The Fudōchi Shinmyōroku

The Fudōchi Shinmyōroku (不動智神妙録; “The Marvelous Record of Immovable Wisdom”) is the longest of the three sword-and-Zen writings of the Rinzai monk Takuan Sōhō (沢庵宗彭, 1573–1645), alongside the Taiaki (太阿記) and the Reirōshū (玲瓏集). It is a letter addressed to Yagyū Munenori (柳生宗矩, 1571–1646), the shogunal fencing-master and head of the Edo Yagyū Shinkage-ryū line, expounding swordsmanship in the terms of Chan practice.

That addressee is what makes the text a natural companion to the Tsuki no Shō (月之抄), and it is read here through that lens. The transmission runs in a tight triangle: Takuan wrote this letter to Munenori; Munenori’s teaching is what his son Yagyū Jūbei Mitsuyoshi (柳生十兵衛三厳) records in the Tsuki no Shō; and several of Takuan’s set-pieces here resurface — mediated through Munenori — in Jūbei’s text. The cross-references below therefore follow the actual channel of transmission rather than merely noting thematic resemblance. Loci given for the Tsuki no Shō are to a parallel working transcription; where the correspondence extends to Jūbei’s actual wording, that is noted in the tables.

The base text we work from is the letter as printed in the Meiji 沢庵全集 (Takuan Zenshū; Ueda-ya Shoten, printed Meiji 30 / 1897, reprinted Meiji 31 / 1898), ending 不動智神妙録終. (Takuan Sōhō 1898) The translation is new, made directly from this witness. Full procedure and provenance — together with the corrected transcription, every emendation marked inline and open issues flagged for confirmation against the physical witness — are given under Methods and Sources.

Mumyō Jūji Bonnō

Mumyō jūji bonnō (無明住地煩悩; the affliction of abiding-place ignorance):

“Mumyō (無明) is written ‘brightness absent,’ and means delusion. Jūji (住地) means the rank of stopping. In Buddhist training there are what are called the fifty-two stages (五十二位); among those fifty-two, the place where the mind stops in one spot is called the abiding-place. Jū (住) has the sense ‘to stop’; to let the mind stop upon a thing — whatever the thing — is what is called stopping.”¹

“Whether the blow comes at you from the other side or you strike out yourself — if for even an instant you let the mind stop on the man who strikes, or on the striking sword, on the interval (hodo 程) or on the rhythm (hyōshi 拍子), your own workings all drain away and you will be cut down. Place the mind in the enemy and the enemy seizes it; so you must not lodge the mind even in your own body. To bind the mind fast inside your own body belongs only to the beginner’s stage of first taking up the training. Lodge it on the sword and the sword takes it; lodge it on matching the rhythm (hyōshi-ai 拍子合) and the rhythm-matching takes it; lodge it on your own sword and your own sword takes it. In every case the mind stops, and you become an empty husk with your hands seized (手取拔殻). This you will surely recognize. I say it by matching it against the Buddha-dharma. In the dharma we call this stopping mind ‘delusion’ (mayoi 迷); hence the term mumyō jūji bonnō.”²³

Shobutsu Fudōchi

Shobutsu fudōchi (諸佛不動智; the immovable wisdom of all Buddhas):

“Fudō (不動; immovable wisdom) is written with the graphs ‘does not move,’ and chi (智) is the chi of wisdom. But ‘immovable’ does not mean the insentient rigidity of a stone or a log. The mind moves toward the front, the left, the right — off in all ten directions and eight quarters, moving however it wishes — and yet does not stop for even an instant: that is what is called immovable wisdom.”⁴

“Fudō Myōō (不動明王) is depicted gripping a sword in his right hand and a rope in his left, teeth bared and eyes blazing, planted there to subdue the demons that would obstruct the dharma. He is not hidden away in some other world. His outward form is fashioned as the guardian of the dharma; his substance embodies this immovable wisdom, shown forth to sentient beings. The plain fool takes fright and resolves not to cross the dharma; the one near awakening reads in Fudō’s figure the disclosure of immovable wisdom, dispels every delusion, and — clarifying immovable wisdom — makes this very body Fudō Myōō. So ‘Fudō Myōō’ names nothing but the point in a person’s single mind that does not move, the state of not being overturned by things. Not being overturned means not stopping on things: to see a thing once and not let the mind halt on it is what is called immovable. For once the mind stops on a thing, all manner of discriminations stir in the breast; when it does not stop, the mind moves and yet does not move.”⁵

“Say ten men each aim a cut at you. Receive and turn aside one blow without letting the mind linger, throw each away as you take the next, and you will not fall short against all ten. The mind works ten times over for ten men, but if it stops on none, you meet each in turn and never fall short. Let it stop before a single man, however, and though you may parry his cut, at the second man your own working will have drained away.”⁶

“The Thousand-Armed Kannon (Senju Kannon 千手観音): if the mind stops on the one hand holding the bow, the other nine hundred and ninety-nine are useless. It is only because the mind stops in no one place that all the hands serve. Kannon does not literally carry a thousand arms on one body; the figure is made to show a person that once immovable wisdom opens, a thousand arms on one body all come into use. Or face a tree: fix on one red leaf and you fail to see the rest; face the whole tree with no fixed intent (同心もなく) and you take in all its many leaves unhindered. Fasten on one leaf and the rest go unseen; hold to none and all the hundreds and thousands are seen. Whoever grasps this is himself the thousand-armed, thousand-eyed Kannon.”⁷

“The plain fool simply believes, literally, that there are a thousand hands and eyes, and finds it marvelous. The half-learned man (なまものじり) scoffs that a thousand eyes on one body is a lie, and tears it down. Knowing a little better, one neither merely believes nor debunks, but reveres it on the plane of principle (dōri 道理): the dharma reveals its truth through a single object, and every Way is like this — Shintō above all is to be seen so. To take it as it stands is the fool; to smash it is worse still; within it lies principle. The Ways run this way and that, but at the last they settle in one place.”⁸

“Now, there is reason why one who has trained up from the beginner’s ground to the rank of immovable wisdom should turn back and fall again to the beginner’s abiding-place. Let me put it through your own swordsmanship. The beginner knows neither stance nor how to hold the sword, so the mind has nowhere in the body to stop; when a man strikes, he simply meets it, with no [deliberate] mind at all. Then he is taught this and that — how to take the sword, the guard-posts of the mind (心の番所), a host of instructions — and the mind comes to stop in a hundred places; wanting to strike a man, he is now peculiarly unfree. But as the days pile into months and years of practice, in the end his stance and his sword-handling all go mindless (皆心なくなりて), and he comes round to being like the very start, as though he knew nothing, as though nothing were there. Here beginning and end come to be alike: count from one to ten, and one and ten stand side by side as neighbors. In the musical scale too, count up from the lowest pitch to the highest and the very bottom and the very top lie adjacent.”⁹¹⁰

“The highest and the lowest come to resemble one another. So too with the dharma: matured to its height, a man looks like one who knows neither Buddha nor dharma, stripped of all ornament in the eyes of others. And so the beginner’s mumyō (無明; ignorance) and bonnō (煩悩; affliction) and the later fudōchi (不動智) become one; the operations of discriminating wisdom fall away, and he settles into the rank of no-mind, no-thought (mushin munen 無心無念). The dull fool shows no wisdom because he has none; the fully ripened man shows none because it is wholly absorbed and does not come out.”¹¹

“Only the half-knowing let their wisdom pop out at the forehead — which is absurd. The manners of today’s clergy must strike you as absurd in just this way; it shames me.”¹²

“There is training in principle and training in phenomena (ri no shugyō / ji no shugyō 理の修行・事の修行). Principle is as above: arrived at the end, one grasps at nothing, only lets the single mind go. But without the phenomenal training, the principle sits idle in the breast and neither body nor hand will move. Phenomenal training, in your swordsmanship, is the five stances (五箇; goka), the single graph (一字), and the many practices. Knowing the principle, you must still work freely in the particulars; however deft your sword-handling, if the seat of principle stays dark it will not do. The two, phenomena and principle (ji-ri 事理), must run like the two wheels of a cart.”¹³¹⁴

Kanfu Yōhatsu

Kanfu yōhatsu (間不容髪; jiān bù róng fà; not a hair’s breadth of gap):

“Let me put this too through your swordsmanship. ‘Gap’ means: press two things flush together and not even a hair will slip into the seam between them. Clap your hands and the crack sounds at once — no gap wide enough for a hair between the striking and the sound. The sound does not deliberate, pause, and then issue; strike, and the sound is already there. Let the mind stop on the sword a man has brought down against you, and a gap opens; in that gap your own working drains away. But if between his descending sword and your response there is no gap for a hair, the enemy’s sword becomes your sword (人の太刀は我太刀たるべし). This same mind is at work in the Zen question-and-answer (mondō 問答). In the dharma we dislike this stopping — this residue of mind left on things — and so call stopping ‘affliction.’ To ride a steep, racing river the way a ball tossed on it rides the current, sweeping straight down (ドッと) with no stopping mind: that we hold precious.”¹⁵¹⁶

Sekka no Ki

Sekka no ki (石火之機; shí huǒ zhī jī; the flint-spark instant):

“This too follows the sense just given. Strike flint and the light is out the moment you strike; struck, the fire issues in that same instant — no gap, no seam. Again it points to there being no interval for the mind to stop in. But take it merely as speed and you go wrong: the whole point is that the mind must not be lodged on anything. It is where the mind does not stop, even in the fast, that the sense lies — for if the mind stops, another can seize it. Resolve to be fast and be fast, and the very resolve to be fast robs you of your mind.”¹⁷

“There is the poem the Eguchi courtesan (江口の遊女) sent in reply to Saigyō (西行): ‘Since I hear you are one who has left the world behind — I only think, do not let your mind rest even in this passing lodging’ (世をいとふ人としきけば假の宿に心とめなと思ふばかりぞ). Take the poem as your own and read it well: 「心とめなと思ふばかりぞ」— ‘only, do not let the mind stop’ — is where the meaning sits.”¹⁸

“You may settle it by this too. In Zen, asked ‘What is Buddha?’ one thrusts up a fist; asked ‘the last meaning of the dharma,’ before the voice has died away one answers ‘a spray of plum blossom’ or ‘the cypress in the garden’ (庭前柏樹子). It is not that one weighs the words for lucky or unlucky — one prizes the mind that does not stop. The non-stopping mind takes on neither color nor scent. This substance of the untransferring mind is hailed as kami, revered as Buddha, called the Zen-mind or the ultimate meaning; yet the moment you deliberate and then speak it out, even golden words and marvelous phrases are jūji bonnō (住地煩悩).”¹⁹

“The flint-spark instant is the speed of a lightning-flash. Call out ‘Uemon!’ and the ‘Ai!’ that answers on the instant — that is immovable wisdom. Called ‘Uemon’ and then musing ‘now what could that be for?’ — that musing is jūji bonnō, the abiding, thing-moved, deluded mind of the ordinary fool. Called ‘Uemon’ and answering ‘Oh!’ straight off — that is the wisdom of the Buddhas. Buddha and sentient beings are not two; kami and human are not two. The mind that is like this is called both kami and Buddha. There are many Ways — Shintō, the Way of poetry (歌道), the Confucian Way (儒道) — but all of them speak of just this: the place where the single mind is clear.”²⁰

“Expounding the mind in words goes only so far. This one mind, as it bears on others and on one’s own person, works day and night at good deeds and at evil according to its karma — it drives men from their houses, it brings provinces to ruin, each according to the person’s station. Good and evil alike are the workings of the mind; yet since there is no one who can tell clearly what manner of thing this one mind is, everyone is deluded by it. People who do not know the mind the world has in plenty; one who has clarified it well is rare, hard to come upon even now and then. And when by chance someone does clarify and know it, to act upon it proves difficult in its turn. That a man can expound this one mind well does not mean he has clarified the mind. Lecture on water and the mouth is not wetted; explain fire ever so well and the mouth is not hot: without touching real water and real fire, they cannot be known.”²¹

“Expounding a book gets one no further; explain food ever so well and hunger is not cured. By the measure of one who explains, it will not be known. In the world the Buddha’s Way and the Confucian Way alike expound the mind; but where a man’s conduct does not answer to his exposition, his mind does not clearly know. Unless each person presses to the very bottom of, and awakens to, the original one mind in his own body, it stays dark. And that the minds of those who have pursued formal study (参學 sangaku) are not clear — many undertake such study, but it does not turn on that; the bearing of those who have studied is, one and all, bad. The clarifying of this one mind must issue from deep, sustained application (工夫 kufū).”²²²³

Kokoro no Okidokoro

Kokoro no okidokoro (心の置所; where to place the mind):

“Where shall one place the mind? Place it on the enemy’s bodily movement, and his movement seizes it. Place it on the enemy’s sword, and the sword seizes it. Place it where you mean to cut him, and that intention seizes it. Place it on your own sword, and your own sword seizes it. Place it where you think ‘I must not be cut,’ and that thought seizes it. Place it on the man’s stance, and his stance seizes it. In short — there is nowhere to place the mind.”²⁴

“Someone asks: if I let my mind go off elsewhere it fastens wherever it goes and I am beaten; so should I not press it down below the navel (臍の下), and, not letting it wander, let it turn and shift with the enemy’s movement? Yes — that too has its place. And yet, seen from the higher reaches of the dharma, ‘pressing it below the navel and not letting it wander’ is a low stage, not the ascent: it is the rank of drill and practice, the rank of the graph kei (敬; heedfulness), or the rank of what Mencius (孟子) meant by ‘seek the strayed mind.’ It is not the risen stage. (The matter of the released mind I have set down separately; you may look there.) For if you resolve to press it below the navel and never let it wander, the very resolve seizes the mind, and the working ahead of you becomes exceedingly unfree.”²⁵

“Another asks: if pressing it below the navel and leaving it idle is itself unfree and the working falls short, then where within the body should it go? I answer: place it in the right hand and the right hand seizes it, and the body’s working fails; in the eye, and the eye seizes it; in the right foot, and the foot seizes it. Fix it in any one place and all the rest of the body’s working fails.”²⁶

“Then where should it be placed? I answer: place it nowhere, and it spreads through the whole body, extended and diffused throughout — so when the hand is wanted it meets the hand’s need, when the foot is wanted the foot’s, when the eye is wanted the eye’s, answering the need of each place as it pervades them all. Fix it in one spot and that spot seizes it, and the working fails. Deliberate, and the deliberation seizes it; so leave neither deliberation nor discrimination behind — cast the mind loose through the whole body (總身), let it stop nowhere, and, present in each place, it meets each use without missing.”²⁷

“To place the mind in one spot is called ‘falling into the lopsided’ (偏 hen). Lopsided means settled to one side; upright (正 sei) means gone through to every quarter. The upright mind is stretched through the whole body and clings to no one side; when it settles in one place and one side falls short, that is the lopsided mind, and this we dislike. To be rigid in all things is to fall into the lopsided, and the Way disdains it.”²⁸

“Have no thought of where to place it, and it stretches and diffuses and pervades. Placing it nowhere, use at each moment the mind already present in each place, according to the enemy’s movement. Fix it in one place and, having to draw it back out, it stops there and the working drains away. Tether the mind like a cat on a leash (繋ぎ猫), set on not letting it go elsewhere, and by holding it back you let yourself seize it; leave it loose within the body and it will not run off.”²⁹

“Only the contrivance of stopping it nowhere — that, entire, is the training. To stop the mind nowhere is the eye of it, the vital point. Place it nowhere and it is everywhere. Even sending it outward: place it to one side and nine quarters fall short; do not, and it is in all ten.”³⁰³¹

Honshin Mōshin

Honshin mōshin (本心妄心; original mind and deluded mind):

“The original mind (本心 honshin) does not stop in one place but stretches and spreads through the whole body entire. The deluded mind (妄心 mōshin) broods on something and congeals in one place; when the original mind congeals and gathers into one place, it becomes what we call the deluded mind. Lose the original mind and the workings of every part fall short; hence keeping it from being lost is itself the original mind. The original mind is like water, which halts nowhere; the deluded mind is like ice — and with ice you can wash neither hand nor head. Melt the ice into water so it flows everywhere, and you may wash hands, feet, and all. Let the mind congeal in one place and stop on one thing, and it is ice, frozen and not freely usable, as one cannot wash with ice. Melt the mind, use it as water spreading through the whole body, and send it where you will: this is the original mind.”³²³³

Ushin no Kokoro, Mushin no Kokoro

Ushin no kokoro / mushin no kokoro (有心之心無心之心; the mind of presence and the mind of no-mind):

“The mind of presence (有心の心) is the same as the deluded mind. 有心 reads aru-kokoro, ‘the mind that has [something]’: in any matter, the point where thought is pressed to one side. Because there is something the mind dwells on and discrimination and deliberation arise, we call it the mind of presence. The mind of no-mind (無心の心) is the same as the original mind above: the mind at a moment with nothing congealed and fixed, no discrimination and no deliberation — the mind spread through the whole body and pervading the entire frame. It is the mind placed nowhere. It is not like stone or wood; having no place where it stops is what we call no-mind. Stop, and there is something in the mind; where there is no stopping, there is nothing in it. Nothing in the mind is called the mind of no-mind, or no-mind-no-thought (無心無念).”³⁴

“Once this no-mind ripens, it does not stop on one thing and does not fall short at any one thing; like water brimming along a channel, it stays present in this body and comes forth to answer whenever a use arises. A mind fixed and halted does not work freely. A cartwheel turns because it is not rigid; jam it and it will not turn. So the mind: fix it at any moment and it will not work. If there is something you are brooding on, you may hear a person speak and not hear it — because the mind has stopped on the thing brooded on, leaning to one side; and once leaning, you hear and do not hear, see and do not see, because there is something in the mind. ‘Something’ means there is a thing you are thinking of. Remove it, and the mind is no-mind, working only when there is a use and meeting that use. Yet the very mind that means to remove the thing becomes, again, a thing within the mind. Do not think about it, and it departs of itself, becoming no-mind of itself. Do this always, and in time it goes there on its own; force it suddenly and it will not go. There is the old poem: ‘To think ‘I will not think’ is itself to think on something; do not even think of not thinking — that is my wish for you’ (思はじと思ふも物を思ふなり思はじとだに思はじや君).”³⁵³⁶

reading note (editorial apparatus; omitted from print)

どこ〈どフこ〉にも置かぬ心なり.

Suijō ni Koro wo Utsu

Suijō ni koro wo utsu; dajaku sureba sunawachi tenzu (水上打胡蘆子捺著即轉; shuǐshàng dǎ húlúzǐ nàzhuó jí zhuǎn; strike the gourd on the water — press it, and at once it rolls):

“To ‘press the gourd’ (胡蘆子 koro) is to push it flat with the palm. Toss a gourd onto water and press it, and it slips off to the side with a flick — do what you will, it stops in no one place. The mind of one who has arrived stops on nothing for even an instant: it is like pressing a gourd on water.”³⁷³⁸

Ō Mu Shojū

Ō mu shojū ni shite sono kokoro wo shōzu (応無所住而生其心; yīng wú suǒ zhù ér shēng qí xīn; dwelling nowhere, let the mind arise):

“This line — from the Diamond Sutra (金剛経)³⁹ — is recited ō-mu-sho-jū-ji-shō-go-shin (オウムシヨジウジシヤウゴシン); construed, it reads ō mu shojū ni shite sono kokoro wo shōzu. When, in doing any of the ten thousand tasks, the intention to do it arises, the mind stops on that thing; so, let the mind arise with no place where it stops. If it does not arise where it should, the hand will not move; and when it moves, to do the thing yet not let the arising mind stop there — that makes a master in any Way. From this stopping mind arises the mind of attachment; from it, transmigration (輪廻); this stopping mind becomes the bond of birth-and-death. See blossoms and crimson leaves — let the seeing mind arise, but the point is not to let it stop there.”⁴⁰

“Jien (慈圓) has the poem: ‘The blossom that would scent this brushwood gate — let it be as it will; I have gazed and gazed, and oh, this hateful world’ (柴の戸に匂はん花もさもあらばあれ眺めにけりな恨めしの世や). The blossom gives its scent in no-mind, while I lodged my mind on it and gazed — the mind that let itself be dyed is what he calls hateful. Seeing or hearing, not to let the mind stop in one place is the utmost.”⁴¹

“The graph kei (敬; heedfulness) — ‘hold to one and go nowhere’ (shu-itsu mu-teki 主一無適; zhǔ yī wú shì) — means fixing the mind in one place and not sending it elsewhere; and though you later draw and cut, the vital thing is not to send the mind toward the cutting. Above all in receiving a lord’s command the kei mind is the eye of it. The dharma too has a kei mind: to strike the keibyaku bell one sounds it three times, joins the palms, and reverently announces — this mind, first calling on the Buddha, is one in meaning with 主一無適 and ‘single-minded, undistracted’ (一心不亂). And yet in the dharma the kei mind is not the utmost: it is a method of drill, for taking hold of the mind so it does not scatter. Let the years of it pile up, and you reach the rank where, drive the mind off in any direction, it is free. The rank of 応無所住 above is the utmost. The kei mind is the rank of holding the mind reined without a moment’s slack, thinking ‘let it go and it scatters’ — a temporary matter of not scattering; to be forever thus is unfree. As when a sparrow-chick has been caught: keep the cat always on a tight leash and it is never tamed. Make your mind unfree, like a leashed cat, and its working will not come at will. Train the cat well, then loose the leash and let it go where it likes, so it can sit beside the sparrow and not seize it — that is the sense of 応無所住而生其心. Cast your mind loose like the freed cat; let it go where it likes and use it so it does not stop.”⁴²

“Put to your swordsmanship: do not stop the mind on the striking hand; forget the hand entirely, strike and cut the man. Do not place the mind on the man. The man is empty (空), you are empty, the striking hand and sword are empty — know this, and do not be seized by the emptiness either. When Wuxue, the Kamakura Zen master (無學禪師 = Wúxué Zǔyuán / Mugaku Sogen), was seized in the disorders of great Tang and about to be beheaded, he composed the verse ending ‘in the flash of lightning, I cut the spring wind’ (電光影裏斬春風), and they say the soldier threw down his blade and fled.”⁴³

In Mugaku’s mind, the sword whipped up in a flash is like a lightning-flash: in that glare there is no mind and no thought. The striking blade has no mind; the man who cuts has no mind; I who am cut have no mind. The cutter is empty, the sword empty, I who am struck empty — so the striker is no man, the striking sword no sword, and I who am cut, in that lightning-glare, am as the spring wind cut by a blade sweeping the spring sky: a mind that stops on nothing. The blade that cut the wind leaves no trace on the steel.

To do the ten thousand things with the mind thus forgotten clean away is the rank of mastery. In dance the hand takes the fan and the foot stamps; think “I will do these hands and feet well, dance well,” fail to forget them clean, and you cannot be called skilled. Let the mind still stop on hand and foot, and none of the performance is fine. Every act done without casting the mind away entire is flawed.⁴⁴

Kyū Hōshin

Kyū hōshin (求放心; qiú fàngxīn; seek the strayed mind)⁴⁵:

“This is Mencius’s teaching: ‘seek out the strayed mind and return it to yourself.’ As, when a dog or cat strays elsewhere, you seek it and bring it home — the mind being the master of the body, when the mind that would take a bad road runs off, why not seek it back? Quite so.”⁴⁶

“And yet Shào Kāngjié (邵康節) said ‘the mind must be released’ (心要放) — and it flips clean over. His meaning: keep the mind seized and pinned and it tires like a leashed cat and the body cannot work; so use it well, letting it neither stop nor be dyed by things, set it loose and drive it off wherever it will. ‘Because the mind is dyed and halted by things, do not let it be dyed, do not let it stop, seek it back’ — that is the beginner’s rank. Be like the lotus, unstained by the mud (蓮の泥に染まぬ): in the mud, yet untroubled by it. Make the mind a well-polished crystal that enters the mud and takes no stain, and send it where it will. Rein it in and it is unfree. To hold it reined belongs to the beginner’s stage; live your whole life at just that, and the upper grade is never seized — you end at the lower.”⁴⁷

“At the time of practice, Mencius’s ‘recover the strayed mind’ is good; at the ultimate, it is Shào Kāngjié’s ‘the mind must be released.’ In the master Zhongfeng’s (中峯和尚 = Zhōngfēng Míngběn) words there is 具放心 — be furnished with the released mind — one in sense with Shào Kāngjié: seek the released mind, do not rein it in and fix it in one place. He also says ‘be furnished with non-backsliding’ (具不退轉): hold a mind that does not regress. A man may do well once or twice, then be tethered again; to hold a mind that does not backslide even in the ordinary run — that is what is meant.⁴⁸

reading notes & witness collation (editorial apparatus; omitted from print)

Header 〔求其〕放心〈不見放心〉 — resolved 2026-07-27; 孟子〈孟十〉; 邵康節〈郡東節〉…心要放〈必要故〉 (the Shào Kāngjié / 心要放 reference — confirmed by the correct 邵康節・心要放 later in the section); 疲れ〈勞れ〉猫; 蓮〈遂〉の泥; 〔常に絶えず〕〈常に無い裡に〉 — not resolved: the Fukui witness reads 常に無い裡に likewise, so the difficulty belongs to the text rather; the supplement stands as conjecture. Fukui (p. 108) also reads 又つかれて where the Zenshū has 又つなかれて; the Zenshū reading is retained. Stray 〆 deleted.

Second witness — Fukui 1937. Printed pp. 106–108 (NDL 1074542, images 62–63) settle two readings flagged here.

Locus	沢庵全集 (1897/98)	福井 1937	Verdict
section head	不見放心 (so printed, heading and text)	孟子が謂ふ求其放心	不見 is a misprint in the Zenshū itself, not an OCR error; Fukui gives the full Mengzi 6A.11 form 求其放心
Zhongfeng’s phrase	中峯和尚の語に見放心 (so printed)	中峯和尙の語に、具放心	見 is an error for 具

The second correction is the substantive one, and three things converge on it. Fukui reads 具; the same passage continues 又具不退轉と云ふ、是も中峯和尙の言葉なり, so 具 + X is the construction Takuan is quoting twice over; and Munenori cites the identical phrase in the Heihō Kadensho §31 as 中峰和尙云具放心心, printed there with kaeriten as 具二放心心一 — read 「放心心を具す」. Zhongfeng’s saying is therefore 具放心(心), possess the released mind, and the Zenshū’s 見 is a graphic error.

Kyūsuijō ni Kyūshi wo Utsu

Kyūsuijō ni kyūshi wo utsu; nen-nen teiryū sezu (急水上打毬子念々不停留; jí shuǐshàng dǎ qiúzǐ niànniàn bù tíngliú; on rushing water strike the ball — thought after thought, it never halts):

“Toss a handball onto steeply racing water and it rides the waves, bobbing on and on without ever stopping — that is the sense.”⁴⁹⁵⁰

Zengo Saidan

Zengo saidan (前後際斷; qiánhòu jì duàn; cutting off before-and-after):

“To fail to discard the prior mind, or to let the present mind trail on behind — both are faults. Cut away the interval between ‘before’ and ‘now’: this is what ‘sever and release the boundary of before-and-after’ means. It is: do not let the mind linger.”⁵¹

Tsuki no Shō. 前後の際 — the seam between before and now — is the temporal face of kizen (機前; before the trigger), the pre-arising instant Jūbei’s text isolates.

Closing

The closing is a letter of remonstrance to Munenori:

From here Takuan drops the doctrine and appends personal-political counsel. It is translated complete, but stands apart from the doctrinal cross-reference apparatus — its value is biographical rather than as a Tsuki no Shō parallel.

“Something I have privately had in mind, which I felt I ought to offer as remonstrance — though I wondered how my foolish thoughts might seem, I take this timely occasion to set down the gist of what I have observed.”⁵²

“You, being in swordsmanship a master without peer in past or present, now enjoy rank, stipend, and a fine name in the world. Sleeping or waking, never forget this great and generous favor; think only, morning and evening, of repaying it and exhausting your loyalty (忠).”⁵³

“To exhaust loyalty is first to rectify your own mind and govern your person, holding not the least duplicity toward your lord, resenting and blaming no one, never slack in daily service; at home, filial to your parents, no impropriety between husband and wife, correct in the rites, not doting on concubines, cutting off the way of lust; toward your parents, grave and guided by the Way; using subordinates without private partiality, employing and keeping good men near, letting them remonstrate your shortcomings, rectifying the province’s governance, keeping the unworthy at a distance. Then good men advance day by day, and even the unworthy are, of themselves, transformed by the lord’s love of the good, leave evil and move to good. When ruler and ministers, high and low, are all good, desires thin and extravagance ceases, the province fills with resources and the people are richly governed, child cleaves to parent as hand and foot shield the head — and the province of itself grows peaceful.”⁵⁴

This is the beginning of loyalty.

“Deploy these men of iron (金鐵), undivided in heart, in the many needs of the times, and command though you may a thousand or ten thousand men, they follow your will. Just as, in the Thousand-Armed Kannon spoken of before, when the single mind is upright the thousand hands all serve — so when your swordsman’s mind is upright, the working of the single mind is free and subdues thousands of enemies with one blade. Is this not great loyalty?”⁵⁵

“When the mind is upright, others cannot know it from without. Where a single thought arises there are two, good and evil; weigh their root, do the good and not the evil, and you are of yourself upright. To know a thing evil and not stop it comes of the pain of your own attachment — a fondness for lust, or willful extravagance; because there is some working the mind favors, though a good man stand before you, if he does not suit your mood you spurn his good counsel, while a witless man who suits your mood you raise up and employ. So a good man, present, is as if absent when unused. Then though there be thousands, in a crisis not one will stand for the lord’s use. That witless young evildoer who once caught your fancy, being from the first not upright of mind, will never think to throw down his life when the moment comes; that a man not upright of mind ever served his lord’s need, I have never heard from ancient times. In your taking-on of disciples too, they say there is such a thing, and I find it troubling. All this comes of being drawn, by a partiality for some diversion (数寄), into that sickness, and falling into evil unaware. A man thinks others do not know — but nothing is more manifest than the minute (微): if your own mind knows, then heaven and earth, the spirits, and all the people know. To preserve the province in this way is truly perilous — indeed it would be great disloyalty.”⁵⁶

“However fiercely you alone mean to exhaust your loyalty, if your own house is not in harmony, and the people of Yagyū valley — the one district that is your fief 〔interlinear gloss: 但馬守の領所, the domain of Tajima-no-kami〕 — turn against you, then all will go awry. To judge whether a man’s goodness is sound, judge by the ministers he loves and uses and the friends he keeps: a good lord’s near ministers are all good; an unrighteous lord’s are all unrighteous, and then all men slight him and neighboring provinces despise him. ‘The province takes the good man as its treasure.’ Take this well to heart. Put away your private unrighteousness, keep the small man at a distance, love the worthy — do this with urgency, and the province’s governance grows ever more correct and you become the first of loyal ministers.”⁵⁷

“Above all, as to the conduct of your son (御賢息): if the parent’s person is not upright, to reproach the child’s faults is backwards. First make your own person upright, and then your admonitions land, and others become upright of themselves; the younger brother Naizen-dono 〔御舎弟内膳殿 — identification to verify〕, imitating his elder brother’s conduct, will be upright, and father and sons alike become good men — an auspicious thing. Taking and discarding are to be done by righteousness (義). Now, being a favored minister (寵臣), you receive thick gifts from the various daimyō; to forget righteousness for greed — never do this. And you are fond of dance (亂舞), proud of your own skill, pressing yourself on the daimyō and urging your performance upon them; this I think simply a sickness. They say the lord above calls it mere sarugaku-like play, and that daimyō skilled at flattering greetings you strongly promote even in the lord’s presence — reconsider this well.”⁵⁸

“There is the poem: (心こそ心迷はす心なれ心に心心ゆるすな). ‘It is the mind itself that leads the mind astray — mind; do not let the mind give the mind free rein’

“End of the Fudōchi Shinmyōroku (不動智神妙録終).”⁵⁹

Methods and Sources

The translation is a new rendering made directly from the primary text with machine assistance (Claude Opus 4.8, Anthropic). It is not derived from currently published work such as William Scott Wilson’s The Unfettered Mind or the Japanese Ichikawa modern rendering.

The base text is the letter as printed in the Meiji 沢庵全集 (Takuan Zenshū; Ueda-ya Shoten, printed Meiji 30 / 1897, reprinted Meiji 31 / 1898). (Takuan Sōhō 1898) Because the letter is vernacular sōrōbun (候文) rather than kanbun, no yomikudashi layer is needed; the embedded Chinese phrases (section headers, the Diamond Sutra line, Wúxué Zǔyuán’s gāthā) are given readings where they occur.

Writing conventions follow house style:

• the witness text is set in blockquotes, re-lineated into paragraphs and interleaved with the translation; the paragraph breaks are editorial (matched to the translation) and do not reflect lineation in the witness;
• OCR emendation comments sit directly beneath the blockquote paragraph containing the flagged reading;
• uncertain or supplied readings are marked 〔…〕;
• graph-level OCR emendations are noted per section;
• readings still requiring confirmation against the physical witness carry an HTML comment in the base-text file.

The Fudōchi Shinmyōroku is also printed in 福井久藏 撰輯『秘籍大名文庫』第二 (東京麴町・厚生閣, 1937; NDL Digital Collections PID 1074542), where it stands as an appendix (附) at printed pp. 87–113, NDL images 52–65, following the Heihō Kadensho and the Shinkage-ryū Sotomono in the same volume. Page formula: NDL image n = printed pp. 2n−18, 2n−17. This serves as a second witness to the orthography.

Variant copies of the work are numerous; Fukui takes as his base an old manuscript held by Banshō-an (萬松庵藏の古寫本), collated against a scroll in the possession of Masuda Takashi (益田孝, 1848–1938), following a 澤庵虎錄 text. For the Heihō Kadensho in the same volume he states a quite different base — 子爵鍋島直繩家本 (p. 2) — so the Fudōchi is not simply carried along with the Nabeshima material.

Fukui and the Zenshū are not two printings of one line but two witnesses descending independently, so their agreements bear on the reading itself and not merely on whether a given graph survived scanning intact. For example, where 常に無い裡に and 早ちかへ處入 appear identically in independent lines, the difficulty is archetypal rather than a scribal accident in either.

Fukui is an editor working from manuscripts and his 參訂 means the printed text is already a collation rather than a single witness — agreement with the Zenshū could in principle reflect his choice among variants. His own note (異本が少くない) is a caution against treating any two-witness agreement as authoritative.

On the addressee, Fukui states the traditional attribution as fact — 澤庵禪師が宗矩の爲に筆を執つた (p. 1), and again at p. 6, 澤庵宗彭禪師が柳生但馬守宗矩の爲に劍法と禪法とを說いたもの, adding that Munenori presented it to the third shōgun Iemitsu.

Correspondences with Tsuki no Shō

Below we provide a table summarizing concepts found in both the Fudōchi Shinmyōroku with Tsuki no Shō.

Fudōchi Shinmyōroku	Tsuki no Shō	Point of contact
lotus / crystal unstained in mud	水月 suigetsu, pp. 24–27	contact without staining
Mencius 求放心 = beginner; Shào Kāngjié 心要放 = adept	一習之事, p. 44 (格ニ入って格を離れる — entering the form and leaving the form; 初心ニかへる); 三つ之習, p. 35 (上=思ふ心 deliberate, 下=おのづからなる spontaneous)	confirmed 2026-07-18 — the bind-then-release staging is stated in the TnS’s own pedagogy
動きながら卒度も止らぬ (moves yet never stops)	水月 suigetsu, pp. 24–27	the moon acts on the water yet clings to nothing
not stopping across ten attackers	神妙劍 shinmyōken, pp. 28–29	the non-stopping cut as the “divine-subtle” sword
心の番所 (guard-posts of the mind)	目付 metsuke, pp. 9–11	番所 does not recur in the TnS witness (full-corpus check, 2026-07-18: zero hits) — the analogue is the metsuke catalogue, not shared vocabulary
事理二つ、車の輪の如し	事理一体, naming preface p. 1 (the sole TnS 事理 locus: Takuan’s added brush exhausts 以心伝心・事理一体・本分之滋味)	confirmed 2026-07-18 — the TnS’s one 事理 usage sits in its Takuan frame-story itself
初と終同じ; 十二律 (high pitch ≈ low)	一習之事, p. 44 (至り至テハ初心ニかへル; 初心ニかへりたる芸は名人; 格ニ入って格を離れる); 後ヲ捨, p. 48 (老テフタヽビ稚児ニ成ル)	ripeness circling back to the beginner’s ground, stated on both sides
the stopping mind = 迷 / 無明住地煩悩	病気を去る事, pp. 31–32	fixation named as the “sickness” (byōki 病気) to be removed
mind lodging on 拍子合 (rhythm-matching)	拍子・位, pp. 15–16; and the school’s formal denial 当流ニハ拍子ト云事なし (定拍子 p. 40; 病気ヲ去 tail p. 32)	rhythm-fixation as a named failure mode — which the TnS resolves by dissolving “rhythm” into mind/breath
mind lodging on 程 (hodo; interval)	定拍子, p. 40 — the definitional locus: ウチツクル所ヲバ「ホド」ト云 (“the striking-point is called hodo”); also ほど p. 54 (三太刀), ホト p. 72	the interval as a site of fixation — Takuan’s 程 answers the TnS’s own technical hodo
間不容髪; clap → sound with no seam	空の拍子 kū no hyōshi, p. 32; 間之拍子歩之事, p. 30 (ナキ所間ノ拍子 — the rhythmless interval as rhythm); 拍子, pp. 15–16	the ma (間) with no gap for the mind
人の太刀は我太刀たるべし	合スル, p. 50; and the 取られて勝 family — 水月ヲ敵ニ取ラレテ勝 p. 24 (敵ヨリ水ヲ取タラハ我取リタルニモ同前), 敵手字種利剣ヲ遣懸ケサセテ勝 p. 22, 座ヲ敵ニトラレテ勝 p. 29	the opponent’s action absorbed as one’s own, a named TnS pattern
石火之機; 稲光のはやき (lightning-quickness)	seeds the gāthā quoted at §応無所住	the flint-spark instant as non-stopping, not mere speed
神と人二つ無し (kami/human non-dual)	Marishiten (摩利支天) as keeper of the art, Rakusaku (front matter)	Shintō/Buddhist fusion Takuan licenses here
電光影裏斬春風 (arrives at §応無所住)	Jo preface, pp. 3–5, as 電光影中斬春風	the variant to pin — full collation below
the section title itself — 心の置所	心のおく所之事, p. 51 — the same entry-title on both sides; the TnS answers it: 置所ハ付所也…心ヲ置トハ西江水也、置所也	title-level correspondence where Takuan concludes “place it nowhere and it fills the whole body,” the TnS names the placing 西江水
catalogue of wrong placements (敵の太刀, 我太刀, 切られじと思ふ所, 人の構)	目付 metsuke, pp. 9–11	the enumerated fixations of gaze/mind
總身に捨て置く; whole-body suffusion	病気を去る事 tail, pp. 31–32; 西江水, pp. 42–43; 惣身ニテ取, p. 30	suffusion as the cure for fixation
臍の下 ranked as beginner’s expedient	中墨, pp. 27–28 (ヘソノマハリ五寸四方 — the shinmyōken’s seat); 西江水, p. 42 (腰より下ニ得心)	confirmed 2026-07-18 — with a live doctrinal tension: Takuan subordinates the navel-focus as a training expedient, while the TnS keeps 中墨/腰より下 as standing doctrine and locates the beyond-stage in 西江水 itself
正/偏 (upright/lopsided)	留ル, p. 41 (心ノ一方ヘカタヨリテ留ル事ヲキラウ…偏ならざる心持専也)	confirmed 2026-07-18 — one-sided leaning named and shunned as attachment
本心 = water, 妄心 = ice	水月 suigetsu, pp. 24–27	mind as water; fixation as freezing
melt to flow through 總身	西江水, pp. 42–43	whole-body suffusion
妄心 = brooding congealed in one place	無心 mushin, pp. 47–49	freedom vs. fixation
無心 pervading 總身, placed nowhere	無心・無刀 mushin/mutō, pp. 47–49	no-mind as whole-body non-fixation
“not like stone or wood”	§諸佛不動智 (this letter)	no-mind ≠ insentience
hear-yet-not-hear / see-yet-not-see	目付 metsuke, pp. 9–11	fixation blinds perception
cartwheel turns because not fixed	事理 (§諸佛不動智)	free rotation vs. jamming
gourd on water — pressed, slips free	水月 suigetsu, pp. 24–27	contact without adhesion
電光影裏斬春風 (Wuxue’s verse quoted)	Jo preface, 電光影中斬春風, pp. 3–5	shared gāthā; 裏/中 variant (collated above)
人も空、我も空 (echoing 人空法亦空)	敵モナシ我モ無, pp. 47–48 (我ニ心ナケレバ敵ニモ心ナシ; the Mansei white-wake poem; Takuan’s reply-waka); 空之拍子, p. 32 (虚空/心空・本空/凡空 taxonomy)	confirmed 2026-07-18 — enemy-and-self both emptied, with Takuan quoted in the TnS entry itself
freed-cat / no-fixation	無心・無刀 mushin/mutō, pp. 47–49	mastery as forgetting the instrument

The verse 電光影裏斬春風 deserves a fuller note. Wúxué Zǔyuán’s death-verse in full (13th c.; composed at Nengren-si when Yuan troops threatened him):

“乾坤無地卓孤筇 (qiánkūn wú dì zhuó gū qióng) “且喜人空法亦空 (qiě xǐ rén kōng fǎ yì kōng) “珍重大元三尺劍 (zhēnzhòng dà Yuán sān chǐ jiàn) “電光影裏斬春風 (diànguāng yǐng lǐ zhǎn chūnfēng)

“In heaven and earth no ground to plant my lone staff; yet I rejoice — the person is empty, and the dharmas too are empty. I salute the great Yuan’s three-foot sword: in the flash of lightning it cuts the spring wind.”

Collation of the fourth line across the three witnesses:

Witness	Fourth line	3rd graph
Wúxué Zǔyuán, received death-verse (佛光國師語録 tradition)	電光影裏斬春風	裏 (ri; within/behind the flash)
Fudōchi Shinmyōroku, this letter (沢庵全集 witness)	電光影裏斬春風	裏 (ri)
Fudōchi Shinmyōroku, this letter (福井 1937 witness, p. 104)	電光影裏斬春風	裏 (ri)
Tsuki no Shō, Jo preface (pp. 3–5)	電光影中斬春風	中 (chū; in the midst of)

Takuan’s 「人も空、我も空」 here paraphrases the verse’s second line 人空法亦空, so he draws on the whole quatrain, not the last line alone.

Takuan’s letter reproduces the received 裏; the Tsuki no Shō is the lone witness carrying 中.

The two graphs are near-synonymous — “within” against “in the midst of the lightning-flash” — so the sense is unaffected. What matters for provenance is the direction of divergence. Munenori received Takuan’s letter with 裏, and Jūbei’s own text carries 中, so the substitution arose inside the Yagyū house line. The economical reading is a memorial or scribal variant in the Tsuki no Shō copy rather than a distinct verse set against Takuan’s own citation of it: two independent printings — the Zenshū of 1897/98 and Fukui’s of 1937 — both read 裏.⁶⁰

End Notes

Contents: Takuan Sōhō on the Sword · ← The Taiaki