to myself are we just the little fishes

abandoning ourselves to the waves to sing and dance and play is that what

we're doing and I'm not saying don't have fun I'm not saying don't sing and

dance and play enjoy life of course and relish the joy of life but I think you

have to make sure you don't dance your life away don't be one of the little

fishes and in doc odo that final writing of Musashi before he died the last thing

he wrote was never stray from the way

and I think that that's what this is about all the fun and the singing and

the dancing and all the play it's okay it's good

but all those things can be distractions

because there is a path there is a way

and you know what that way is you know what you should be doing and it's hard

to stay on that path because it is the path of discipline and discomfort but it

is the right path and you know that and it is that path that will ultimately

lead you to where you really want to be

so that you can live

and you can die without regrets

I think a lot of times people are trying to find the path then they're looking

all around different places and different people and different

influences but man I think so often that path you know what the path is and

people know what they're supposed to be doing but they just don't get on the

path and stay on the path yeah I agree worth something they felt when they were

8 or 12 and they they travel the world or travel through life's experiences

trying to find the answer that was in front of them the entire time and so

they come back to see what they knew with different eyes and to recognize

that they knew the path all along which is something that I so enjoyed about

this book and the character both real and certainly presented by the author of

Musashi who is using his experiences in this domain of the sword as a means of a

thematic interconnectedness and so unlike Cisco judo at the end he is not

just the technician with the sword although he is a brilliant technician he

is tilling the soil he's constructing buildings which later he did quite a lot

of in terms of architecture and overseeing the building instead of

destruction of things and finding at the highest levels of performance with the

sword in felling opponents the the principles the first principles that he

can apply everywhere and that's part of what fascinates me so much about Musashi

or anyone who's the best at what they do is that it could be anything it could be

pottery it could be sniping it could be

calligraphy but like the best they see the depth

they see the the interwoven web that can expand from that one fine focus into

everything that they do and I think that for me at least is the path and maybe

it's just coming off of a silent retreat that I want to talk this way but it

doesn't strike me is something that is cleanly expressed in an Instagram post

or quote necessarily it's it's more of a feeling like you know if you're sober

and take a moment to sit and the stillness and that by stillness I don't

mean sitting on a mountaintop it could just be five minutes of silence when you

first get up in the morning and observe your own mind and how you feel like you

know if you're on the path or not or at least you know when you're not I totally

agree you know you know when you're not on it

and I think that the feeling of being on it when you're on the path it has that

beauty of mindlessness or no mind as what they would say and say then the

state of no-mind and it sounds like unconscious but it's different it's not

unconscious it's not subconscious it's something else where you feel that

you're exactly where you should be doing exactly what you should be doing and

you're not planning you're just putting one foot in front of the other on this

path that you didn't have to find because in a way the path was seeking

you the whole time and it's just a feeling it's a really it's a feeling I

think that everyone can have but they get so caught up we all get caught up on

I want to speak for you to find gents I'll speak for myself it's it's easy to

get caught up in the noise and the shiny objects and just like the little fish

you were talking about earlier okay you see that lure to recognize it as a lure

is sort of the first step and then to realize that when you look

past the lure all right there's a lure 16 inches in front of you and then

you're in an ocean that has endless fathoms of depth what a journey