficult man, and this book does not pretend otherwise. But what he learned alone serves everyone, because underneath the sword he was writing about the one thing we all share: a mind trying to meet a reality it must see clearly, act in well, and finally let go.
The concrete skills of attention and discipline. Heart, technique, body.
The conduct of a whole working life, walked one road at a time.
The cleared mind, and the acceptance of death he reached at the end.
It holds Musashi's ideas against the conditions we actually face: the war for our attention, the fantasy of the shortcut, the anger that masquerades as strength, and the grasping that strangles what it means to protect.