Samurai zen: the warrior koans

For centuries, the Zen Buddhist masters used koans – riddles that test the inadequacy of logic — to train samurai in the art of patience, precision, and practicality, hallmarks of Asia’s supreme warriors. Zen expert Trevor Leggett gathers 100 of these medieval Japanese interviews rescued from secret temples of the 13th Century.

These early koans are unusually pure and vivid. For unscholarly warriors, the masters created instant koans from incidents of everyday life – a broken teacup, a water jar, a cloth. The pupils could reply with a poem, brush strokes, a song, or a line from the No drama. The resulting koans are rich in simple, powerful images that meld the serenity of Zen with the mental steel of the samurai warrior.