Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

In spite of the enduring popularity of Takuan’s essay, his advocacy of
a Zen approach to mental training represented a minority opinion amidst
the predominantly Confucian inclinations of Tokugawa-period martial treatises.
Confucian critics commonly asserted that martial artists could learn
nothing useful from Zen monks. Issai Chozan [153] (1659–1741), for example,
argued in his Tengu geijutsuron [154] (Performance Theory of the
Mountain Demons, 1727; reprinted in Hayakawa et al. 1915) that Zen
teachings are impractical because Zen monks are unconcerned with society:
They “abandon the proper relations between lords and ministers, ignore the
rites, music, punishments, and politics taught by the sages, and wish to discard
life and seek death” (Hayakawa et al.,1915, 320). Moreover, monks
lack military training. Buddhist awakening alone, Issai maintained, cannot
substitute for correct technique and suitable drill. For Issai and other Confucian
instructors, mental training in martial arts consists of devotion to
proper social relations, elimination of selfish private inclinations, acquiring
a clear sense of right and wrong, and discipleship under a Confucian military
instructor. Otherwise, the freedom of not minding (mushin) will be
nothing more than a kind of arrogant vacuity (gankû [155], “foolishness”).
Many Confucian instructors advocated quiet sitting (seiza [156]) rather
than Buddhist forms of sitting Zen (zazen) meditation as a simplified method
of mental cultivation. Quiet sitting differed from Zen meditation insofar as it
eliminated all distinctive aspects of Buddhist ritual, such as sitting in the lotus
posture, burning incense, observing fixed periods of time, and so forth (e.g.,
Tengu geijutsuron in Hayakawa et al. 1915, 337). The lack of these features
allowed its advocates to portray quiet sitting as more compatible with secular
life and less removed from worldly affairs. Noting that both Confucian instructors
and Zen monks advocated forms of meditation and discussed the
same conventional morality in similar terms, some scholars have referred to
Tokugawa-period Confucian teachings as a kind of “popular Zen” for laypeople
(e.g., Sawada). The ultimate result of these Confucian teachings, however,
was not the popularization of Zen practice but a decline in Buddhist piety
as their practitioners came to rely less on the worship of Buddhist divinities.
Adherence both to religious practices and to abstract metaphysics declined
throughout the late eighteenth and, especially, nineteenth centuries,
due to the widespread adoption of competitive forms of martial training and
to foreign threats. Significantly, competition developed first in rural areas
outside of the urban mainstream. The spread of martial art training among
peasants and other commoners has not been well studied, partially from
lack of scholarly interest but mainly because peasants did not write scholastic
martial art treatises. Nonetheless it is clear that many rural households
maintained or developed family traditions of martial art training and that as
rural society became more stratified, they began to practice them openly as
Religion and Spiritual Development: Japan 495