The Zen Sword: A Modern Interpretation

Abstract In medieval Japan, when the warrior was dominant in both the political and cultural life and when Zen was in its heyday as the warrior religion, no questions were raised about its involvement as a Buddhist sect in maximizing the warrior’s combat skills. Just as the earlier Buddhist sects, Tendai and Shingon, had perceived their roles to be protection of the country and its rulers from human and superhuman dangers, so latecomer Zen fitted into the same mold without protest or resistance. And both because of its coming into prominence just as the warrior Hōjō regency took over political power in Japan in the early thirteenth century and because of its peculiar fitness for dealing with the warrior mind described in Chapter 7, Zen became the religion of the warrior class par excellence. Its militancy was not “forced” on it by circumstances, by the large estates donated to its temples (as in the case of Shingon and Tendai), or by political ambitions such as those cherished by Pure Land Ikkō. It was simply that its approach to life was so adaptable to the character and aims of the dominant warrior class that the two became close Partners in action, with no embarrassing questions asked on either side about nonviolent Buddhism teaming up with the samurai as his enabler.