What is Warrior Zen?

Musashi’s and The Book of Five Rings

Today’s piece is adapted from our new The Book Of 5 Rings course in the Stoa app.

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What if there is something that connects all great people? Something that they all have in common about how they approach life, from great entrepreneurs and artists to community leaders and philosophers. Yes they are all good at different things, but what if we could narrow in on what all great people have in common, and focus on developing that in particular?

Zen has an answer to that question. What connects all great people is an understanding of the Way - a direct indescribable knowledge of the nature of the current moment and how to navigate it successfully.

Now, you can’t use words to describe something that is indescribable. Even if I understood it myself, I couldn’t tell you what the Way is, any more than I could give you a set of words that instantly make you a great artist, parent, or entrepreneur.

You have to understand it yourself through study and practice. However, 400 years ago a Japanese samurai, undefeated in over 60 duels, retired to a cave to write down his understanding of the Way. He knew his book couldn’t give people the answer, but it might help them get there quicker.

I’m talking about Miyamoto Musashi’s famous Book of Five Rings.

Zen is a type of Buddhism that emphasizes practice, particularly meditation and contemplation, over the study of theory or scripture. But it is also heavily influenced by the Taoist traditions, with a focus on finding ‘the way’ through life, the thing that connects all exceptional people, and runs through each domain of life.

To understand “the way” of anything, is to understand how to live well. However, Zen also argues that this way is indescribable. We can’t just talk about it and write it down, we have to come to understand it through practice.

The zen warrior is someone who pursues ‘the way’ through the art of combat or battle. This is their practice or craft, along with meditation, that enables them to understand how to live.

So, someone practicing Zen aims to live well, but is skeptical of how far theory can take them, so they begin a practice. The Zen warrior involves combat, conflict, and battle as a key part of that practice.

Some reading this may be professional soldiers, or combat athletes, but not many. So why should you care about Warrior Zen if you do not think of yourself as a warrior?

Warrior Zen is a life philosophy that focuses on using high-stress or challenging conflicts in our life and turning them into a way to live better. It is about mastering strategy, learning how to succeed in difficult situations, and then applying that strategy back to other parts of your own life.

Miyamoto Musashi is an excellent teacher of Warrior Zen. Musashi was a Japanese swordsman who lived in the 17th century. Known as perhaps the greatest sword fighter of all time, he was undefeated in over 60 duels, many of which were to the death.

He was also renowned for his innovative style of fighting, which often broke convention, and his use of two swords, instead of the more common single sword style. If all Musashi had done was fight with a sword, he would still be well known today. But he was also a philosopher.

Months before his death, at nearly 60 years old, he isolated himself in a cave and wrote down his philosophy of swordsmanship and life in the Book of Five Rings.

There are many lessons in this book, about how to fight and how to live.

It also has many parallels to Stoicism. Remember that the Stoics also compared living well to a kind of combat.

Marcus Aurelius wrote that:

The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.

Meditations, 7.61

Zen does not always use the same language as western philosophy. It does not talk about pursuing virtue, or eudaimonia. Instead, it focuses on achieving what is called “The Way”. Zen philosophers aspire to life in accordance with the Way - even if it is not easily describable.

One key theme of Musashi’s writing is that we can learn about ‘The Way’ through whatever craft we pursue excellence in, although as a zen warrior his craft is battle.

So there is a ‘Way’ in swordfighting, and by understanding that, Musashi gets closer to understanding how to follow ‘The Way’ in life.

This is similar to the Stoic’s craft analogy. Living well is a skill to be learnt like any other, so our other skills teach us about living.

Keep this in mind when studying Musashi.

You may not be a fighter, but you do have other skills. They are all connected. Learning about ‘The Way’ of swordfighting will teach you about how to draw, run a business, or be a better friend.