KI POWER CULTIVATION, Part ONE

The Budo Secrets of Internal Energy from the Master Samurai Kaibara Ekiken

Contemporaneous portrait of Kaibara Ekiken

Part One

The Way of Nourishing Life

For quite some time now, I have wanted to write a series on one of my favorite budo writers of all time, Kaibara Ekiken (sometimes referred to as Ekken).  Ekiken was an interesting figure, to put it mildly (as you will find out if you continue to read).

I had originally intended, however, to finish a series I started some time ago on The Hagakure, which I had set aside to write my (now finished) series on Musashi’s The Dokkodo.  However, as I was doing some research for several budo “pieces” that I have also been working on, it dawned on me that I was referring to Ekiken’s works increasingly, and returning to him more and more in my research.  And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Ekiken might be the perfect writer of budo (at least among writers of antiquity) for our modern world.  I think you will find the same thing, too, especially if you are unfamiliar with him, or at least much more familiar with his contemporaries, such as the aforementioned Musashi, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, or Yagyu Munenori.

You will, most likely, find Kaibara Ekiken to be the antithesis of these other writers of the Tokugawa era.

Ekiken was born in 1630 in Fukuoka, Japan, an ancient port on the southern coastal bay of Kyushu, the southern-most island of the country’s four main islands.  He was a pioneering botanist—sometimes called the “Father of Japanese Botany''—and a travel writer in addition to being Japan’s foremost Neo-Confucian scholar/philosopher.  He was well-loved for his ability to explicate Confucian doctrines in a kind of “everyman’s” language that the commoners, as well as the classes among the nobility, could understand.  The 19th century German “Japanologist” Phillip Franz von Siebold even referred to him as the “Aristotle of Japan.”

Although his most popular works were his travel writings, he was also the author of many other works on Neo-Confucian philosophy and medicine.  Of these, the most important for the budoka is his “Yojokun” or “The Book of Life-Nourishing Principles,” also simply referred to as “The Book of Nourishing Life.”  For this series of essays, I will take excerpts from the book, summarize what I feel to be the most important points, and offer some more personal commentary as to how the book has helped me in my budo path.

Taking care of your life is your first important work as a human being. ~Kaibara Ekiken*

Compare the quote above to the (much more famous) one from the Hagakure: “The way of the samurai is found in death.”  William Scott Wilson, in the introduction to his translation of the Yojokun, has this to say in regard to this juxtaposition: “I was pleased to encounter a work of the same period that is almost a mirror image of Hagakure.  In total contrast to a stance of not valuing one’s own life, the author of this very different work emphasized that a strong body, mind, and spirit were essential to the warrior.  He reasoned that a man in the military class would be unable to carry out his duties if he were enervated or if he lived a short life… Over his long career, the author, a samurai doctor and philosopher known as Kaibara Ekiken, took notes on how a samurai might live a life of health in harmony with Nature, based on the maintenance of chi, and was concerned primarily with how chi, the very essence of life, is affected by everyday activities such as eating, drinking, intimate relations, and even bathing.  In Ekiken’s 84th year, these notes were compiled as Yojokun… The book is a clear departure from other samurai class writings.  Rather than a treatise on sword techniques or philosophical discussions on the unity of Zen and the martial arts, its focus is on how to maintain the healthy physical and mental foundation upon which techniques and philosophy depend.”

Wilson’s translation of Yojokun is well worth the read.  I would recommend anyone who is interested to find a copy.  It would be interesting to read it, make notes, try to apply it to your life, and then see if what you find accords with what I am going to write about here.  But, if I’m honest, and I must be for this to have even the ring of truth to it, my main point in this series is to present the views of Ekiken specifically regarding the cultivation of ki (what Wilson referred to as chi), and ways that the modern budoka can apply it in her training.

As mentioned, Ekiken wrote a number of books, but the Yojokun was the culmination of 6 decades of study and practice regarding Neo-Confucian philosophy and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).  As with many texts of TCM that preceded it, the main point of Ekiken’s book is that great health—the health that he believed almost everyone was universally endowed with at birth—comes not from “medicines” and “cures” but from a lifestyle that prevents disease in the first place.

In each essay that follows, I will focus on a different “tenet” of Ekiken’s found in the Yojokun.  This means that this won’t be a “straightforward” commentary on the book, but may jump to different sections of the book, depending on the subject matter.  For this introduction, I would like to simply leave you with the opening paragraphs from Wilson’s translation of the Yojokun.  It sets up what will follow nicely:

You should consider the foundation of your body to be your father and mother, and its beginning to be Heaven and Earth.  As you are born and then nourished by Heaven and Earth and your father and mother, you cannot truly consider your body a personal possession with which you can do as you choose.  Rather, your body is a treasured gift from Heaven and Earth.  It is also something left to you by your parents.  Thus, you should cherish it, nourish it, neither damage nor destroy it, and take care of it for the natural span of its life.  This is the basis of being dutiful to Heaven and Earth, and to your father and mother.

Should you lose your body, you are good for nothing.  Further, to damage or destroy it thoughtlessly is the highest ingratitude.  Indeed, to consider the gift of life as your possession alone and then to abuse it by overindulging in food, drink, sex, or in any other manner is to squander your health and invite disease to enter.  To hasten your own demise so thoughtlessly demonstrates extreme ingratitude.

Once born into the world, you can lead a long, happy, and enjoyable life if you are intently respectful of your father and mother and Heaven and Earth, and if you walk the path of morality and compliance with duty.  Isn’t such a life what everyone truly desires?

If this is what you seek, then you must first consider the above-mentioned new Way in which to look at life, learn the techniques of the Way of Nurturing Life discussed in these pages, and regulate your body very well.

These are the very first rules in human life.

*All quotes from Ekiken in this post come from William Scott Wilson’s translation (2008) entitled “Yojokun: Life Lessons from a Samurai.”  This is a “hard-to-find” book, as I believe it is out-of-print, but it is possible to find used copies on the internet.