ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY

 

The Para-Rational Perspective*

 

Zen practice of any art is mystical, an end in itself, and an understanding which passes from teacher to student via minimalist language and repetitive practice/discipline. As Eugen Herrigel explains in Zen in the Art of Archery, arts molded by Zen merge the art and the artist into a single reality in which the artist is a vehicle of the divine, a vessel through which the divine expresses itself. Such a vessel, of course, is empty and void of self.

 

The debate between philosophers and scientists over whether the “value of knowledge" is to know the world or to change the world, plays itself out in the juxtaposition of the Western-conceived “sport” of archery and Herrigel’s discussion of the Zen molded “art” of archery. According to Herrigel, the art of archery reveals itself in spiritual exercises to discipline the mind, not in bodily exercises to build physical stamina in a rational and progressive study

of technique. The Zen molded art of archery seeks to develop life as an art form; the Western sport of archery endeavors to hit the target.

 

Zen's molding of arts as described by Herrigel requires the right presence of mind; discipline; loss of self; and, when words finally do not suffice to instruct, transference of spirit from Master to student. With an objective to become part of the greater whole, part of the spirit, Herrigel had

to relinquish his Western habits of rationalizing, thinking, and analyzing in order to learn to wait and to realize “… in Nature there are correspondences which cannot be understood …” (Herrigel, page 57).

 

Using paradoxes to describe the Zen of archery, Herrigel cal1s the art "artless", the archer simultaneously “the aimer and the aim”, and shooting becomes “non-shooting". Perceptual reality plays no role in the development of this art, making it, thus, anathema to the rational construct of art or sport as known in the Western world. Perceptual knowing through the senses went unrewarded for Herrigel when he learned a technique to loose the shot. His master sought

from him enlightened unselfconsciousness, instead, so the shot would loose itself. In fact, the bow and arrow, Herrigel learned, are superfluous to the real attainment in this art, which is to accomplish something within one’s self, not outwardly.

 

Elimination of self permeates Herrigel’s exposition of Zen molded archery. Life is something which no Zen adept primarily inhabits as “his.” A complete annihilation of the confused rational assessment of life in relation to the individual is replaced by an “all-embracing Truth” (Herrigel, page 10) that becomes the bedrock of “Life.” Zen, in effect, teaches concentration, breathing, and meditation as do all other forms of Buddhism. Zen molded arts harness those teachings into art forms which serve to create human vehicles purely focused on the moment through which the spirit may express itself.

 

Just as Zen refuses to invest any value in self, it also refuses to assign any significance to objects. Upon his departure from his Master, Herrigel received a gift of the Master's best bow with an instruction to use it and then, when ready to die, to destroy the bow. Such a directive denies any value to the bow, its history, or its craftsmanship. The Zen focus remains always on the “spirit”

and becoming one with it. Like the man, the bow has been a vessel for the spirit and it too, like the man in death, deserves the dignity of the “spirit's” embrace through destruction of its outer form."

 

Zen’s contribution to a man’s life is understood through doing or practice, but nearly impossible to articulate. Despite centuries of Zen practitioners, a book as compact as Herrigel’s accommodates descriptions of the few manuscripts that offer any insight into the Zen molded arts. From this, one must appreciate Zen as mystical if only because Zen masters do no more than hint at their own experiences in pursuing and accomplishing the skills and discipline associated with the Zen arts.

 

“Wrapped in impenetrable darkness, Zen must seem the strangest riddle which the spiritual life of the East has ever devised: insoluble and yet irresistibly attractive” (Herrigel, page 8).