Hariya Sekiun
針ヶ谷夕雲
Founder of the Mujūshin Ken-ryū, Undefeated in 52 Bouts, Who Taught the Ideal of "Ainuke"
Description
Origins and Discipleship under Ogasawara Genshinsai
Hariya Sekiun is said to have come from Hariya in Kōzuke Province (near present-day Fukaya City, Saitama Prefecture). He became a disciple of Ogasawara Genshinsai (Chōji), founder of Shinshinkage-ryū, who had returned from a period of martial training in China, and studied his swordsmanship under him.
Undefeated in 52 Bouts
Over the course of his life, Sekiun is said to have fought 52 matches without ever suffering a defeat.
A Zen-Inspired Transformation of Swordsmanship
From around the age of forty, Sekiun began studying Zen Buddhism under the monk Kōhaku of Ryūko-in temple. He came to reject the swordsmanship techniques he had mastered until then as mere illusion, arriving instead at a new understanding in which the essence of contest lay not in technical skill but in humanity's own natural, unforced functioning.
Founding the Mujūshin Ken-ryū
This new principle was named "Mujūshin Ken" (the sword of the mind that abides nowhere) by his teacher Kōhaku, drawing on the Diamond Sutra, and was established as Sekiun's own school, known as Sekiun-ryū or Mujūshin Ken-ryū. Prizing the "contest of the mind" over victory through technique, this school occupies a distinctive place in the swordsmanship thought of the Edo period.
Later Reputation
Sekiun's philosophy, which set aside technique in pursuit of the ideal of ainuke — a state in which neither side strikes and the contest is never decided — is said to have influenced later schools of swordsmanship, and he is counted among the leading swordsmen of the early Edo period. He died in 1669.
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