• At 13 he slew a samurai in single combat by throwing him to the ground and beating him on the head with a stick when he tried to rise – Arima Kihei died vomiting blood

• At 16 he defeated another man named Tadashima Akiyama in a duel

• Musashi then left home an embarked on a journey – “Warrior Pilgrimage” – that would last four decades and take him to six wars, until he settled down at the age of 50, having reached the end of his search for reason – By the time he was 29 he had engaged in over 60 duels, all of which

he won

• He spent most of his life living apart from society while he devoted himself with a ferocious single-mindedness to enlightenment through Kendo – “the Way of the sword”

• He wandered Japan “soaked by the cold winds of winter, not dressing his hair, nor taking a wife, nor following any profession” and his appearance was “uncouth and wretched”

WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE

• Training in Kendo meant subjugating the self, bearing the pain of grueling practice, and cultivating a level mind in the face of peril

• Warfare was the spirit of the samurai’s everyday life and death was a constant reality

• The Way of the sword is the moral teaching of the samurai, fostered by the Confucianist philosophy which shaped the Tokugawa system, together with Japan’s native Shinto religion

KENDO

• Musashi found employment serving the house of Ogasawara as an army captain

• At age 55 he fought against Christians in the Shimawara uprising in 1638

• After serving the Ogasawara Tadazene for six years he was invited to stay at Kumamoto Castle as the guest of Hosokawa Churi

LATER YEARS

• While Musashi lived for a few years as the guest of lord Churi at Kumamoto Castle he spent his time teaching and painting

• In 1643, he retired to a life of seclusion at a nearby cave called “Reigendo” where he lived the final two years of his life

• Musashi wrote Go Rin No Sho (A Book of Five Rings) to one of this pupils, Teruo Nobuyuki, a few weeks before his death on May 19, 1645

RETIREMENT