Zen in the Art of Archery: Training the Mind and Body to Become One

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This supposedly uplifting book has depressed me amidst its poetry and beauty into a realization that I will probably never 'correct my own stance' or 'let the arrow fall at the moment of highest tension', effortlessly hit any goal or even realize what the real goal is... Kyudo (pronounced “cue-dough”) literally means, “the way of the bow”. Older military traditions in Japan were called kyujitsu, which means something closer to “skill with the bow”, the jitsu part giving a fighting context.

Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel | Goodreads

The meditative repose in which he performs them gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work can be done" Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera LucidaAnother key difference between kyudo and competition archery is the commitment to a club and practising in a group. The very experienced can practice at home or on other ranges, but kyudo is very much a collective discipline: a display for an audience – both for your club mates, so that they can learn, and your peers, so that you might be assessed. If one really wishes to be a master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an “artless art” growing out of the Unconscious.

Zen in the Art of Archery - Penguin Random House

Dopo quattro -sottolineo QUATTRO- anni di esercizio quotidiano a tendere la corda, l’allievo tedesco si rivolge al Sensei nipponico In the end, the pupil no longer knows which of the two – mind or hand – was responsible for the work. Objectively speaking, it would be entirely possible to make one’s way to Zen from any one of the arts… You must learn to wait properly... By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension”

Confucius, the philosopher whose influence still dominates East Asian culture described the bow as a “vessel of virtue”.) Voor de eerzuchtige die zijn treffers telt, is de schijf een armzalig stuk papier, dat hij verscheurt." - blz. 67 I failed to see a genuine learning in the voice of the author. It was almost caricaturish. Lately I have also become very sensitive to cultural appropriation, and I no longer enjoy reading books on Yog that are written by someone who can't read Sanskrit, or a book on Zen by someone who doesn't understand Japanese language.

Kyudo, the way of the bow and the pursuit of Zen in archery Kyudo, the way of the bow and the pursuit of Zen in archery

Like all mysticism, Zen can only be understood by one who is himself a mystic and is therefore not tempted to gain by underhand methods what the mystical experience withholds from him. The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure.” Una pequeña joya literaria que va más allá de la apariencia inicial de autoayuda y nos sumerge en la superficie de la filosofía del Zen de una manera práctica y fascinante.Bow, arrow, goal and ego, all melt into one another, so that I can no longer separate them. And even the need to separate has gone. For as soon as I take the bow and shoot, everything becomes so clear and straightforward and so ridiculously simple..." In which case this book is a German response to a Japanese response to a European fantasy of a mythic past. But that's the nature of cultural history I guess, the dream of having been a butterfly dreaming that one was human more important than what may not have been. Grading might happen once or twice a year, and there is a programme of competitions and events around the world. This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose.”

Zen in the Art of Archery: Eugen Herrigel, Zinc Read Zen in the Art of Archery: Eugen Herrigel, Zinc Read

This book comes highly recommended by personages as disparate as Mike Tyson and Norman Mailer (actually, Tyson and Mailer might not be all that different). Wary of Western appropriations of Eastern arts and mysteries, I put off reading this book for some time. You have described only too well," replied the Master, "where the difficulty lies...The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You...brace yourself for failure. So long as that is so, you have no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way--like the hand of a child.” Zen takes Buddhism a step beyond the simple dictums of Theravada. The feeling I had while reading this was similar to the one I had when I read Jiddu Krishnamurti. The underlying idea is the same but expressed in different ways. The version best known outside of Japan is seitei or “sport” kyudo: the basic form pulling elements from all the schools, and more grade-oriented and geared to competition. According to the Nippon Kyūdō Federation, the supreme goal of kyudo is achieving a state of shin-zen-bi, which roughly translates as “truth-goodness-beauty”. The book offers some surprisingly practical advice on achieving mastery, which I think is safely generalizable to most skills. Near the end, he briefly explores swordplay through the same lens which also had a great deal of interesting ideas in it. Some of my favorite quotes from a practical perspective are below.The book sets forth theories about motor learning. Herrigel has an accepting spirit towards and about unconscious control of outer activity that Westerners heretofore considered to be wholly under conscious-waking control and direction. For example, a central idea in the book is how through years of practice, a physical activity becomes effortless both mentally and physically, as if our physical memory (today known as "muscle memory") executes complex and difficult movements without conscious control from the mind.