Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrige

Championship: Zen in the Art of Archery.
Author: Eugen Herrigel.
Genre: Non-fiction, philosophy, martial arts, autobiographical, Zen buddhism.
Country: Federal republic of germany.
Language: German.
Publication Date: 1948.
Summary: Wise, deeply personal, and oft mannerly, it is the story of one man'southward penetration of the theory and practice of Zen Buddhism. Eugen Herrigel, a German professor who taught philosophy in Tokyo, took upwardly the study of archery as a step toward the agreement of Zen. Zen in the Fine art of Archery is the account of the six years he spent every bit the student of one of Japan's great Zen masters in the 1920s, and the process by which he overcame his initial inhibitions and began to look toward new ways of seeing and understanding.

My rating: 7.5/10.
My review:

♥ By archery in the traditional sense, which he esteems every bit an art and honors every bit a national heritage, the Japanese does not empathize a sport but, foreign as this may sound at beginning, a religious ritual. And consequently, byu the "art" of archery he does not mean the ability of the sportsman, which can be controlled, more or less, by bodily exercises, only an ability whose origin is to be sought in spiritual exercises and whose aim consists in hitting a spiritual goal, then that fundamentally the marksman aims at himself and may even succeed in hitting himself.

♥ Should one ask, from this standpoint, how the Japanese Masters empathise this contest of the archer with himself, and how they describe information technology, their reply would sound enigmatic in the extreme. For them the contest consists in the archer aiming at himself - and even so non at himself, in hitting himself - and yet not himself, and thus becoming simultaneously the aimer and the aim, the hitter and the hitting. Or, to employ some expressions which are nearest the center of the Masters, information technology is necessary for the archer to go, in spite of himself, an unmoved center. Then comes the supreme and ultimate miracle: art becomes "childlike," shooting becomes not-shooting, a shooting without bow and pointer; the instructor becomes a pupil again, the Primary a beginner, the end a showtime, and the beginning perfection.

♥ Wrapped in impenetrable darkness, Zen must seem the strangest riddle which the spiritual life of the east has always devised: insoluble and yet irresistibly bonny.

The reason for this painful feeling of inaccessibility lies, to some extent, in the style of exposition that has hitherto been adopted for Zen. No reasonable person would expect the Zen proficient to do more than than hint at the experiences which have liberated and changed him, or to attempt to depict the unimaginable and ineffable "Truth" past which he now lives. In this respect Zen is akin to pure introspective mysticism. Unless we enter into mystic experiences past direct participation, nosotros remain outside, turn and twist as nosotros may. This law, which all 18-carat mysticism obeys, allows of no exceptions.

♥ 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.

...And then it is not asking too much if, driven by a feeling of spiritual affinity, and desirous of finding a way to the nameless power which can work such miracles - for the just curious accept no right to demand anything - we look the Zen adept at to the lowest degree to describe the fashion that leads to the goal.

♥ On the other mitt, is the fact that his experiences, his conquests and spiritual transformations, so long as they yet remain "his," must be conquered and transformed again and again until everything "his" is annihilated. Simply in this way can he accomplish a basis for experiences which, every bit the "all-embracing Truth," rouse him to a life that is no longer his everyday, personal life. he lives, but what lives is no longer himself.

♥ Only the longing persisted, and, when it grew weary, the longing for this longing.

♥ "You must concur the drawn bowstring," answered the Master, "similar a little child holding the proffered finger. It grips it then firmly that one marvels at the strength of the tiny fist. And when information technology lets the finger go, there is not the slightest jerk. Do you lot know why? Because a child doesn't think: I volition now let go of the finger in lodge to grasp this other thing. Completely unself-consciously, without purpose, it turns from ane to the other, and nosotros would say that it was playing with the things, were it not equally true that the things are playing with the child."

♥ "We principal archers say: one shot - one life! What this means, you cannot still empathise. Scrap maybe another image volition help y'all, which expresses the same experience. Nosotros principal archers say: with the upper end of the bow the archer pierces the heaven, on the lower finish, as though attached by a thread, hangs the world. If the shot is loosed with a jerk at that place is a danger of the thread snapping. For purposeful and tearing people the rift becomes final, and they are left in the awful heart between sky and globe."

♥ This state, in which nothing definite is thought, planned, striven for, desired or expected, which aims in no item management and yet knows itself capable akin of the possible and the impossible, so unswerving is its power - this state, which is at bottom purposeless and egoless, was called by the Chief truly "spiritual." Information technology is in fact charged with spiritual awareness and is therefore also called "right presence of mind." This means that the mind or spirit is present everywhere, because it is nowhere attached to any particular identify. And information technology can remain nowadays because, even when related to this or that object, information technology does not cling to it by reflection and thus lose its original mobility. Similar water filling a pond, which is ever prepare to catamenia off again, information technology can work its inexhaustible ability because information technology is free, and be open to everything because it is empty. This country is essentially a primordial state, and its symbol, the empty circle, is not empty of meaning for him who stands within it.

Out of the fullness of this presence of mind, disturbed by no ulterior motive, the artist who is released from all zipper must practice his fine art. But if he is to fit himself self-effacingly into the artistic process, the practise of the art must have the way smoothed for it. For if, in his self-immersion, he saw himself faced with a state of affairs into which he could non leap instinctively, he would first accept to bring it to consciousness. He would then enter again into all the relationships from which he had detached himself; he would be like one wakened, who considers his program for the 24-hour interval, only not like an Awakened One who lives and works in the primordial land. It would never appear to him equally if the individual parts of the artistic process were being played into his hands by a higher ability; he would never feel how intoxicatingly the vibrancy of an event is communicated to him who is himself only a vibration, and how everything that he does is done earlier he knows it.

♥ Bold that his talent tin can survive the increasing strain, in that location is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the educatee on his road to mastery. Not the danger of wasting himself in idle cocky-gratification - for the East has no aptitude for this cult of the ego - but rather the danger of getting stuck in his achievement, which is confirmed by his success and magnified by his renown: in other words, of behaving as if the artistic existence were a form of life that bore witness to its own validity.

♥ The man, the art, the work - it is all one. The art of the inner piece of work, which dissimilar the outer does non forsake the creative person, which he does non "do" and can only "be," springs from depths of which the twenty-four hour period knows nothing.

♥ "He who tin can shoot with the horn of the hare and the hair of the tortoise, and can hit the center without bow (horn) and arrow (hair), he alone is Principal in the highest sense of the earth - Master of the artless fine art. Indeed, he is the artless art itself and thus Master and No-Master in one. At this betoken archery, considered as the unmoved motion, the undanced dance, passes over into Zen."

♥ Like the beginner the swordmaster is fearless, simply, unlike him, he grows daily less and less accessible to fearfulness. Years of unceasing meditation accept taught him that life and death are at bottom the same and belong on the same stratum of fact. He no longer knows what fear of life and terror of death are. He lives - and this is thoroughly characteristic of Zen - happily enough in the world, but ready at whatsoever fourth dimension to quit it without existence in the least disturbed by the thought of death. It is not for zippo that the Samurai have called for their truest symbol the fragile cherry flower. Like the petal dropping in the morning time sunlight and floating serenely to earth, so must the fearless detach himself from life, silent and inwardly unmoved.

To be gratis of the fear of decease does non mean pretending to oneself, in one'due south practiced hours, that ane will not tremble in the face of death, and that at that place is nothing to fear. Rather, he who masters both life and expiry is gratuitous from fright of any kind to the extent that he is no longer capable of experiencing what fear feels like.

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Source: https://margot-quotes.livejournal.com/176471.html

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