Travel to Japan

The Unfettered Mind: Writings of the Zen Master to the Sword Master

Format: Paperback
Author: Takuan Soho
ReleaseDate: 15 March, 1988
Publisher: Kodansha International
Rating:

I like Takuan's Zen...
. . I'd like to meet him. But not in a duel. The title of the book is appropriate. Do not park your mind. Zen is a no-parking zone. It is alright to park your tail on a cushion, though. To understand this book, you need to be a bit of a martial artist, and a bit of a zennist to begin with. Not for beginners, or for those who like their gruel thin.

the unfettered pickle
in japan there's a kind of pickle named after takuan. i know this is completely unhelpful and i'm going to be berated for this review, but i think it's funny.

also (on the horrific side of things), the idea of combining buddhism and warrior values is kind of scary to me. really what it leads to is "mindless" killing. ideas along this vein were used during WWII to encourage just that.

hate me if you want.

Neither zen nor sword
I knew for a fact that the Japanese used Buddhism as a vehicle for training the warrior class, and learning that the book consisted of letters from a Zen monk to a swordsman, expected the book to contain reasons why Buddhism and swordsmanship were compatible. I got interested in the book because of its references to swordsmanship and Buddhism, two seemingly incompatible subjects.

I found no satisfactory answers. Instead (within the first and second letters) was Soho's (the Zen monk) teaching to swordsmen to fulfill the master/servant contract. ". . . Therefore it is better not to inquire who this lord or that might be, but to simply think 'the lord,' and consider right-mindedness towards him without mentioning his name. " I found Soho's such Confucianism-oriented(!) teachings puzzling.

For those of you whom are approaching this from the spiritual (Buddhism) side like myself, there are parts of the book that touches the five skandhas (things of temporal existence), how consciousness arises, and the importance of not fixating one's mind in any one thing (this became the Sino-Japanese title of the book), but there are much elaborate and better Buddhism references available. For those of you want to approaching from the business side, I suppose you may gain some insight about the Japanese way of viewing the world, but there are too few maxims in this book that you could ponder over. This is no Sun Tzu.

There might be misunderstandings on my part, but to me the importance of the book seems historical.

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