If you want to learn the craft of war, ponder over this book. The teacher is as a needle, the disciple is as thread. You must practice constantly.
Miyamoto MusashiRead
Unless you really understand others, you can hardly attain your own self-understanding.
Interpretation
Understanding others is essential for self-awareness.
Miyamoto Musashi's quote emphasizes the interconnection between self-understanding and the understanding of others. It suggests that in order to deeply comprehend ourselves, we must first delve into the perspectives, experiences, and emotions of those around us, as this broader understanding can illuminate our own identities and motivations.
In practice
In a discussion on empathy, this quote could illustrate the importance of listening to others.
If you want to learn the craft of war, ponder over this book. The teacher is as a needle, the disciple is as thread. You must practice constantly.
If you fail to take advantage of your enemies' collapse, they may recover.
One must make the warrior walk his everyday walk.
To cut and slash are two different things. Cutting, whatever form of cutting it is, is decisive, with a resolute spirit. Slashing is nothing more than touching the enemy.
You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect.
In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.
To be suspicious is not a fault. To be suspicious all the time without coming to a conclusion is the defect.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view and demand that they respect yours.
Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations.
Nobody in the developing world is going to take, as an answer to their aspirations, the developed world's reply: 'Sorry, you can't; we've already used it all up.' To earn the right to look the developing world in the eye and start this conversation, we need a reassessment of how we live and what we want.
Since there my past life lies, why alter it?
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