One of the most significant features we notice in the practice of archery, and in fact of all the arts as they are studied in Japan and probably also in other Far Eastern countries, is that they are not intended for utilitarian purposes only or for purely aesthetic enjoyments, but are meant to train the mind; indeed, to bring it into contact with the ultimate reality. Archery is, therefore, not practiced solely for hitting the target; the swordsman does not wield the sword just for the sake of outdoing his opponent; the dancer does not dance just to perform certain rhythmical movements of the body. The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious.
Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. “Childlikeness” has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks yet he does not think.
For access to the art — and the master archers of all times are agreed in this — is only granted to the who are “pure” in heart, untroubled by subsidiary aims.
Bow and arrow are only a pretext for something that could just as well happen without them, only the way to a goal, not the goal itself, only helps for the last decisive leap.
Not because he thinks it immodest to talk, but because he regards it as a betrayal of Zen. Even to make up his mind to say anything about Zen itself costs him grave heart-searchings.
Nor could I find exactly what I sought in the extensive literature of mysticism, and, disappointed and discouraged, I gradually came to realize that only the true detached can understand what is meant by “detachment,” and that only the contemplative, who is completely empty and rid of the self, is ready to “become one” with the “transcendent Deity.” I had realized, therefore, that there is and can be no other way to mysticism than the way of personal experience and suffering, and that, if this premise is lacking, all talk about it is so much empty chatter.
I cannot think back to those days without recalling, over and over again, how difficult I found it, in the beginning, to get my breathing to work out right.
When, to excuse myself, I once remarked that I was conscientiously making an effort to keep relaxed, he replied: “That’s just the trouble, you make an effort to think about it. Concentrate on your breath, as if you had nothing else to do.”
Whoever makes good progress in the beginning has all the more difficulties later on.
When I have drawn the bow, the moment comes when I feel: unless the shot comes at once I shan’t be able to endure the tension. And what happens then? Merely that I get out of breath. So I must loose the shot whether I want it or not, because I can’t wait for it any longer.
The right art is purpose less, aimless. The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you don’t do yourself does not happen.
Archery is not a pastime, not a purposeless game, but a matter of life and death.
When you come to the lessons in the future you must collect yourselves on your way here. Focus your minds on what happens in the practice-hall. Walk past everything without noticing it, as if there were only one thing in the world that is important and real, and that is archery.
And who knows whether these images, born of centuries of practice, may not go deeper than all our carefully calculated knowledge?
The breathing in, like the breathing out, is practiced again and again by itself with the utmost care. One does not have to wait long for results. The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background.
This exquisite state of unconcerned immersion in oneself is not, unfortunately, of long duration. It is liable to be disturbed from inside. As though sprung from nowhere, moods, feelings, desires, worries and even thoughts incontinently rise up, in a meaningless jumble, and the more far-fetched and preposterous they are, and the less they have to do with that on which one has fixed one’s consciousness, the more tenaciously they hang on. It is as though they wanted to avenge themselves on consciousness for having, through concentration, touched upon realms it would otherwise never reach. The only successful way of rendering this disturbance inoperative is to keep on breathing, quietly and unconcernedly, to enter into friendly relations with whatever appears on the scene, to accustom oneself to it, to look at it equably and at last grow weary of looking. In this way one gradually gets into a state which resembles the melting drowsiness on the verge of sleep.
To slip into it finally is the danger that has to be avoided. It is met by a peculiar leap of concentration, comparable perhaps to the jolt which a man who has stayed up all night gives himself when he knows that his life depends on all his sense being alert; and if this leap has been successful but a single time it can be repeated with certainty.
This state, in which nothing definite is thought, planned, striven for, desired or expected, which aims in no particular direction and yet knows itself capable alike of the possible and the impossible, so unswerving is its power — this state, which is at bottom purposeless and egoless, was called by the Master truly “spiritual.”
Steep is the way to matter. Often nothing keeps the pupil on the move but his faith in his teacher, whose mastery is now beginning to dawn on him. He is a living example of the inner work, and he convinces by his mere presence.
- I can’t help it, the tension gets too painful.
- You only feel it because you haven’t really let go of yourself.
And this obstinate failure depressed me all the more since I had already passed my 3rd year of instruction. I will not deny that I spent many gloomy hours wondering whether I could justify this waste of time, which seemed to bear no conceivable relationship to anything I had learned and experienced so far.
“Once you have understood that, you will have no further need of me. And if I tried to give you a clue at the cost of your own experience, I would be the worst teachers and would deserve to be sacked.”
Weeks went by without my advancing a step.
I was convinced that I would never hear anything but the monotonous answer: “Don’t ask, practice!” So I stopped asking, and would have liked to stop practicing, too, had not the Master held me inexorably in his grip.
Obediently we practiced letting off our shots without taking aim. At first I remained completely unmoved by where my arrows went. Even occasion hits did not excite me, for I knew that so far as I was concerned they were only flukes.
We practiced in the manner prescribed and discovered that hardly had we accustomed ourselves to dancing the ceremony without bow and arrow when we began to feel uncommonly concentrated after the first steps. This feeling increased the more care we took to facilitate the process of concentration by relaxing our bodies. And when, at lesson time, we again practiced with bow and arrow, these home exercises proved so fruitful that we were able to slip effortlessly into the state of “presence of mind.”
You have now reached a stage where teacher and pupil are no longer two persons, but one. You can separate from me any time you wish. Even if broad seas like between us, I shall always be with you when you practice what you have learned.
Among sword masters, it is taken as proved that the beginner, however strong and pugnacious he is, and however courageous and fearless he may be at the outset, loses not only his lack of self-consciousness, but his self-confidence, as soon as he starts taking lessons. He gets to know all the technical possibilities by which his life may be endangered in combat. He is now forced to admit that he is at the mercy of everyone who is stronger, more nimble and more practiced than he. He sees no other way open to him except ceaseless practice, and his instructor too has no other advice to give him for the present. So the beginner stakes everything on surpassing the others and even himself. He acquires a brilliant technique, which gives him back some of the lost self-confidence, and thinks he is drawing nearer and nearer to the desired goal. The instructor, however, thinks differently — and rightly so, since all the skill of the beginner only leads to his “heart being snatched away by the sword.”
The pupil must develop a sense or, more accurately, a new alertness of all his senses, which will enable him to avoid dangerous thrusts as though he could feel them coming. Once he has mastered this art of evasion, he no longer needs to watch with undivided attention the movements of his opponent, or even of several opponents at once. Rather, he sees and feels what is going to happen, and at that same moment he has already avoided its effect without there being “a hair’s breadth” between perceiving and avoiding.
Perfection in the art of swordsmanship is reached 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 even of life and death.
To be free from the fear of death does not mean pretending to oneself, in one’s good hours, that one will not tremble in the face of death, and that there is nothing to fear. Rather, he who masters both life and death is free from fear of any kind to the extent that he is no longer capable of experiencing what fear feels like.
He must dare to leap into the Origin, so as to live by the Truth and in the Truth, like one who has become one with it. He must become a pupil a gain, a beginner; conquer the last and steepest stretch of the way, undergo new transformations.