 As sinophilia increased among Rinzai Zen monks in the later medieval and Edo periods, many Rinzai monasteries became centers for practicing the arts and letters, much in the tradition of the Chinese literati and often to the neglect of traditional Zen disciplines. Occasionally, Rinzai masters like Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768) reacted against this development and urged a revival of intense and rigorous forms of praxis. One teaching that would have important ramifications for later events was an increasing emphasis on death as a theme. When the Tokugawa peace brought newly unemployed samurai warriors to the gates of Rinzai Zen monasteries, some masters like Takuan Sōhō (1573–1645), Suzuki Shōsan (1579–1655), and Shidō Bunan (or Munan 1603–1676) tried to find points of contact between Zen and their martial experience. One strategy was to compare the warrior’s fearlessness in the face of death with the Zen monk’s fearlessness in the face of losing the ego-self. Of course, the former occurs only at the moment of battle and the latter should be a mentality of egoless engagement within all the events of everyday life. Yet, the comparison would establish a link between Buddhist discipline and what would evolve into bushidō, the Way of the warrior in the modern period.