Somatic commonalities in the study of Budō and Zen

This article explores the central place of body-mind practice in the Japanese martial arts, known as Budō, and the Sōtō Zen sect of Buddhism, as I have encountered them in Europe. Drawing on my experiences from the study of Budō and Zen, my purpose is to explore a body-mind synthesis in subjective–objective experience, as described by the medieval Japanese Zen master Eihei Dōgen and the philosopher Yasuo Yuasa, which I find to be the fertile shared ground of these two systems of self-cultivation. It is ground that is, I think, all too easily overlooked and left fallow, but which it has been my good fortune to encounter in the training methods of the Tetsushinkan dōjō, in east London.