Zen in the Art of Archery - Eugen Herrigel [8]
Hitherto I had simply let go of the bowstring when the hold at the point of highest tension had become unendurable, when I felt I had to give way if my parted hands were not forcibly to be pulled together again. The tension is not in any sense painful. A leather glove with a stiffened and thickly padded thumb guards against the pressure of the string becoming uncomfortable and prematurely shortening the hold at the point of highest tension.
When drawing, the thumb is wrapped round the bowstring immediately below the arrow, and tucked in. The first three fingers are gripped over it firmly, and at the same time give the arrow a secure hold. Loosing therefore means opening the fingers that grip the thumb and setting it free. Through the tremendous pull of the string the thumb is wrenched from its position, stretched out, the string whirrs and the arrow flies. When I had loosed hitherto, the shot had never gone off without a powerful jerk, which made itself felt in a visible shaking of my whole body and affected the bow and arrow as well. That there could be no possibility of a smooth and, above all, certain shot goes without saying; it was bound to “wobble”.
“All that you have learned hitherto”, said the Master one day when he found nothing more to object to in my relaxed manner of drawing the bow, “was only a preparation for loosing the shot. We are now faced with a new and particularly difficult task, which brings us to a new stage in the art of archery.” So saying, the Master gripped his bow, drew it and shot. Only now, when expressly watching out for it, did I observe that though the right hand of the Master, suddenly opened and released by the tension, flew back with a jerk, it did not cause the least shaking of the body. The right arm, which before the shot had formed an acute angle, was jerked open but ran gently back into full extension. The unavoidable jerk had been cushioned and neutralized.
If the force of the discharge did not betray itself in the sharp “thup” of the quivering bowstring and in the penetrative power of the arrow, one would never suspect its existence. At least in the case of the Master the loose looked so simple and undemanding that it might have been child's play.
The effortlessness of a performance for which great strength is needed is a spectacle of whose aesthetic beauty the East has an exceedingly sensitive and grateful appreciation. But ever more important to me—and at that stage I could hardly think otherwise—was the fact that the certainty of hitting seemed to depend on the shot's being smoothly loosed. I knew from rifle-shooting what a difference it makes to jerk away, if only slightly, from the line of sight. All that I had learned and achieved so far only became intelligible to me from this point of view: relaxed drawing of the bow, relaxed holding at the point of highest tension, relaxed loosing of the shot, relaxed cushioning of the recoil—did not all this serve the grand purpose of hitting the target, and was not this the reason why we were learning archery with so much trouble and patience? Why then had the Master spoken as if the process we were now concerned with far exceeded everything we had practised and accustomed ourselves to up 'til now?
However that may be, I went on practising diligently and conscientiously according to the Master's instructions, and yet all my efforts were in vain. Often it seemed to me that I had shot better before, when I loosed the shot at random without thinking