平常心 heijōshin Presence of Mind
平常心 (heijōshin, in Zen byōjōshin) is the mind without contrivance, and in the martial arts today it is composure. It is the Tang master Mazu's term, and it became the nineteenth case of the Gateless Barrier in 1228. This study follows it to Yagyū Munenori's sword teaching of 1632 and its narrowing to composure by 1862.
Abstract
平常心 is a Zen word before it is a martial one: by the lamp history of 1004, the Tang master Mazu Daoyi's term for the mind without contrivance, defined by him as the Way itself and needing no cultivation. The five characters 平常心是道 became a koan — Nanquan's answer to Zhaozhou, recorded in the Zutang ji of 952 and the lamp history of 1004 and made the nineteenth case of the Gateless Barrier in 1228 — 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. By 1862 a fencing master in Edo was using the three characters themselves for the composure a fighter keeps under live blades, and from 1891 a novelist used them for the composure anyone keeps or loses; that narrower sense is the word the martial arts use today, and the dictionaries still record it beside the older, Buddhist one.
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 among its capping phrases: Hori's dictionary of them lists it as entry 5.331, read byōjōshin kore dō, at no. 114 of Shibayama's 1972 collection and absent from Tsuchiya's, the two modern collections it draws on, 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 your everyday mind, that is the Tao, in D. T. Suzuki's essays of 1933; the word's own English, tied to the sword by Suzuki in 1959 and in the martial-arts manuals by 1980, 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 Zhaozhou 趙州, still a novice by the lamp history's account (the Zutang ji of 952 has him ordained before he came to Nanquan), 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 doubted, it is like vast space, open and empty; and on those words he awoke [4][5]. Nanquan in his own sermon, in another volume of the same history, 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]. The saying is in records older than 1004: the Zutang ji of 952, the oldest read, has the exchange in its entry on Zhaozhou and gives the five characters also to Yanguan Qi'an 鹽官齊安, another heir of Mazu; the Record of the Source Mirror of 961 has it in the mouth of another ninth-century master; and Linji, who died in 866, quotes it in his recorded sayings as an ancient's [6]. 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 [7]. The records disagree in small words: the lamp history of 1004 has to aim and the Way that is not doubted, the Zutang ji of 952 and the Gateless Barrier have to aim and the Way that is not aimed at, and Zhaozhou's own recorded sayings have to doubt; both wordings came to Japan.
1231 to 1323. 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 [8]. His successor Ejō 懐奘 quotes the whole koan in 1278 in the wording of Zhaozhou's sayings [9]; Chūgan Engetsu 中巌円月 raises it in his recorded sayings in the fourteenth century [10]; and Keizan 瑩山, the second founder of the Sōtō line, is said by the early modern biographies to have awakened on the phrase at his teacher's lecture, by one of 1879 on the twentieth day of the tenth month of 1294. Yokoyama Ryūken, reading the medieval sources, finds them setting the awakening on a line of the Lotus Sūtra, and finds in Keizan's own record of 1323, as the 2015 edition of the Tōkoku ki prints it, an exchange with his teacher on the ordinary mind as the last test before the teacher handed him Daijōji; the awakening on the phrase, by his reading, begins in a Sōjiji biography written by 1646, and he calls it a creation [11]. The printed Gateless Barrier of 1666 carries the case with reading marks [12], 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 [13]. The 1937 edition read for this study prints 平等心, the mind of equality, at the koan; his own gloss that follows, and a 1988 study quoting the passage, read ordinary [13]. He 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 [14]. Takuan 沢庵, the Zen master who wrote to Munenori on the sword, uses the word once, in a reflection on sitting [15]. The sword's word in the seventeenth century, then, is tsune no kokoro in Japanese, with the koan named as its source.
1862. The fencer's word. Mori Kagechika 森景鎮 (1810–1868), a fencing master teaching in Edo, printed his Treatise on the Sword and the Strike in 1862, and there the three characters are the sword's own: when the spirit is clear within, the breath follows and is still; when the breath is still, every movement of the enemy is plain in one's own heart; so even in a match with live blades one can reach the state of the ordinary mind; and, of practice, to think of the hours of training and the hours of leisure as two separate things is not to know the ordinary mind [16]. The book was reissued in 1884 as a fencing primer and reprinted in the martial-arts collections of 1894 and 1915 [16]. Musashi's thought is there, the same mind in daily life and in combat; the word is now 平常心 itself.
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 [17]. 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 [18]; a 1920 biography records the Zen habit as a third reading, heizeishin [19]; in 1923 a kendo book praises Musashi as composed, never losing his ordinary mind, treating a real fight as if it were a game [20]; in 1941 the teacher-training ethics textbook tells its readers to hold the so-called ordinary mind [21].
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, and not a novelist's: the fencing master's book of 1862 has the sword's sense before the dictionaries' first citation.
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
1933. D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism: Second Series. When Chao-chou came to study Zen under Nan-ch'üan, he asked, "What is the Tao (or the Way)?" Nan-ch'üan replied, "Your everyday mind, that is the Tao." The earliest English known for the koan; a review of March 1934 quotes it [22].
1947. Fung Yu-lan, The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy, translated by E. R. Hughes. Ch'üan replied: "The ordinary mind is the Tao." The wording most later English follows [23].
1955. D. T. Suzuki, Studies in Zen. "My everyday thought is the Tao" (heijo-shin kore michi) — the earliest romaji known [24].
1959. D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture. "the everyday mind" (heijo-shin). The secret of swordsmanship consists in attaining… The earliest English known that ties the word to the sword [25].
1966. R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, volume four, Mumonkan. Case nineteen, Nansen's Ordinary Mind: "Your everyday mind — that is the Way!" [26]
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 [27].
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… [28]
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 [29].
1980. Syd Hoare, Judo. Heijoshin. This means 'everyday mind'. The word in a martial-arts manual's own glossary [30].
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 [31].
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 [32].
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 [33].
Today. The martial-arts English of the word itself has settled on nothing: everyday mind, peace of mind, the firm state of mind, one's usual state of mind, placid state of mind, normal 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 [34]; the older English, the ordinary mind is the Way, is the koan's, and has been since the 1930s.
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. Two centuries later a fencing master uses the three characters for the state a fighter reaches under live blades, and from Rohan they name the same narrower and more useful thing for everyone, composure, the mind one keeps or loses; 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.
Sources not seen
- Keizan's Tōkoku ki itself, and 東隆真's 1972 study of his 平常心是道; the modern commentaries past their excerpts.
- Munenori's Family Book in a manuscript or an edition earlier than 1937.
- Mori Kagechika's 1862 print and its 1884 reissue at the page; the 1894 collection past its excerpt.
- The sword-school documents printed from 1936 that list 平常心 among their teachings (the 念流's 平常心正明; a school catalogue in the 1936 Kendō sōsho), whose manuscripts are undated.
- Suzuki's Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture (1938), the first version of his 1959 book.
A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.
References
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- 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.
- Syd Hoare, Judo, Teach Yourself Books, 1980, p. 153. https://archive.org/details/judo0000hoar
- 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」.