The Greatest Private Lesson for Martial Artists

Spending one-on-one time with a great teacher can be a life-changing experience. While I have benefited from many private lessons over the years, without a doubt, the greatest private lesson was with the legendary samurai, Miyamoto Musashi.

Yes, Musashi is dead. Not just dead, but 350 years dead. But Musashi lives on because he wrote a book. And that book is the least expensive, yet most valuable private lesson any martial arts student could hope to have. Maybe that’s why I have collected four translations so far!

To find out what I love about this book, you can check out the video or read my thoughts below. To get your own copy of The Book of Five Rings, here’s my Amazon affiliate link. 🙂

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A Private Lesson with Musashi

First and foremost, The Book of Five Rings is inspiring simply as a work of art. Musashi writes as if sending a letter to a friend, as opposed to delivering a speech to a roomful of scholars.

His intimate writing style draws me in every time. Musashi begins by basically saying—

I’m 60 years old. It’s 3:00 in the morning. I’ve been fighting my whole life and I have learned a lot. I just climbed up a mountain so I can be alone in this cave and write everything down once and for all.

This unpretentious introduction always makes me feel as if I am sitting with Musashi by the fire as he picks up his brush and paper. Having set the stage in this way, the rest of the book reads like a conversation—a private lesson.

The fact that Musashi died a few weeks after writing his book only makes it more poignant and powerful. It is truly amazing to me how the old samurai’s wisdom is able to live on, transcending time, distance, language, and culture to inspire students he would never meet… like me! This is art at its finest.

I also appreciate the fact that the book is short. No poems. No mumbo jumbo. Just the facts. Seriously—the whole book is less than 100 pages—and that usually includes the translator’s introduction and footnotes.

Musashi writes in such a clear, direct style that you gain an instant feel for his approach to fighting as well. His words serve as a mirror to the man, which all true art should.

Of course, the book is full of practical advice. Musashi even finds time to criticize commercial martial arts schools, fancy moves, and so-called “secret” techniques. Talk about being ahead of your time! He’d be right at home in the YouTube comment section!

But for me, one lesson stands out more than all the others. Here it is—advice is meaningless without practice. Musashi writes over and over—

It is impossible to write about this in detail.
You must train constantly.
You must research this well.
You must study hard.

In short, even as Musashi is giving advice, he understands the limitations of giving advice. He knows that gaining your own experience is the key to wisdom, not reading about his experience.

Accordingly, he never lets the reader fell smug. Every lesson is followed up with an order to go practice what he talks about. To make his point even more clear, Musashi writes—

I practice many arts and abilities—all things with no teacher.

All things with no teacher. Musashi presents himself as a self-made man. He states that his learning was not influenced by any religion or martial arts texts. Instead, his wisdom was born of experience. But not experience alone.

Musashi writes it was not until the age of 30 that he stopped to reflect on the secrets of his success in battle. It then took him another 20 years to figure it all out. Therefore, the great samurai only had two teachers—experience and reflection.

Of course, as a teacher, I believe in the importance of having someone in your life who can share information and offer advice. But as I discussed in Motivation is a Waste of Time, if a student is not willing to practice and do the work, even the best advice serves no purpose.

It is tempting to build your ego based on what you have heard and seen, or who you know, or a notebook full of ideas. But over time, it becomes clear that even if you are shown the “deadliest” and most “secret” techniques ever known to humankind, without practice to make those techniques your own, the information is worthless.

If anything, knowledge might actually work against you because you begin to judge yourself based on what you know, and not on what you can do. Confusing the two will always leads to trouble.

So, whatever journey you are on, if you need a bit of inspiration, or a little guidance on how to—as Mushashi says—“polish [your] particular way,” I highly recommend you step into the cave, pull up a rock, and join Musashi by the fire. It will be the greatest private lesson you could ever dream of having.