A Mason's Work

So when we talk about the water scroll in the context of the book of

Five rings and how Freemason relates, it's really helpful to kind of understand

how the water scroll fits in the entire sort of architecture of the book of

Five rings. The first book, which we went over in our last episode, is really

about Earth. It's really the grounding, the beginning, the foundational element.

We talked about the use of the square. The water book is a lot more about

getting some of the basic kind of forms under your belt, the techniques, the tactics,

the purpose and intents, and understanding that those are going to be

something that you're going to develop over time and shape and understand their use case.

So when you evaluate the water book, which you really want to be thinking about,

is in the context of that fellow craft Mason's perspective, where out in the field,

as a fellow craft Mason, you are learning what a good job looks like. You're learning

how to solve certain problems in the stone Mason kind of function.

So personally, as an individual, when you're in that fellow craft,

sort of learning apprentice space where you're understanding how the tools work and

what they do and where they use them and where you apply and when do you apply certain

techniques, that's what the water scroll is all about. You'll read, if you read that,

you'll hear all about things like different forms and different types of strikes

and different types of sort of mindsets that you're going to bring to the table

with the understanding that it's all working towards a formless awareness that you get

to in subsequent books. But we're now in the water book, as you go through the process

of kind of reading it and understanding it, you really can benefit from that,

bringing that sort of fellow craft Mason's mind just to the work itself.

And understand that each one of these sort of tools that he talks about,

each one of these tools, these sort strikes, these positions, are about accomplishing

a very specific objective. It's very interesting because the entirety of the book

of five rings, if you review it, is a heightened and perpetual state of attention.

And so it is about consciousness in many ways, consciousness and motion at all times

and evaluating behavior, evaluating position, evaluating intent.

And this is where you get to kind of how all these tools start to really fit together.

The book of five rings is really unique in that way.

There are other places, other books in this sort of genre,

they're going to talk a lot about analytical sort of reflective process.

This is very not analytical. It is super direct.

It is, understand the world around you and respond accordingly.

Evaluate exactly what you see, exactly how you feel, exactly where your muscles are,

and respond accordingly. There is no duality in that sort of mental headspace

where you're going to collect data for processing and then come back with an answer.

So when you are in that sort of learning space as a, as a fellow craft Mason,

you're also in that spot where you are instantaneously evaluating everything that's happening.

And at the same time, you are building that repertoire of skills and understandings and behavior sets

that you can use to solve problems.

From an internal sort of headspace perspective, it is really about just not parsing a ton of information

and just collecting as much as you can, understanding as much as you can,

getting as much information into the system as possible.

And kind of, in any way, letting your body sort it out.

A lot of the way Musashi's writings are designed is very much relying on that sort of underpinning of biological intelligence as well.