EXTRACTS FROM EUGEN HERRIGEL “ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY”
1. … The Japanese pupil brings with him three things:
good education,
passionate love for his chosen art, and
uncritical veneration of his teacher …
2. … Shunning long-winded instructions and explanations, the latter contents himself with perfunctory commands and does not reckon on any questions from the pupil. Impassively he looks on at the blundering efforts, not even hoping for independence or initiative, and waits patiently for growth and ripeness. Both have time: the teacher does not harass, and the pupil does not overtax himself …
3. … Far from wishing to waken the artist in the pupil prematurely, the teacher considers it his first task to make him a skilled artisan with sovereign control of his craft … He sticks to this traditional custom because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating. The meditative repose in which he performs them give him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers …
4. … There is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to mastery. Not the danger of wasting himself in idle self-gratification – for the East has no aptitude for this cult of the ego – but rather the danger of getting stuck in his achievement, which is confirmed by his success and magnified by his renown … Thus the teacher lets his pupil voyage onward through himself. But the pupil, with growing receptiveness, lets the teacher bring to view something of which he has often heard but whose reality is only now beginning to become tangible on the basis of his own experiences …
5. … It is immaterial what name the teacher gives it, whether indeed he names it at all. The pupil understands him even when he keeps silent … “Just as one uses a burning candle to light others with”, so the teacher transfers the spirit of the right art from heart to heart, that it may be illumined … the pupil remembers that more important that all outward works, however attractive, is the inward work which he has to accomplish if he is to fulfil his vocation as an artist …
6. … For mastery proves its validity as a form of life only when it dwells in the boundless Truth and, sustained by it, becomes the art of the origin.
The Master no longer seeks, but finds …
7. … Wherever his way may take him, the pupil, though he may lose sight of his teacher, can never forget him. With a gratitude as great as the uncritical veneration of the beginner, as strong as the saving faith of the artist, he now takes his Master’s place, ready for any sacrifice. Countless examples down to the recent past testify that this gratitude far exceeds the measure of what is customary among mankind …
