He ceased trying to impose his will on nature and let nature lead the way, while at the same time seeking out possibilities beyond the grasp of other inhabitants of the plain. On that day he became nature’s manservant. What I’ve got to do is learn to be a servant to the water and a protector of the land.” In his own way, he had submitted to the attitude of the peasants.
How could it? Water’s water, dirt’s dirt. “I tried to make the water flow where I thought it should and force the dirt to stay where I thought it ought to be. “What a fool I’ve been,” he exclaimed aloud. Here, despite the general flatness, there were slight variations in the lay of the land and the quality of the soil that argued for an irregular shape. Unconsciously, he had been trying to create a neat, square field like those common in other parts of the Kanto Plain, but this was not what the terrain called for. For two full days and on into a third, he sat silently brooding and staring at his field. And finally Musashi himself began to lose heart. Iori, on his return from trips to the temple for food, inevitably wore a long face, for the people there rode him mercilessly about Musashi’s failure. Only a month passed before the next disaster, a heavy snowfall followed by a quick thaw. Is that the Way of the Sword?” The question struck close to the bone, but Musashi would not give in. “Look,” Iori said, “we’re wasting our energy on something impossible. Three weeks later everything was again washed away. It took several weeks of strenuous labor to dig ditches, drain the water off, pile dirt for a dike and then cover it with heavy rocks. I’m not giving up a foot of this land until I see barley growing on it.” Musashi carried on his stubborn struggle throughout the winter, into the second month of the new year. We’ll lay a dam from here all the way to that hill over there.” ‘That’s an awful lot of work.” “You seem to forget that this is our dōjō. I examined the location from every angle before I chose it.” “What if we have another heavy rain?” “We’ll fix it so the water doesn’t come this way.
“With the water drained off, this would make excellent farmland. Let’s look for better land somewhere else.” “No,” Musashi said firmly. Iori, seeing no way to reclaim their loss, looked up and said, “This place is beyond hope. The water seemed to mock them just as the villagers had. The field they had so arduously carved out of the wilderness had disappeared without a trace in its place were rocks, and a river where none had been before. Musashi chafed to be out in the open, but it was another week before they were able to return to work under a bright sun. “On the eleventh day, it finally stopped raining.
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