無心 mushin No-Mindedness

無心 is a mind that settles nowhere. The sword master Yagyū Munenori put it plainly: it does not mean having no mind at all. It is only the ordinary mind, and with it every stroke lands. The Zen master Takuan, writing to him, said the mind of no-mind is the original mind. The deluded mind is like ice, he wrote, while the original mind is like water and stays in no one place. Before them, the nō actor Zeami wrote of acting at the level of no-mind. A modern book on Japanese archery says no-mind is not the elimination of thought.

No-Mindedness, our title, is the form a Kenkyūsha dictionary prints for this sense, and many English books call it no-mind. The Japanese word has other lives that the English does not carry. It can mean innocence, or things that feel nothing, like grass and trees. In everyday speech it can also mean asking someone for money. The design carries only the Zen sense.

The Japanese word 無心 is composed of the kanji 無 (read mu) meaning "no; nothingness" and 心 (read shin) meaning "heart; mind; spirit".

The word is in the 莊子 three times and became a term in Guo Xiang's commentary of about 300, five centuries before the Zen masters took it up; in Japan it is in the court anthologies of 814 and 818, and the sense the design carries, the mind that stops nowhere, is the sword-Zen teaching of Takuan and Yagyū Munenori in the 1630s.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 無心.

Each design is Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's hand-brushed calligraphy of the word or phrase on this page, delivered as a PDF you can print. Every PDF includes the line art, so a tattoo artist or a craftsperson can work from the outline as well as the brushed image.

Your purchase includes a personal-use license: use the design as a tattoo reference, frame it, engrave it, print it for yourself, or make it into a gift. For more information see Licensing, which also covers commercial-use options that may be purchased separately.

Your PDF is available for download the moment your order completes, and a copy is attached to your emailed receipt.

If you need your design again later, ask us for it and we will send it.