平常心 heijōshin Presence of Mind
This is a philological study of the Japanese word 平常心, read heijōshin in the martial arts and byōjōshin in Zen. It traces the word from a Tang master's own definition, through the koan that carries it as the nineteenth case of the Gateless Barrier, its adoption by a shogun's fencing master as the archer's and swordsman's state of mind, and its narrowing since 1891 into the modern word for composure that the martial arts now use.
Abstract
平常心 is a Zen word before it is a martial one: the Tang master Mazu Daoyi's own term for the mind without contrivance, defined by him as the Way itself and needing no cultivation. That definition became a koan — Nanquan's answer to the young Zhaozhou, the nineteenth case of the Gateless Barrier — and reached Japan through Dōgen, who built on it, and a Sōtō founder said to have awakened on it. In 1632 the shogun's fencing master Yagyū Munenori quoted the koan and turned it into plain Japanese for the archer and swordsman, and Miyamoto Musashi said the same without naming the source. From 1891 a Japanese novelist used the same three characters for something narrower: the composure a person keeps or loses, which the martial arts made their own term by 1923 and the dictionaries still record beside the older, Buddhist sense.
Overview
The sense. In Zen, the mind without contrivance, which is the Way already; in the sword and in modern Japanese, the mind that stays as it always is, calm under pressure. 平常 is as always, ordinary, the word for a pulse returning to normal and trains running to schedule, in Japanese since a poem of 818 [1][2]. 心 is mind, heart. So the three characters say the ordinary mind, and the whole history of the word is the question of which ordinary.
The words. Mazu's own definition of the ordinary mind: without contrivance, without right and wrong, without taking and rejecting, without the views of annihilation and permanence, without profane and holy, and walking, standing, sitting, lying down, meeting whatever comes, all of it is the Way [1]. The modern dictionaries give instead: the calm, ordinary mind, nothing special about it; the mind that does not waver; the composure one keeps or loses, 平常心を失う [1]. When a monk asked Zhaozhou what the ordinary mind was, he answered foxes, wolves and jackals, and the modern word would not survive that answer, which is the distance between the two. The Rinzai monastery keeps the five-character phrase 平常心是道 in its own curriculum: a capping-phrase dictionary lists it as entry 5.331, read byōjōshin kore dō, at no. 114 of one classical index and absent from another, so the Zen reading byōjōshin is the one a monk answers a koan with, and heijōshin the one the dojo says [3].
The text in English. The koan came first into English, as the ordinary mind is the Tao, in 1947; the sword's English for the word begins about 1990 and has settled on nothing.
The historical record
Tang to 1228. The koan. Mazu Daoyi 馬祖道一, founder of the line from which most of later Zen descends, is recorded in the great lamp history of 1004 as teaching: the Way needs no cultivation; only do not defile it. What is defiling? Any mind of birth and death, any contriving, any aiming. If you would grasp the Way directly, the ordinary mind is the Way, and then the definition quoted above [4]. His heir Nanquan 南泉普願 gave the same five characters, 平常心是道, as his answer when the young Zhaozhou 趙州 asked what the Way was; Zhaozhou pressed, can one aim at it?, and was told to aim at it is to miss it; pressed again, and was told the Way belongs neither to knowing nor to not-knowing; knowing is false perception, not-knowing is blankness, and if you truly reach the Way that is not aimed at, it is like vast space, open and empty; and on those words he awoke, in his teens by the tradition's count [4][5]. Nanquan in his own sermon in the same volume already speaks of every patriarch down to the master of Jiangxi teaching the two sayings this mind is Buddha and the ordinary mind is the Way [4]. In 1228 Wumen 無門慧開 made the exchange the nineteenth case of his Gateless Barrier, with the verse that has carried it since: spring has its hundred flowers, autumn its moon, summer its cool wind, winter its snow; if nothing useless hangs on the mind, that is a good season in the human world [6]. The two oldest records disagree in small words, to aim against to doubt, and both wordings came to Japan.
1231 to 1294. Japan, from Dōgen. Dōgen 道元 uses the word in the 1230s and 1240s: the Buddha-nature fascicle of 1241 gives the koan as a reason, not the being of a first arising, because the ordinary mind is the Way; elsewhere in the Shōbōgenzō the word is the old Buddha mind, the mind of the three realms, the undefiled [7]. His successor Ejō 懐奘 quotes the whole koan in 1278 in the older wording [8]; Chūgan Engetsu 中巌円月 raises it in his recorded sayings in the fourteenth century [9]; and Keizan 瑩山, the second founder of the Sōtō line, is said by all his Meiji biographers to have awakened on the phrase at his teacher's lecture on the twentieth day of the tenth month of 1294, so that it became the family style of the Sōjiji tradition [10]. The printed Gateless Barrier of 1666 carries the case with reading marks [11], and the Edo Zen records print it many times.
1632 and 1645. The sword. Yagyū Munenori 柳生宗矩, the shogun's fencing master, quotes the koan in his Family Book of the Art of War: a monk asked an old worthy, What is the Way? The old worthy answered, The ordinary mind is the Way [12], and then turns it into plain Japanese, the ordinary mind, and applies it: the archer must forget he is shooting and shoot with the mind of a moment when nothing is being done; so the swordsman, the rider, the writer, the koto player; when you do everything with the ordinary mind, having stopped everything and doing nothing, everything goes without difficulty. Miyamoto Musashi 宮本武蔵's Book of Five Rings says the same without the koan: in the way of strategy, let the bearing of your mind be no different from the ordinary mind; in daily life and in combat alike, keep the mind broad and straight [13]. Takuan 沢庵, the Zen master who wrote to Munenori on the sword, uses the word once, in a reflection on sitting [14]. The sword's word in the seventeenth century, then, is tsune no kokoro in Japanese, with the koan named as its source.
1891 on. The modern word. The novelist Kōda Rohan 幸田露伴 writes the word with the reading heijōshin in 1891, of a man's mind clearing like mist; that is the dictionaries' first citation for the everyday sense [15]. By 1915 to lose one's ordinary mind is an idiom; in 1920 a Zen lecturer explaining the koan glosses the word itself as the mind that does not waver under passion and delusion, the calm mind, the modern sense read back into the source [16]; a 1920 biography records the Zen habit as a third reading, heizeishin [17]; in 1923 the first kendo book known to carry the word praises Musashi as composed, never losing his ordinary mind, treating a real fight as if it were a game [18]; in 1941 the teacher-training ethics textbook tells its readers to hold the so-called ordinary mind [19].
What is not a source. No Chinese classic outside the Zen records; the word's home is the lamp histories and the koan collections. Not Musashi, whose word is tsune no kokoro, and not Takuan, who uses the compound once in passing; the sword's named source is Munenori. Not kendo's invention: the modern sense is a novelist's of 1891, and kendo's use of it is on record from 1923.
The dictionary today. Two readings for one word, and the dictionaries keep both: byōjōshin, Buddhist, the ordinary everyday mind, the ordinary way of living, cited from Dōgen and the Gateless Barrier; heijōshin, the calm ordinary mind with nothing special about it, cited from Rohan [1]. The kendo and karate books in Japanese use the word for the mind that stays as it is under attack.
The word in English
1947. Fung Yu-lan, The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy, translated by E. R. Hughes. Ch'üan replied: "The ordinary mind is the Tao." The earliest English known for the koan [20].
1955. D. T. Suzuki, Studies in Zen. "My everyday thought is the Tao" (heijo-shin kore michi) — the earliest romaji [21].
1959. D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture. "the everyday mind" (heijo-shin). The secret of swordsmanship consists in attaining… The word tied to the sword in English for the first time [22].
1966. R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, volume four, Mumonkan. Case nineteen, Nansen's Ordinary Mind: "Your everyday mind — that is the Way!" [23]
1974. Zenkei Shibayama, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan. Literally it means, "Everyday mind as it is without any discrimination is Tao" … we have to transcend our ordinary mind to attain the true ordinary mind, and in order actually to transcend our dualistic ordinary mind, sincere searching and hard discipline are required — the koan read as a paradox to be broken through [24].
1974. Victor Harris, translator, A Book of Five Rings. Musashi's tsune no kokoro: in strategy your spiritual bearing must not be any different from normal. Both in fighting and in everyday life… [25]
1977. Katsuki Sekida, Two Zen Classics. The answer to the question is samadhi … Children are in samadhi in their play, work, and daily routine … in short, innocence is ordinary mind — the koan read as samadhi rather than paradox [26].
1981. Shigematsu Sōiku, A Zen Forest. Saying 1054, Ordinary mind / is the Way, named in the introduction as a very famous koan — but no easy one [27].
1991. Robert Aitken, The Gateless Barrier. The Chinese compound I translate as "ordinary" also means "usual" or "normal." The etymology is "constant" or "eternal." The everyday is the eternal, set beside Yunmen's every day is a good day [28].
1993. Thomas Cleary, translator, The Book of Five Rings, with Munenori's Family Traditions. "What is the Way?" He replied, "The normal mind is the Way." … the ancient worthy replied that the normal mind is the Way. This is truly the ultimate — Munenori's own passage in English [29].
Today. The martial-arts English of the word itself begins about 1990 and has settled on nothing: everyday mind, peace of mind, the firm state of mind, one's usual state of mind, placid state of mind, with one kendo guide right to say the word was initially conceived in T'ang China. JMdict's gloss, one's self-possession; one's presence of mind, is the modern word's, and is where a martial-arts rendering should start [30]; the older English, the ordinary mind is the Way, is the koan's, and has been since 1947.
A reading
One word, two registers, and the sword in between. Mazu's ordinary mind is not calm as against agitation; it is the mind before any such pair, which needs no cultivation and is the Way already. Nanquan's answer is a refusal to let Zhaozhou aim at it. Munenori takes exactly that and makes it practical: the mind of a moment when nothing is being done is the mind to shoot with, and the koan is his warrant. From Rohan the same three characters name something narrower and more useful, composure, the mind one keeps or loses, and kendo made that its term. Three English commentators hold three readings of the koan side by side and are not the same reading: Shibayama takes it as a paradox to be broken through, Sekida as samadhi, and Aitken glosses the word's own etymology, constant or eternal, and sets it beside Yunmen's every day is a good day — a bridge to the dojo's word, since composure is the mind that stays constant under attack. This reading stands nearest Shibayama's.
References
- 「平常心」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/平常心
- 「平常」, 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/平常
- Victor Sōgen Hori, Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Kōan Practice, University of Hawai'i Press, 2003, entry 5.331.
- 馬祖道一, teaching, and 南泉普願, sermon, in the 景徳伝灯録, 卷二十八, compiled 1004, at CBETA. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2076&juan=28
- 趙州録, in the 古尊宿語録, 卷十三, Song compilation, at CBETA.
- 無門慧開, 『無門関』, 第十九則, 1228, at CBETA. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2005&juan=1
- 道元, 『正法眼蔵』, 身心学道 and 佛性 fascicles, 1231–53, in the 1926 edition, scans 124 and 211. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1018721/1/124
- 懐奘, 『光明蔵三昧』, 1278, in the 1879 print, scan 15. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/822966/1/15
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- 瑩山紹瑾's awakening, reported in Meiji biographies of 1879 and 1915. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/943877/1/104
- 『鼇頭評註無門関』, 寛文六年 (1666) print, scan 28. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2537644/1/28
- 柳生宗矩, 『兵法家伝書』, 1632, in the 1937 edition, scan 20. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1074542/1/20
- 宮本武蔵, 『五輪書』, 水之巻, 1645, in the 1939 facsimile edition, scan 12. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1071527/1/12
- 沢庵, 『東海夜話』, 巻之二, 17th century, in the 1921 collected edition, scans 105–106. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/968098/1/105
- 幸田露伴, 『いさなとり』, 1891, in the 1892 edition, scan 8. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/885387/1/8
- 菅原時保, 『無門関講話』, 1920, scan 107. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/963185/1/107
- 中村勝麻呂, 『真面目の人 井伊大老』, 1920, scans 72 and 75. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1875095/1/72
- 堀正平, 『剣道の真諦』, 1923, scan 113. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/971716/1/113
- 文部省, 『師範修身書』, 巻四, 1941, scan 52. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1277077/1/52
- Fung Yu-lan, The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy, translated by E. R. Hughes, Kegan Paul, 1947.
- D. T. Suzuki, Studies in Zen, Rider, 1955.
- D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, Bollingen, 1959.
- R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, vol. 4, Mumonkan, Hokuseido, 1966.
- Zenkei Shibayama, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan, New American Library, 1974, case 19, p. 147.
- Victor Harris, translator, A Book of Five Rings, Overlook Press, 1974.
- Katsuki Sekida, Two Zen Classics, Weatherhill, 1977, case 19 commentary, p. 74.
- Shigematsu Sōiku, A Zen Forest: Sayings of the Masters, Weatherhill, 1981, saying 1054, p. 109.
- Robert Aitken, The Gateless Barrier, North Point Press, 1991, case 19 commentary.
- Thomas Cleary, translator, The Book of Five Rings, Shambhala, 1993, with Yagyū Munenori's Family Traditions.
- JMdict (EDRDG), 「平常心」.