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THE FRUITS OF ZEN
89 attack is tremendous, and the speed of action is such that he who pauses to think would be, were his opponent's sword of steel, most neatly severed in two. According to the famous precepts of Takuan, the most important factor in Kendo is "Immovable wisdom", an intuitive state in which all is in motion save the inmost centre of the mind. This is Zen, for nothing could be more "direct" than the line of motion-ahead. “That the Japanese sword is to be used with both hands and that the Japanese warrior never carries a shield, show how well the Samurai appreciates the practice of Zen, in which the idea of ‘going-straight-ahead-ness' is strongly emphasised."1 Judo, the modern term for Jiu-Jitsu, is even more the application of Zen principles. It is, indeed, the Taoist wu-wei in action, for the power used is one's opponent's power, turned to his own undoing, and the victor wins by giving way. Here is no pitting of strength to strength: a girl can throw, and I have watched it a hundred times, a man nearly twice her size, for she marries her skill to his movement, and it is with his own force that he hits the mats with such a resounding thud. For myself, I knew the meaning of Zen for the first time on the night when, without “thought" or feeling, I leapt to opportunity and in the fraction of time that my opponent was off his balance, threw him directly, cleanly, utterly. Japanese art and culture is a very wide term, but wherever one looks in this most lovely field, one sees the light of Zen.
A Japanese house, and all within and about it, shows such chastity of taste as is only the product of a most refined and lovely mind, and the tokonoma, the alcoveshrine in the living-room, which holds but a single picture
1 Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk, p. ix.
