The martial arts were born in China out of Bodhidarma’s search for spiritual enlightenment. It was not long, however, before the secular world became interested in them for very non-spiritual reasons. The martial arts spread beyond the monastery walls, and they became intimately involved with the world of courtly politics and economics.
The very practical nature of Chinese culture and thought had revivified the Buddhism that Bodhidarma brought from India. Buddhism lost the unworldly, ascetic bent it developed in India. In China, it was practiced widely in temples, which were intimately involved in local activity; Buddhism became perhaps too worldly, and again the core of the practice was being lost. It was necessary that the seed be carried to fresh ground. This was to be Japan.
The Middle Way Comes To Japan
Buddhism arrived in Japan in the middle of the sixth century from Korea. At that time, there was tremendous rivalry among the various clans competing for the favor of the Japanese Emperor. The Soga clan championed the cause of Buddhism, and it successfully influenced the royal family. Toward the end of the sixth century, Prince Shotoku Taishi, an intellectual and philosopher, threw his support to Buddhism. He became a prominent Buddhist scholar, writing commentaries on the sutras, or scriptures.
In the early part of the seventh century, the T’ang Dynasty (618-906) began its ascendancy in China. Remember that Shaolin’s influence was at its height under the T’angs. Japanese culture and administration patterned themselves after the T’ang Dynasty. The city of Nara, for example, the imperial city of Japan, was built on the model of Ch’ang-an in China.
On the political front in Japan, as the clans struggled for influence with the Emperor, his own real power started waning. The Emperor eventually became a figurehead, with the Fujiwara family becoming the real civil power in Japan. With the Emperor weakened and no central system of taxation or administration, Japan fell into an extended feudal period. The Fujiwaras, meanwhile, divided into warring factions, each one allying itself with a military house for support and protection. Eventually, the military class wrested power from the dominant families, and, in 1192, Yoritomo was made the first Shogun, or “Generalissimo.”
Buddhism had been planted firmly in the Japanese soil under the patronage of Prince Shotoku Taishi. In Japan, however, it was radically transformed into something unique, namely, Zen. Dogen, a Japanese Buddhist monk, went to China to study and learn first-hand the deeper teachings of Buddhism. In China, he went from temple to temple, inquiring and observing the practice. He was unsatisfied with what he saw and heard, and he decided to go back home to Japan. Before returning, he stopped at a temple and observed a very old monk kneeling on the ground, drying mushrooms in the sun.
Dogen was surprised that an old man, a senior monk of the temple, was doing the labor of the most junior monks.
“Why are you working in the hot sun doing the job of your younger subordinates when you are a senior monk of the temple?” asked Dogen.
“If I do not do this, if I do not work here and now, who could understand? I am not you, I am not others. Others are not me. So others cannot have the experience. I must dry these mushrooms here and now, today, at this moment. Now, go away so I may work!”’
Dogen was startled and had the experience of enlightenment (satori). He spent a year in the temple, studying with the old monk’s teacher. Dogen received the kesa of transmission from the Master and went home to Japan to introduce his practice of Zen to Japan.
In China and India, Buddhist practice came to be secondary to philosophical systems or to ethical and political norms. Dogen, as a result of his experience, and continuing in the line of succession from Shakyamuni Buddha, founded Zen based on two basic principles:
• Direct, personal experience.
• Practice of zazen (seated meditation).
What Dogen did was to strip away all the philosophical, intellectual and external superstructures of Buddhism that had been destroying the core, namely, the practice. The practice, that is zazen, now became the only thing. Everything else was secondary.
The quiet, spare simplicity of Zen appealed greatly to many elements in the Japanese character, and it quickly took root and interacted in many profound ways with Japanese history and culture. Zen became a way for the warrior, the aristocrat and the scholar. It stressed, among other things, a unity with nature. The Zen influence led to a very prolific period in Japanese landscape painting. No aspect of Japanese art and culture escaped the Zen influence. The most striking example, which remains today, is the Dai Butsu, the huge statue of Amida at Kamakura.
During the feudal period in Japan, the samurai, or warrior class, rose to positions of great influence and respect. Particularly during the Kamakura period in the thirteenth century, the samurai absorbed much from Zen. They, in turn, imbued Zen with much of their stoic attitude. The samurai reached their peak of power and influence in the Tokugawa period of the seventeenth century. In the hierarchy of social standing of that time, warriors were paramount, followed by peasants, artisans and, finally, merchants or traders. Under Tokugawa Ieyasu, the samurai cultivated intellect as well as physical skill and power in swordsmanship. The samurai combined kendo (way of the sword) with the butsudo (way of the Buddha) of Dogen; these two came into one, becoming bushido (way of the warrior). The samurai value system, incorporating Zen and a fighting spirit, is the foundation of karate’s value system.
We have seen so far that the precursors of the martial arts came not from a martial tradition, but from a monk’s quest for spiritual perfection. The Buddhist tradition went from India to China and to Japan, via Korea; along the way it was transformed, becoming Zen in the ground of Japanese culture. Along this way, the physical techniques and exercises of Bodhidarma were transformed also. The world looked on these powerful and effective techniques as useful and desirable, apart from any spiritual training. The initial and fundamental unity of Zen and the martial arts came to be broken, as it is in the twentieth century. In the samurai class, however, the Zen and martial art traditions were unified into a single way of being.
Developments in Okinawa
Parallel to these developments in Japan, martial arts techniques were being developed, for extremely practical reasons, in the Ryukyu Islands, on Okinawa. The islanders, having been forbidden to carry weapons by the ruling Japanese, developed self-defense techniques which they practiced in secret. These became known as Okinawa-te (hand techniques of Okinawa). In 1722, Sakugawa, who had studied kempo and stick-fighting techniques in China, systematized and developed the indigenous techniques to the point where the art became known as karate-no-Sakugawa (Chinese hand techniques of Sakugawa). This was the first use of the word “karate.”
In 1879, the Okinawa Islands were annexed by Japan. In 1916, a group of Okinawan masters, led by the renowned Gichin Funakoshi, gave the first official public demonstration of karate outside of Okinawa, in Kyoto, Japan. Master Funakoshi, an artist and philosopher, changed the character for kara from one meaning “Chinese,” to one which means “empty.” Karate then came to mean “empty hand.”