Intro by D.T. Suzuki.
[Archerly in Japan] not intended for utilitarian purposes only or for purely aesthetic enjoyments, but are meant to train the mind.
The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious. One has to transcend technique so art becomes an "artless art" growing out of the Unconscious.
The hitter and hit are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality. The state of unconsciousness is realized only when, completely and rid of the self.
Zen is the "everyday mind," ... "sleeping when tired, eating when hungry."
As soon as we reflect, deliberate, and conceptualize, the original unconsciousness is lost and a thought interferes.
Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when is not calculating and thinking. "Childlikeness" has to be restored with years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness.
Main text by E. Herrigel
- archery as a religious ritual
- the ability to be sought in spiritual exercises and whose aim consists in hitting a spiritual goal, so fundamentally the marksman aims at himself and may even succeed in hitting himself.
- For access to the art is only granted to those who are "pure" in heart, untroubled by subsidiary aims.
- Zen cannot be apprehended by intellectual means; one knows it by not knowing it.
- Drawing the string: only your two hands do the work, while arm and shoulders muscles remain relaxed.
- Able to draw the bow "spiritually" after a Year One of Six Year course with a kind of effortless strength.
- Next: "loosing" of the arrow.
- Master: "The right art is purposeless, aimless! You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen."
- "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."
- The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background.
- With the breathing and rituals/ceremonies comes the "right presence of mind" -- mind or spirit is present everywhere, because it is nowhere attached to any particular place.
- Japanese teaching model: Demonstration, example; intuition, imitation -- fundamental relationship of instructor to pupil.
- Nothing more is required of the pupil, at first, than that he should conscientiously copy what the teacher shows him. Shunning long-winded instructions and explanations, the latter contents himself with perfunctory commands and does not reckon on any questions from the pupil.
- These arts are ceremonies.
- One danger on the road to mastery -- the danger of getting stuck in his achievement. The teacher points out that all right doing is accomplished only in a state of true selflessness, in which the doer cannot be present any longer as "himself."
- The important thing is that an inward movement is thereby initiated. He helps the pupil in the most secret and intimate way he knows: by direct transference of the spirit, "just one uses a burning candle to light others with," so the teacher transfers the spirit of the right art from heart to heart, that it may be illumined.
- One more thing: the teacher turns him away from himself, from the Master, by exhorting him to go further than he himself has done, and to "climb on the shoulders of his teacher."
- Slipping more easily in the ceremony which sets forth the "Great Doctrine" of archery.
- When the tension is fulfilled, the shot must fall, it must fall from the archer like snow from a bamboo leaf, before he even thinks it."
- The waiting at the highest tension ... "It" shoots.
- Weeks went by without my advancing a step. At the same time I discovered that this did not disturb me in the least.
- "Don't ask, practice!"
- Able to distinguish the right shots from the failures.
- the dance and the dancer are one and the same.
- After 5 years, reached a stage where the teacher and pupil are no longer two persons, but one.
- How does skill become "spiritual," and how does sovereign control of technique turn into master swordplay? Only by the pupil becoming purposeless and egoless. He must be taught to be detached not only from his opponent but from himself.
- Swordplay ... more difficult and of truly decisive importance is the task of stopping the pupil from thinking and spying out how he best come at his opponent. He should clear his mind of the thought that he has to do with an opponent at all and that it is a matter of life and death.
- This state of purposeless detachment is followed by mode of behavior like the previous stage of instinctive evasion. No time lag between evasion and action.
- "It" takes aim and hits.
- Perfection in the art of swordmanship is reached, according to Takuan, when the heart is troubled by no more thought of I and You, of the opponent and his sword, of one's own sword and how to wield it -- no more thought of even life and death.
- Takuan: "All is emptiness." From this absolute emptiness comes the most wondrous unfoldment of doing.
- Years of unceasing meditation have taught him that life and death are at bottom the same.
