拳禅一如 kenzen ichinyo The Body and Mind are One
拳禅一如 (kenzen ichinyo), the fist and Zen are one, is a karate maxim, followed here through the sword's 剣禅一如 back to Takuan and into English.
Abstract
拳禅一如, kenzen ichinyo, the fist and Zen are one, is a karate maxim of the twentieth century: in print in a collection of karate writing by 1934, and the first principle of Shorinji Kempo, founded in 1947, whose founder traced the discipline to Bodhidharma. In form it is the sword's 剣禅一如 with a fist for the sword, and that phrase is itself Taishō, in print from 1916 for what the Zen master Takuan had taught the swordsman Yagyū Munenori three centuries before. The fist and Zen are one is the literal; the body and mind are one is the gloss Shorinji Kempo's founder gave in 1963, known in English from a translation of 1982.
Overview
The sense. That the striking art and Zen are one and the same discipline, the trained body and the trained mind one thing; a karate maxim with the form of the swordsman's 剣禅一如, a fist put for the sword.
The words. 拳 is the fist, and in the names of the striking arts it stands for the art: 拳法, 拳術. 禅 is Zen. 一如 is a Buddhist word twelve centuries old in Japanese, one and the same, not two; the dictionaries give the everyday sense with the example 物心一如, matter and mind one. So the four say the fist and Zen are one and the same. They have the form of 剣禅一如, the sword and Zen are one; its neighbor 剣禅一致, the sword and Zen agree, is in print earlier, and the big dictionary defines it as the stance 沢庵 taught in his letter to the shogun's fencing master: that the last ground of swordsmanship is the same as Zen's ground of no-thought. Both first characters are read ken, so the two phrases sound alike, and a manga of 1971 makes the likeness its joke.
The text in English. The Body and Mind are One is not a translation of the characters but a gloss of them, the fist for the body and Zen for the mind: Shorinji Kempo's founder grounds the phrase in Bodhidharma's 霊肉不二, spirit and flesh not two, in 1963, and the earliest known English is a 1982 translation of Musashi, There is a saying, Ken-Zen Ichi Nyo, ("Body and Mind, Together"). The literal, The fist and Zen are one, is what the karate books print.
The historical record
Before 1645, 沢庵, the 不動智神妙録, which does not contain the phrase. The Zen master's letter to 柳生宗矩 on the sword and the unmoving mind is where every later writer sends the reader, and the 1921 edition of it has neither 剣禅一如 nor 剣禅一致 in the text: the volume's text layer carries 劍禪一如 once, at scan 6, in the editor's preface. His 太阿記 was not read. 沢庵 taught the thing; the name is known in print only from 1901, though the scholarship now calls his teaching by it: 笠井哲's papers of 2006, 2010 and 2013 put 沢庵's 剣禅一如 in their titles [1].
1901 to 1919, the name. The three phrases for the sword appear in the Meiji and Taishō literature on 山岡鉄舟, 宮本武蔵, 沢庵 and 宗矩, and the national library's full-text index, read oldest first, finds none of them earlier: 剣禅一致 in 1901, 剣禅一味 in 1912, 剣禅一如 in 1916. The 1901 use is in the June number of the Zen monthly 禅宗: 沢庵, it says, explained no room for a hair from 剣禅一致; 足立栗園 has the phrase in a book of 1909. 剣禅一味 is 加藤咄堂's, in a chapter on Zen and the martial way of 1912, and his 剣客禅話 of 1916 calls 山岡鉄舟 the modern master of 剣禅一味. The earliest known 剣禅一如 is 徳富蘇峰's, in an essay on the Zen master 一絲 printed in 1916 both in 禅宗 and in the commentary to his facsimile of 一絲's 大梅夜話: read the 不動智神妙録 he wrote for 柳生但馬守, and you know that he had a divine accord with the sword and Zen as one, 彼が柳生但馬守の爲めに書き與へたる、不動智神妙錄を讀めば、以て劍禪一如に於て、神契ありしを知る可し; 徳富 reprinted the essay in 1926. He gives the phrase no gloss, as a term his reader would know. In 1919 a collection of Zen anecdotes gave the phrase its story, twice: 武蔵 attained to the sword and Zen being one under a Zen uncle, and so did 宗矩 under 沢庵. The 宗矩 entry reads: he took his mind to the essentials of Zen, paid homage to 沢庵, tasted his angry fist for years, and attained to the sword and Zen being one; 沢庵 gave him an iron sceptre as his certificate, the one kept at 天沢山 in 湯島; and what the world calls the 不動智神妙録 is what 沢庵 taught him. A 1921 edition of 沢庵's works copied the sentence into its preface with the reading けんぜんいちにょ, writing 痛棒, the master's stick, where 1919 had 瞋拳, the angry fist. Two 1936 books call it what 山岡 used to call 剣禅一如, though 山岡 died in 1888 and in the index no book with 鉄舟 in its title carries the phrase before 1968. The Musashi books make it his, from 森's 1921 collection of his brushwork to 添田達嶺's 画人宮本武蔵 and an exhibition catalogue of the Takashimaya store in 1936, each saying he reached the realm of 劍禪一如; 吉川英治's 宮本武蔵 (1935–39), in the book text Aozora Bunko carries, never prints the words, though its later editions' commentators sum up the hero's quest in them; in 1940 the first book was titled with it [2].
1934 to 1968, the fist takes the sword's words. The four characters are in print by 1934, in the first volume of 空手研究, a collection of karate writing: reach the ground of what is called 拳禪一如, and karate too can truly become the life-giving fist, 所謂拳禪一如の域に達すれば空手術も眞に活人拳となり得る. What is called: the phrase was already current. The same volume, and a book by 摩文仁賢和 of that year, quote the newspaper 中國民報 on karate as a 拳禪一味 method of health and self-cultivation that Bodhidharma, 達磨大師, taught his disciples and that passed to the Ryukyus; a writer in the same volume doubts that the two classics of sinew and marrow, 易筋 and 洗髓, are Bodhidharma's. In 1936 a book of short pieces noted that the boxer Piston Horiguchi had taken up Zen, and asked whether his would be 拳禪一如, so by 1936 the words could be turned on a boxer. The form with 一致 is in print by 1940, as a heading in 摩文仁 and 仲宗根源和's karate manual, 拳禪一致の妙境; Rielly's Shōtōkan history numbers Ken zen itchi fifteenth in a list of sayings, and in the English of 長嶺将真's memoir the monument the 松濤会 raised to 船越 at 円覚寺 in Kamakura in 1968 reads Kenzen-ichi, its characters not seen. ja.wikipedia reports, in its own words and citing a thesis of 2017, that the Okinawan founder of 剛柔流, 宮城長順, set 拳禅一如 as the state karate should aim at, in a lecture of 1936 [3].
1947, 宗道臣, Shorinji Kempo. The school's official site dates its founding to October 1947 at 多度津 and calls it the 拳禅一如 Shorinji Kempo; the phrase stands first among its six defining features, before 力愛不二, strength and love not two. The school did not coin the four characters, which were in print thirteen years before, but it made them a first principle, and it is the phrase's home. 宗道臣's own book of 1963, subtitled Zen's source, a self-defense art come from China, sets 拳禅一如の修行, the training of 拳禅一如, first among the school's marks and grounds it in Bodhidharma's teaching 霊肉不二, spirit and flesh not two, which it explains as spirit and body being one; the discipline Bodhidharma brought to China, it says, spread from the monks to ordinary people. Its magazine's twenty-first number is the way of 拳禅一如 [4].
1961 to 1994, the creed spreads. A book on Zen of 1961 by 増永霊鳳 retells the story, placing the 拳禅一如 discipline at Shaolin and its spread among people pressed by bandits, and cites 宗道臣's 少林寺拳法 in its notes. The manga 空手バカ一代 (1971–77) has 大山倍達 vow not 剣禅一如 but 拳禅一如, a fiction that makes the sound of the sword's phrase its joke, and its reissue titles a volume with it. 長嶺将真, founder of 松林流, uses it in eight places of his book on Okinawan karate of 1975, and in the English of his memoir it is a chapter, Karate and Zen are One, and a section, Dedicated to Seeking Ken Zen Ichinyo. A 1982 magazine article, a Kodansha book of 1983 titled The Way of 拳禅一如, and a 1994 book from the Kyushu technical bureau of the Japan Karate Association carry it in the national library's catalogue [5].
The sense across time. One idea, and a family of names for it that the printed record shows from 1901 to 1916, three centuries after 沢庵. The early 剣禅一如 is most often a realm a man reaches: 宗矩 and 武蔵 attain to it in 1919, and 武蔵 reaches its height in 1936; 徳富 in 1916 has 一絲 in divine accord with it, and a writer of 1936 speaks of 山岡's 工夫 of it, the working at it. The first 拳禪一如, in 1934, is a ground karate reaches to become the life-giving fist. Shorinji Kempo gave the phrase a second sense: 宗道臣 in 1963 writes 拳禅一如の修行, the training itself, and the school defines it so today [4].
What is not a source. 沢庵's 不動智神妙録, which in the 1921 edition does not carry the words. Nothing pre-Meiji: the library's nine classical hits on 剣禅 are the two characters as accidental neighbors in lists. Nothing Chinese in Chinese Wikisource or the CBETA canon, in either form. No Meiji bilingual dictionary. Blyth is silent.
Today, the dictionaries. No dictionary on kotobank, which carries the 日国 and 大辞泉, has the four characters as a headword; the sword's 剣禅一致 is the only one of the family in the 日国. The phrase lives in dojos and their books [6].
The phrase in English
1949 to 2013. The sword's phrase, in the scholarship. It reached German first: Kammer's notes cite Ken-Zen als Einheit, by Reibun Yuki, very likely 結城令聞 of the 1940 book, in Karlfried Graf von Dürckheim's Japan und die Kultur der Stille of 1949. A Jesuit Zen teacher wrote in 1966 that the Japanese language has expressions like Ken-zen ichinyo, which means "fencing and Zen are one," a Boston exhibition catalogue of 1971 has 武蔵 live up to his maxim of kenzen itchi ("Swordsmanship and Zen are One"), and the scholars of Zen and the sword (Hurst 1998, Victoria 1997, Ives 2009, Haskel 2013) have used the romaji since; Sato's The Sword and the Mind (1985) carries the name back to the sixteenth century, telling of Kamiizumi Hidetsuna's attainment of kenzen itchi, and says 沢庵's 太阿記 helped promote the notion; Victoria records a Zen master who didn't know when the phrase "The sword and Zen are one" had first been used, a question the 1916 sentence answers as far as the printed record reaches [7].
1976 to 2023. The fist's phrase, in the karate books. The earliest known is a women's self-defense book of 1976 (kenzen itchi — harmony between the fist and Zen); Ohshima's 1973 English of 船越義珍's 空手道教範 (1935) has no such sentence, and a unity of fist and Zen is not the manual's: Gisho Funakoshi, of 船越's family and by his own word an outsider to karate, wrote it in the introduction he gave Harumi Suzuki-Johnston's English of the manual, about to be published in an English translation (Neptune Publications, copyright 2005, reissued 2016); Nakayama's Best Karate (1978, quoting 沢庵 as The sword and Zen are one), Farkas and Corcoran (1982, hand and Zen are altogether), Rielly's Shotokan histories (1998, 2000: The fist and Zen are the same, with calligraphy plates), Nagamine's memoir (2000, Karate and Zen are One), Nakamura (2001, the old saying Ken Zen Ichi Nyo), a dojo calligraphy in Rhinoceros Zen (2005, Karate and Zen as One), Bennett on Shorinji Kempo (2009, 2023: unity of ken and Zen, i.e. technique and spirit) and Hall's encyclopedia (2012, boxing and Zen are one) [8].
Today. The English body and mind is known first from a 1982 Bantam translation of Musashi, Ken-Zen Ichi Nyo, ("Body and Mind, Together"), copied since by popular books far from any dojo as an old Zen adage [9].
A reading
The honest history of this text is short. 拳禅一如 is a karate maxim of the twentieth century, in print in a collection of karate writing by 1934 and the first principle of a school founded in 1947, whose founder gave it a lineage from Bodhidharma that no text read before 1934 carries; in form it is the sword's 剣禅一如 with a fist for the sword, and that phrase is itself modern, in print from 1916 for what 沢庵 had taught 宗矩 three centuries earlier. I read the fist's phrase as made on the sword's: the two share three characters and a sound, the sword's is in print first, and the 1934 sentence uses the fist's as the sword's was most often used, of a realm one reaches; no witness says so, and the 1971 manga that does is fiction. So the four characters carry a real idea with a long pedigree and a name about a century old, and the pun is the point: ken is both, and 沢庵, 武蔵 and 鉄舟 stand behind the sword the fist replaced. The fist and Zen are one is the right literal; body and mind are one is the school's own gloss, in Japanese by 1963 and known in English from 1982. Both belong to the phrase, with the schools and the model named and no antiquity claimed. On a dojo wall, the four characters carry the modern karate creed.
Sources not seen
- 空手研究 (1934), 井上吉次郎 (1936), 摩文仁 (1934) and 摩文仁 and 仲宗根 (1940) past their excerpts; the writer of the 1934 sentence.
- 『禅宗』 of June 1901 and of August 1916, and 徳富's 大梅夜話解説 (1916), past their excerpts.
- The 1932 encyclopedia entry the index returns for 拳禅一致 without an excerpt.
- 宮城長順's 1936 lecture, and 長嶺将真's 1975 book and his 1986 memoir in Japanese past their excerpts.
- The 1968 円覚寺 monument itself.
- 沢庵's 太阿記; 笠井哲's papers of 2006 and 2010 past their titles; 結城令聞's 剱禅一如 (1940); Dürckheim's Japan und die Kultur der Stille (1949), known from Kammer's note.
- 宗道臣's 少林寺拳法, which 増永 1961 cites (the catalogue's earliest under that title is 1955).
A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.
References
- 沢庵宗彭, 不動智神妙録, before 1645, in 後藤亮一, ed., 禅門法語全集 第1巻, 1921, scan 6 and from scan 14; 笠井哲, 「剣禅一如」思想の源流: 沢庵と柳生新陰流, 印度學佛教學研究 55(1), 2006, and 沢庵『不動智』における「剣禅一如」思想の諸相, 59(1), 2010 (titles only), and 沢庵「剣禅一如」思想の近代人への影響について, 62(1), 2013, pp. 179–185. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/968098/1/6 · https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1390001205380670720
- 『禅宗』 75, June 1901, scan 22 (剣禅一致; excerpt only); 足立栗園, 胆力之錬養, 1909, scan 101 (剣禅一致); 加藤咄堂, 禅学観, 1912, scan 92, p. 166 (剣禅一味; the date on the library's slip at scan 148); 常磐大定, 釈迦牟尼伝, scan 131 (剣禅一味, a publisher's notice for a book of 1916, so a later printing of the 1908 book); 徳富蘇峰, 一絲和尚, in 『禅宗』 23(8), August 1916, scan 4, and in 徳富猪一郎 等, 大梅夜話解説, 1916, scan 21 (the earliest 剣禅一如; excerpts only), reprinted in 徳富猪一郎, 第一人物随録, 1926, scan 140, p. 266; 森大狂, 近古禅林叢談, 1919, scans 41 and 45; 加藤咄堂, 剣客禅話, 1916, scan 60; 平山蘆江, 花柳風景, 1936, scan 99, and 安田銕之助, 神皇命之道, 1936, scan 13; 森大狂, ed., 宮本武蔵遺墨集, 1921, scan 17 (excerpt only); 添田達嶺, 画人宮本武蔵, 1936, scan 83 (excerpt only); 剣哲宮本武蔵と武道展覧会記念目録, 高島屋大阪支店, 1936, scan 8 (excerpt only); the index's books with 鉄舟 in the title, oldest first (the first with the phrase 1968); 吉川英治, 宮本武蔵, at Aozora Bunko (eight volumes, from the 1989 edition); 大衆文学大系 14, 1972, scan 389, and 吉川英治全集 15, 1980, scan 203 (the commentary; excerpts only); 結城令聞, 剱禅一如, 1940 (NDL catalogue). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/11006063/1/22 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/757708/1/101 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823194/1/92 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/816597/1/131 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/11006172/1/4 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1182791/1/21 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1020405/1/140 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/963150/1/45 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3437779/1/17 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1875955/1/8 · https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001562/card52396.html
- 空手研究社, ed., 空手研究 第1輯, 興武館, 1934, scan 42 (拳禪一如), scan 53 (易筋 and 洗髓) and scan 55 (拳禪一味, quoting the 中國民報), excerpts only; 摩文仁賢和, 功防自在空手拳法十八の研究, 1934, scan 93 (拳禪一味, excerpt only); 井上吉次郎, 逆に, 1936, scan 32 (excerpt only); 摩文仁賢和 and 仲宗根源和, 攻防拳法空手道入門, 7th printing, 1940, scan 16 (拳禪一致の妙境, excerpt only); 宮城長順's 1936 lecture as reported in ja.wikipedia, 宮城長順, citing 嘉手苅徹 2017. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1027727/1/42 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1228376/1/32 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3456304/1/16
- Shorinji Kempo, official site, shorinjikempo.or.jp/what/ and /federation/compulsory/features; magazine, vol. 21 (2012), shorinjikempo.or.jp/magazine/; 宗道臣, 秘伝少林寺拳法: 禅の源流・中国伝来の護身術, 光文社, 1963, scans 27, 58 and 68 (excerpts only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2499685/1/68
- 増永霊鳳, 現代人の禅, 春秋社, 1961, scans 43–44 and the notes at scan 46 (excerpts only); 梶原一騎・つのだじろう, 空手バカ一代, 1971–77; 長嶺将真, 史実と伝統を守る沖縄の空手道, 新人物往来社, 1975, scan 7 (excerpt only), and Tales of Okinawa's Great Masters, Tuttle, 2000, ch. 12, at Internet Archive (talesofokinawasg0000naga); 鈴木義孝, 拳禅一如の道, Kodansha, 1983; 宮田実, 拳禅一如, 1994, National Diet Library catalogue. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2969265/1/44 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12148764/1/7
- kotobank, 剣禅一致 (the only headword); 拳禅一如 and 剣禅一如 (no entry). https://kotobank.jp/word/剣禅一致
- Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle, Zen: Way to Enlightenment, Taplinger, 1966, at Internet Archive (zenwaytoenlighte0000hugo); Jan Fontein, Zen Painting and Calligraphy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1971, at Internet Archive (zenpaintingcalli0000font); Brian Victoria, Zen at War, Weatherhill, 1997, at Internet Archive (zenatwar0000vict); G. Cameron Hurst, Armed Martial Arts of Japan, Yale, 1998, at Internet Archive (armedmartialarts0000hurs); Christopher Ives, Imperial-Way Zen, Hawai'i, 2009, at Internet Archive (imperialwayzenic0000ives); Peter Haskel, Sword of Zen, Hawai'i, 2013, at Internet Archive (swordofzenmaster0000hask); Hiroaki Sato, The Sword and the Mind, Overlook, 1985 (the Barnes & Noble edition), pp. 3 and 17; Reinhard Kammer, The Way of the Sword, tr. Betty J. Fitzgerald, Arkana, 1986, p. 108, note 36.
- Jun Sugano, Karate and Self-Defense for Women, Ward Lock, 1976, at Internet Archive (karateselfdefens0000suga); 船越義珍, Karate Do Kyohan, trans. Harumi Suzuki-Johnston, with an introduction by Gisho Funakoshi, Neptune Publications, copyright 2005, at Internet Archive (karatedokyohanma0000gich); Tsutomu Ohshima (trans.), Karate-Do Kyohan, Kodansha, 1973; Nakayama Masatoshi, Best Karate 3: Kumite 1, Kodansha, 1978, at Internet Archive (bestkarate3kumit0000naka); Emil Farkas and John Corcoran, Martial Arts: Traditions, History, People, Rutledge Press, 1982, at Internet Archive (martialartstradi00fark); Robin L. Rielly, Complete Shotokan Karate and Secrets of Shotokan Karate, Tuttle, 1998 and 2000, at Internet Archive (completeshotokan0000riel, secretsofshotoka0000riel); 長嶺将真, Tales of Okinawa's Great Masters, Tuttle, 2000, at Internet Archive (talesofokinawasg0000naga); 中村忠, Karate: Technique and Spirit, Tuttle, 2001, at Internet Archive (karatetechniques0000tada); Jeffrey Brooks, Rhinoceros Zen, 2005, at Internet Archive (rhinoceroszenzen0000broo); Alexander Bennett, The Martial Ways of Japan, Nippon Budokan, 2009, and The Insider's Guide to the Japanese Martial Arts, Tuttle, 2023, at Internet Archive (martialwaysofjap0000alex, insidersguidetoj0000alex); David A. Hall, Encyclopedia of Japanese Martial Arts, Kodansha USA, 2012, at Internet Archive (encyclopediaofja0000hall).
- The Book of Five Rings, Bantam, 1982, at Internet Archive (bookoffiveringsg00miya).
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