Sword of Zen: Master Takuan and His Writings on Immovable Wisdom and the Sword Taie

Notes

Notes Abbreviations HK Watanabe Ichirō, ed. Heihō kadensho. Tokyo, 1985. T Takakusu Junjirō et al., eds. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō. Tokyo, 1914–1922. TZI Zen Bunka Kenkyūjo. Takuan zenji itsuwasen. Kyoto, 2001. TON Ogisu Jundō, ed. Takuan oshō nenpu. Kyoto, 1983. TOZ Takuan Oshō Zenshū Kankōkai, ed. Takuan oshō zenshū. Tokyo, 1928– 1930. 6 vols. Preface 1. De Bary, ed., The Buddhist Tradition, 376–380. 2. In Watanabe, ed., Heihō kadensho. The term heihō can be translated “art of combat,” “martial arts,” and so forth, but, because Munenori’s work deals with swordsmanship specifically, I have rendered it as “art of the sword,” a sense in which heihō was commonly used in Munenori’s period. While the term is sometimes read hyōhō, a 1619 letter from Iemitsu to Munenori gives the word in kana as heihō, and I have therefore used this reading. See ibid., 172. 3. TOZ, 5: 1–27 and 1–13, respectively (page numbering of all works is internal). 4. Suzuki Daisetsu, Zen and Japanese Culture, 95–115, 166–168. Other English translations include Fudōchi shinmyō roku, translated by Akashi and Tohen; Wilson, The Unfettered Mind; Sato, The Sword and the Mind (partial translation ), 111–125; Hirose, Immovable Wisdom, 21–48; and Cleary, Soul of the Samurai, 100–141, 142–154. Along with Yoshito Hakeda’s translations from Immovable Wisdom referred to earlier, portions of the text are translated by William M. Bodiford in the second edtion of de Bary et al., Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. 2, 528–531. 5. Both works are in Sino-Japanese (kanbun). The full title of the Account is Manshōzan [also romanized Banshōzan] Tōkaizenji kaizan Takuan dai-osh ō gyōjō (Account of the Life of the Great Master Takuan, Founder of the Zen Temple Tōkaiji of the Myriad Pines). The versions of Munetomo’s Gyōjō and Kinenroku cited here are those included in Ogisu, Takuan oshō nenpu, 147–174 and 35–146, respectively. Chapter : An Introduction to Takuan’s Writings on Zen and Swordsmanship 1. Tsuji, Nihon bukkyōshi, 8:485. 2. All are undated and included in volume 5 of TOZ. (Works are internally numbered.) The title Knotted Cords alludes to an ancient Chinese mode of reckoning and recording by tying knots on a string or rope (ketsujō). Tsuji speculates that Knotted Cords was directed to Takuan’s daimyo patron Hori Naoyori (1577–1639). At the opening of the work, Takuan speaks of “replying to matters you had asked me about in your letter from Echigo,” Naoyori’s domain in what is now Niigata Prefecture. Tsuji, Nihon bukkyōshi, 8:485. 3. The next earliest such material of which I am aware is the brief set of instructions on Zen and the art of combat composed by the Rinzai Zen master Bankei Yōtaku (1622–1693) for his patron Katō Yasuoki (1618–1677), daimyo of Ōzu and an expert in the Japanese lance, or yari. Bankei’s instructions echo many of Takuan’s themes in Record of Immovable Wisdom and The Sword Taie, stressing the importance of direct intuitive response, of moving naturally with “no-mind” and no fixed form, no “you” and no opponent. The piece can be dated to the third quarter of the seventeenth century, the period between 1655, when Bankei first met Yasuoki, and the daimyo’s death in 1677, that is, probably at least a generation or two after Takuan composed his own works on Zen and the martial arts. Bankei’s instruction to Yasuoki is translated in my Bankei Zen, 138–139. For the text, see Akao, Bankei zenji zenshū, 940. Sōtō school initiation-style koan transmissions from the late medieval and early modern periods also deal with swordsmanship and Zen mind. Bodiford translates such a document, dated 1664, which calls on the samurai confronting an opponent to remain in his original “baby” mind so that any spilled blood will be pure and free of pollution. The document, which also urges repetition of the nenbutsu in meditating on the koan “sword upraised,” or “sword blades upward” (kenjinjō or kenninjō), is translated in full in Bodiford , “Zen and Japanese Swordsmanship Reconsidered,” 88. Besides use in koan study, such documents, Bodiford points out, were offerings at funeral and memorial services, representing talismans of a sort. See ibid., 85–94, and Ishikawa, Zenshū sōden shiryō no kenkyū, vol. 2, 134. All, however, represent secret transmission-type documents as developed in late medieval Japan. Takuan’s sword...