C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Achieve Fantastic Results in Martial Arts by Utilizing the Maxims of the Founder of Matsubayashi-Ryu Karate Do: A “Modern” Application Shoshin Nagamine seated in Zazen (Zen Meditation). One of the earliest books that I bought as a young karate-ka was Shoshin Nagamine’s “The Essence of Okinawan Karate-Do.”  For those of you that don’t know—or only “know” because of the title of this essay—Shoshin Nagamine was the founder of an “offshoot” of Shorin-Ryu karate that he called Matsubayashi-Ryu .  But most modern martial artists probably know him—if they even know him at all—from the aforementioned book.  As I said, I bought this book when I was probably 11 or 12 years old (which means in the early to mid 1980s) at a store called “Bookland”—that’s right, kids, once-upon-a-time there were these things called “malls” that actually had relatively small bookstores inside of them.  (The other one in our local mall was called “Walden Books.”)  By the way, I at the time had...

Read on and discover the REAL connection between Zen and the martial arts! Taisen Deshimaru - the great Soto Zen monk of the 20th century - clearly taught that there was a correlation between martial arts and Zen.      There has long been a debate over how much, if any, influence Zen has had on the martial arts.  There has also been interest over the years as to whether or not mutual exchanges occurred between the various martial arts and the various Buddhist philosophies of silent/seated meditation - i.e.: Zen.  Zen is the Japanese translation of the Chinese "Chan", itself a translation of the Indian/Sanskrit word "Dhyana", which simply means "seated meditation" in English.  I write "philosophies" (plural) of Buddhist meditation because there are many "Zens".  Not only is Zen known as Chan in China, but it's also practiced as "Seon" in Korea, and "Thien" in Vietnam.  (Probably the most popular Zen monk in the wo...