Winston L. King, Zen and the Way of the Sword: Arming the Samurai Psyche (New York& Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1993, 1994) ("[T]he truth of Buddhism in the Zen mode was not in scriptures, ritual, or doctrine--all of which in any case lay outside the interest and capacities of the majority of the samurai. Truth and salvation in Zen lay within the person, in one's own self and capacities. Truth was existential, not intellectual; its realization and practice were visceral, not cerebral. This character of Zen then put it well within the range of samurai awareness and emotional compatibility; it was capable of making connection with the kind of life the samurai led. For this was a kind of truth that could be utilized and realized in action; it was not mere theory. It tended to free one to act according to one's own inward perceptions (or better, 'gut feeling') of what the immediate situation called for, apart from or beyond the strictures of rules and regulations and traditional fighting techniques." Id. at 163-164.).
George Sansom, A History of Japan to 1334 (Stanford, Ca: Stanford U. Press, 1959) ("Since the influence of Buddhism upon Japanese life is an important feature in Japanese history, it may be useful to give here a short account of Buddhist doctrine . . . " "From simple beginnings in the sermons of the Blessed One (the first being the Sermon at Benares) Buddhism in the course of time developed a vast canon and a most comprehensive range of metaphysics, but its fundamental doctrine is short and not very difficult to understand. The Buddha taught that all clinging to life involves suffering; that the cause of suffering is craving for pleasure and rebirth; that suffering can be ended because its cause is known and can be removed; and that the way to end suffering is to follow the Eightfold Path. These are the Four Holy Truths." "The Eightfold Path is right views, right aims, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, and right rapture. These eight paths seem only to lead towards a simple morality, but taken together they are more than that; they are the necessary steps to complete enlightenment, since the last path, right rapture, means the ecstasy of perfect knowledge, from which comes the end of craving for pleasure and rebirth, and the fore deliverance from suffering. To these precepts are added the idea, which the Buddha described as the essence of his teaching, of the Chain of Causation, the inevitable sequence of events, 'If that is, this comes to pass. On account of that arising this arises. If that is not, this does not come to pass.'" "The metaphysical elaboration of this Law is difficult to understand, but it was not hard for the ordinary man to grasp the idea that the whole universe is a process of birth and death and rebirth, involving suffering from which he can escape by reaching a goal (called nirvana) which is not annihilation but the absence of all causes of suffering." "This goal cannot be reached so long as a man thinks in terms of his own identity. So long as he believes that he has a self he must continue through an indefinite series of reincarnations. In other terms this is the doctrine of Karma, of which the essence is that a life is not complete in itself, but is both a sequel and a prelude, conditioned by past lives and conditioning future lives. In this chain there may be existences of many kinds, animal, human, and godlike, so that a man's actions may raise him towards deliverance or lower him to incarnation as an unhappy human, or a beast, or a bird, or an insect." Id. at 60-61.).
George Sansom, A History of Japan1334-1615 (Stanford, Ca: Stanford U. Press, 1961).
George Sansom, A History of Japan 1615-1869 (Stanford, Ca: Stanford U. Press, 1963).
