The Body and Mind are One

拳禅一如, read kenzen ichinyo: the fist and Zen are one. The four characters say that the striking art and Zen are one and the same discipline, the trained body and the trained mind one thing, which is what the teachers mean by the body and mind are one, and the two Englishes have gone together since 1982. The phrase is a karate maxim of the twentieth century, the first principle of Shorinji Kempo from its founding in 1947 and the creed of the Okinawan and Kyokushin lines, and it was made by putting the fist where the sword had been in 剣禅一如, the sword and Zen are one. That phrase is modern too, coined in 1919 to name what the Zen master Takuan had taught the shogun's fencing master three centuries earlier without naming it. Both first characters are read ken, so the karate phrase is a pun on the sword's, and a karate student hearing one hears the other beneath it, with Takuan, Musashi and Yamaoka Tesshū standing behind the sword the fist replaced. The sword's phrase names an attainment, something a master reaches; the fist's names a method, body and mind trained together from the first day. The four characters carry a real idea with a long pedigree and a name two generations old, and for a dojo wall that is the modern karate creed, plainly stated. 拳禅一如 is composed of the kanji 拳 (read ken) meaning "Fist" and represents the body, 禅 (read zen) meaning "Zen" represents the mind or spirit, and 一如 (read ichinyo) meaning "oneness".