The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman

My review of 'The Book of Five Rings' apply to this book as well. It is among the 4 classics on strategy that I carry with me at all times. I prefer the print version because I tend to annotate the text with my observations over time. Required reading for the most refined study of strategy (business, marketing, martial art, war, politics, or anything else that can be interpreted as conflict), along with Sun Tzu's Art of War, Musashi's Book of Five Rings, and Lao Tzu's Tao-Te-Ching.

Great

I really enjoyed this book!!! 📖 I find my ability to vitiate mental attachment to a topic without my full consent strengthened. I don’t know that I had any awareness of how much time, energy, effort, and potential was being wasted or siphoned in this one Way. I genuinely hope to keep strengthening this conscious choice of what I apply my mind towards in the future: it really is a powerful tool underpinning any conscious success.

Excellent reading, especially if you have an interest in both swordsmanship and philosophy.

This book contains *utterly profound* wisdom, that goes as deep as you can dive. If you're considering buying it, just go for it. Even if you're deep into philosophy, spirituality, martial arts, even psychology- you should find something to contemplate in this short book. If you buy it and find no use of it, you can potentially change someone's life by giving it to them. This is the real deal, no nonsense.

The Unfettered Mind, a scant 100 page document written by a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman about the importance of right mindedness. Soho most likely couldn't have envisioned his treatise would be poured over after some 400 years had past. Yet, it has been since first writing it. Westerners have devoured his work just as much as Easterners. A quick search for the Unfettered Mind will net the potential reader many possibilities from different translations as well as many reviews. I do not have the audacity to think mine will be something new, but, after all, it is my perspective. William Scott Wilson is the translator on my edition; he also translated The Book of Five Rings and Hagakure both of which I suggest reading in addition to The Unfettered Mind. This completes the most common "trilogy" of Japanese thought during the height of their renaissance. There are others of course, but these three are the most accessible to western thought and frankly the easiest to get. The Unfettered Mind is broken into three smaller books or essays: The Mysterious Record of Immovable Wisdom, The Clear Sound of Jewels, and Annals of the Sword Taia. Each of these deal with the right mind in the double context of Buddhism and Swordsmanship. Soho draws on many different aspects of Buddhist thought but basically the thing is and the thing isn't; for example, "One may explain water, but the mouth will not become wet. One may expound fully on the nature of fire, but the mouth will not become hot." Other such jewels of Buddhist wisdom seem to be tailor made for the martial arts. The ideal of no contemplation on the action of cutting down the opponent is taken into consideration in many different places of The Mysterious Record of Immovable Wisdom. In one such place Soho describes being of no mind by quoting an old poem, To think, "I will not think" This, too, is something in one's thoughts. Simply do not think About not thinking at all. Many times Soho uses Buddhism's mystical nature to bring the reader into the right frame of mind and does so rather effortlessly. This is the nature of the Zen Master, to uncomplicated complicated thought. My hat is off to Takuan Soho. Finally, I will say that I have enjoyed this small book of Immovable Wisdom. I will be giving as gifts to those on the path to right mindedness. It is a piece that should be read then reread a few years down the road. And, finally, reread a decade down the road. I am sure I will come back to it again to find more truth than I did this time. To all potential readers, take your time, understand that you might not, and above all else, enjoy.