A Mason's Work

So today I want to talk a little bit about the Book of Five Rings.

We've been reviewing that in the past couple of episodes.

And today we want to talk about the Fire Book, Fire Scroll.

The thing about evaluating Masashi's work in sort of broad moving strokes is the language

is obviously all combat, right?

So it was designed to help teach folks how to engage in combat.

But at the same time, he's very clear that this is all about a way of life.

There is nothing that cannot be done with the mind of a combatant, basically, for a lack

of a better way to say it.

And I'm sure there's more elegant descriptions.

When we look at it from a Masonic context, there's tons and tons of parallels.

And we've gone over a couple of those in the first two books.

In the Fire Book, the parallel really or the sort of functioning perspective or tool is

the lodge itself.

If you're familiar with Wilmshurst's work on the meaning of Masonry, he describes the

lodge as an internal sort of headspace or meditation where the different sort of cognitive functions

represented by the different officers in the lodge.

As that lodge opens, it's very much opening an internal kind of sanctum, sanctum, or

where you are operating at sort of the highest possible level and not disregarding any valuable

or valid input.

And if you look at the Fire Book, it's pretty much the same.

Now it doesn't talk about the process of getting to that sort of open lodge headspace.

But what it does talk about in a lot of cases is when confronted with situational information,

how do you respond?

When confronted with when the same attack doesn't work more than once, what do you do?

If you try the same thing ten times, how should you work on the 11th?

And a lot of that really is, if you think about it, the conversations you'll have in

lodge itself, actual lodge, but also the mental conversations you have.

We tend to build these structural sort of processes.

These repeated patterns that we use to process everyday life.

And this is a normal occurrence, right?

So I have my algorithm for having breakfast or getting a shower or doing any of the habits

of daily living.

And those algorithms, we tend to not re-evaluate all that often in general.

And one of the things you says in the Fire Book is very clearly is don't get stuck.

Don't get stuck with your favorite little sword technique or your favorite little flourish,

your favorite little twirl, because it's worked in the past.

You have to approach the present moment with an understanding that all this stuff you

did before has to serve the objective, it has to serve the present moment, and it has

to serve to feature enemy, whatever that looks like.

Now I think we've talked a little bit about how present all of his sort of mindset is

in the first book.

And even in the second book, he is a very intense in his presence when it comes to being

in the moment and understanding how these pieces fit together.

But a lot of the tactical things he talks about are sort of broadly and readily applicable.

You know, if somebody's coming at you from a direction you're not used to or you're

afraid of or what have you, make sure you put your back in a certain location so that

you can throw your enemy off guard.

So all sorts of tactical behavior sets are available to you in the fire book, and those

adapt really well to your own internal sort of tips and tricks and all that kind of stuff.

So again, the fire book is really a great sort of tactical toolkit for that internal

headspace, that internal lodge that you're operating on a daily basis.

And it's also probably quite practical from managing the conversations in the lodge.

Again, when somebody's coming from a place of low energy or trying to bring something

offensive or defensive into the body of the open lodge, a lot of the sort of cognitive

tools that Musashi illustrates in his book might be functional for you in your everyday

sort of living and certainly in your interactions.

Again, we talked a lot about in other episodes prior about not bringing any offensive or

defensive in the body of the open lodge and you shouldn't need tactics for this kind of stuff.

But a lot of the things that we do when we have these conversations with each other

are coming from places of perhaps either ignorance or lower value.

And so don't consider this as ways to try and be right.

Consider a lot of these tactics as ways to help other folks kind of see what you see from maybe

a different perspective. We're not in combat even though the language of the Book of Five Rings

is designed for that. We are really at the highest levels of attention trying to bring our best

self to the table both in our personal lives, in our headspace and in our lodge.