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    Zen in the Art of Archery
    Zen in the Art of Archery
    Zen in the Art of Archery
    Ebook75 pages1 hour

    Zen in the Art of Archery

    By Eugen Herrigel

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    About this ebook

    The book sets forth theories about motor learning and control that provide lessons for learning any sport or physical activity. For example, a central idea in the book is that through years of practice, a physical activity becomes effortless both mentally and physically, as if the body executes complex and difficult movements without conscious c

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVigeo Press
    Release dateJan 8, 2018
    ISBN9781941129937
    Author

    Eugen Herrigel

    EUGEN HERRIGEL (1884-1955), a German professor who taught philosophy at the University of Tokyo, penetrated deeply and personally into the theory and practice of Zen Buddhism. In endeavoring to become a Zen mystic, he experienced the rigorous discipline of training with a Zen Master for six years.

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    Reviews for Zen in the Art of Archery

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      The lesson don't think, do.
    • 5/5
      when i was studying the harpsichord, my teacher, Margaret Fabrizio, gave me this book as a textbook. it was of course a brilliant idea.
    • 4/5
      An interesting and informative book on mind and action.
    • 2/5
      There is only one thing the Zen Master has taught me, and it is that mud is better than words ("...boy"). So I feel kind of underwhelmed by Herrigel's attempt to Teutonize kyūdo into submission. Like, as long as he's trying to isolate its unique conceptual essence in the grand tradition of the Romantic philosophers, you're all "yeah right man, I seen the Matrix or the Karate Kid, this never gonna work," and it doesn't, and then he learns to embrace irrationalism and wins the approval of his sensei (and who knows what that means really, since evidently it's not about whether the arrows hit their target exactly, but still kind of is) but he still hasn't emptied out entirely and you can see that unreason for him is still a kind of wild man way to break open and plumb this tradition and something doesn't sit right and then you look him up and sure enough, he was a committed Nazi right to the end and beyond. Presumably of the mystical variety, but still, ugh.
    • 4/5
      This is a very interesting book. Archery in respects to the Japanese is not a sport. Learning archery involves a spiritual approach. You must detach yourself and learn to breath through everything. If you have enough time and patience, you should try it. The author took more than 4 years to become a master.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite 'small books', Zen in the Art of Archery so well captures what it is to practice any discipline as an exercise in no-self. It is so paradoxical to most of us that the culmination of one's training and study should not be to become 'larger' and 'better,' but rather to essentially disappear so that no credit is taken for what is accomplished.
      Other than practicing a little sitting Zen from time to time, I am on the outside looking in to this great tradition. It is humbling to read a work such as this, and realize what is apparently possible, given the proper frame of mind. Or perhaps: given the absence of no frame of mind.
    • 4/5
      It seems the oriental concept of selfless and that of Meister Eckhart, niht, met in the heart of Herrigel.

      He thought that he lucks something, lucks some capability to accept and understand mysticism. And then he sought that in Japan, found the way to Unio Mystica in Zen in the art of archery.

      Hard to believe what he saw in a hall of archery in the night.
      But the point is what inspired he and not what he saw.
    • 5/5
      A very interesting and enlightening little book on the essence of the spiritual experience in Zen Buddhism.
      A German philosophy professor goes to Japan for six years and practises Zen through archery. The book is a summary of his experience.
    • 4/5
      Zen and the Art of Archery was written in 1953 by a German philosopher named Eugen Herrigel. It chronicles Herr Herrigel's progress towards an understanding of Zen through the teachings of the Great Doctrine as applied to the martial art of archery. That Herr Herrigel, along with Frau Herrigel, also studied Flower Arranging is mentioned but the author does not dwell upon the subject, rather focusing his very precise descriptions of lessons and ceremony solely on Archery.

      I found the book instructive and very German.

      [Update: I recently saw the film "Enlightenment Guaranteed" and was reminded of Herrigel's book. EG is an intellectual comedy about two German brothers who go on a pilgrimage of sorts to a Zen monastery in Japan. If you liked Bill Murray's "Lost in Translation" I highly recommend "Enlightenment Guaranteed".]

    Book preview

    Zen in the Art of Archery - Eugen Herrigel

    ZenArchery-Cover_Ebook-01.jpg

    Zen in

    the Art

    of Archery

    Eugen Herrigel

    Translated by R. F. C. Hull

    Vigeo Press

    Originally Published 1953.

    Public Domain.

    Vigeo Press Reprint, 2018

    ISBN

         Paperback 978-1-941129-94-4

         Epub 978-1-941129-93-7

    Contents

    Preface

    Chapter I.

    Chapter II.

    Chapter III.

    Chapter IV.

    Chapter V.

    Chapter VI.

    Chapter VII.

    Chapter VIII.

    Chapter IX.

    Chapter X.

    Chapter XI.

    Preface

    In 1936 a lecture which I had delivered to the German-Japanese Society in Berlin appeared in the magazine Nippon under the title The Chivalrous Art of Archery. I had given this lecture with the utmost reserve, for I had intended to show the close connection which exists between this art and Zen. And since this connection eludes precise description and real definition, I was fully conscious of the provisional nature of my attempt.

    In spite of everything, my remarks aroused great interest. They were translated into Japanese in 1937, into Dutch in 1938, and in 1939 I received news—so far unconfirmed—that an Indian translation was being planned. In 1940 a much improved Japanese translation appeared together with an eyewitness account by Prof. Sozo Komachiya.

    When Curt Weller, who published The Great Liberation, D. T. Suzuki’s important book on Zen, and who is also bringing out a carefully planned series of Buddhist writings, asked me whether I agreed to a reprint of my lecture, I willingly gave my consent. But, in the conviction of having made further spiritual progress during the past ten years—and this means ten years of continual practice—and of being able to say rather better than before, with greater understanding and realization, what this mystical art is about, I have resolved to set down my experiences in new form. Unforgettable memories and notes which I made at the time in connection with the archery lessons, stood me in good stead. And so I can well say that there is no word in this exposition which the Master would not have spoken, no image or comparison which he would not have used.

    I have also tried to keep my language as simple as possible. Not only because Zen teaches and advocates the greatest economy of expression, but because I have found that what I can not say quite simply and without recourse to mystic jargon has not become sufficiently clear and concrete even to myself.

    To write a book on the essence of Zen itself is one of my plans for the near future.

    Eugen Herrigel

    Chapter I.

    At first sight it must seem intolerably degrading for Zen—however the reader may understand this word—to be associated with anything so mundane as archery. Even if he were willing to make a big concession, and to find archery distinguished as an art, he would scarcely feel inclined to look behind this art for anything more than a decidedly sporting form of prowess. He therefore expects to be told something about the amazing feats of Japanese trick-artists, who have the advantage of being able to rely on a time-honored and unbroken tradition in the use of bow and arrow. For in the Far East it is only a few generations since the old means of combat were replaced by modern weapons, and familiarity in the handling of them by no means fell into disuse, but went on propagating itself, and has since been cultivated in ever widening circles. Might one not expect, therefore, a description of the special ways in which archery is pursued today as a national sport in Japan?

    Nothing could be more mistaken than this expectation. By archery in the traditional sense, which he esteems as an art and honors as a national heritage, the Japanese does not understand a sport but, strange as this may sound at first, a religious ritual. And consequently, by the art of archery he does not mean the ability of the sportsman, which can be controlled, more or less, by bodily exercises, but an ability whose origin is to be sought in spiritual exercises and whose aim consists in hitting a spiritual goal, so that fundamentally the marksman aims at himself and may even succeed in hitting himself.

    This sounds puzzling, no doubt. What, the reader will say, are we to believe that archery, once practiced for the contest of life and death, has not survived even as a sport, but has been degraded to a spiritual exercise? Of what use, then, are the bow and arrow and target? Does not this deny the manly old art and honest meaning of archery, and set up in its place something nebulous, if not positively fantastic?

    It must, however, be borne in mind that the peculiar spirit of this art, far from having to be infused back into the use of bow and arrow in recent times, was always essentially bound up with them, and has emerged all the more forthrightly and convincingly now that it no longer has to prove itself in bloody contests. It is not true to say that the traditional technique of archery, since it is no longer of importance in fighting, has turned into a pleasant pastime and thereby been rendered innocuous. The Great Doctrine of archery tells us something very different. According to it, archery is still a matter of life and death to the extent that it is a contest of the archer with himself; and this kind of contest is not a paltry substitute, but the foundation of all contests outwardly directed—for instance with a bodily opponent. In this contest of the archer with himself is revealed the secret essence of this art, and instruction in it does not suppress anything essential by waiving the utilitarian ends to which the practice of knightly contests was put.

    Anyone who subscribes to this art today, therefore, will gain from its historical development the undeniable advantage of

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