拳禅一如 kenzen ichinyo The Body and Mind are One

拳禅一如 joins the striking arts and Zen in four characters. 拳 is the fist, and in the names of the striking arts it stands for the art itself. 禅 is Zen, and 一如 is an old Buddhist word for one and the same, not two. The English title follows the gloss Shorinji Kempo's founder gave the phrase in 1963: the fist as the body and Zen as the mind. So the phrase says a trained body and a trained mind are the same thing.

拳禅一如 is composed of the kanji 拳 (read ken) meaning "Fist", 禅 (read zen) meaning "Zen", and 一如 (read ichinyo) meaning "oneness".

A karate phrase in print by 1934 and the first principle of Shorinji Kempo, founded in 1947, whose founder traced its discipline to Bodhidharma; in form it is the sword's 剣禅一如 with a fist for the sword, a phrase in print from 1916 for what the Zen master Takuan had taught the swordsman Yagyū Munenori three centuries before.

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