" The liquid sound of the flute began. As the girl's thin fingers moved over the seven holes of the instrument, her knuckles look like tiny gnomes absorbed in a slow dance. It was a low sound, like the gurgling of a brook. Takuan felt that he himself had turned into flowing water, splashing through a ravine, playing in the shallows. When the high notes sounded, he felt his spirit wafted into the sky to gambol with the clouds. The sound of the earth and the reverberations of heaven mingled and were transformed into the wistful sighs of the breeze blowing through the pines, lamenting the impermanence of this world. "

― Eiji Yoshikawa , Musashi