Zen in the Art of Archery - Eugen Herrigel [3]
Such descriptions of the way and its stations are almost entirely lacking in Zen literature. This is partly due to the fact that the Zen adept has an insuperable objection to giving any kind of instructions for the happy life. He knows from personal experience that nobody can stay the course without conscientious guidance from a skilled teacher and without the help of a Master. No less decisive, on the other hand, is the fact that his experiences, his conquests and spiritual transformations, so long as they still remain “his”, must be conquered and transformed again and again until everything “his” is annihilated. Only in this way can he attain a basis for experiences which, as 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.
From this standpoint we can understand why the Zen adept shuns all talk of himself and his progress. 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. He has before him the warning example of one of the greatest Masters, who, on being asked what Zen was, maintained an unmoving silence, as though he had not heard the question. How then could any adept feel tempted to render an account of what he has thrown away and no longer misses?
In these circumstances, I should be shirking my responsibilities if I confined myself to a string of paradoxes and took refuge behind a barrage of high-sounding words. For it was my intention to throw light on the nature of Zen as it affects one of the arts upon which it has set its stamp. This light is certainly not illumination in the sense fundamental to Zen, but at least shows that there must be something behind the impenetrable walls of mist, and which, like summer lightning, heralds the distant storm. So understood, the art of archery is rather like a preparatory school for Zen, for it enables the beginner to gain a clearer view, through the works of his own hands, of events which are not in themselves intelligible. Objectively speaking, it would be entirely possible to make one's way to Zen from any one of the arts I have named.
However, I think I can achieve my aim most effectively by describing the course which a pupil of the art of archery has to complete. To be more precise, I shall try to summarize the six-year course of instruction I received from one of the greatest Masters of this art during my stay in Japan. So it is my own experiences which authorize me in this undertaking. In order to make myself intelligible at all — for even this preparatory school holds riddles enough — I have no alternative but to recollect in detail all the resistances I had to overcome, all the inhibitions I had to fight down, before I succeeded in penetrating into the spirit of the Great Doctrine. I speak about myself only because I see no other way of reaching the goal I have set before me. For the same reason I shall confine my account to essentials, so as to make them stand out more clearly. I consciously refrain from describing the setting in which the instruction took place, from conjuring up scenes that have fixed themselves in my memory, and above all from sketching a picture of the Master — however tempting all this may be. Everything must hinge on the art of archery, which, I sometimes feel, is even more difficult to expound than to learn; and the exposition must be carried to the point where we begin to discern those far-off horizons behind which Zen lives and breathes.
II
Why I took up Zen, and for this purpose set out to learn the art of archery, needs some explanation. Even as a student I had, as though driven by a secret urge, been