Zen in the Art of Archery Quotes

“Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out!" he exclaimed. "The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“You worry yourself unnecessarily. Put the thought of hitting right out of your mind!”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background... In due course one even grows immune to larger stimuli, and at the same time detachment from them becomes easier and quicker. Care has only to be taken that the body is relaxed whether standing, sitting or lying, and if one then concentrates on breathing one soon feels oneself shut in by impermeable layers of silence. One only knows and feels that one breathes. And, to detach oneself from this feeling and knowing, no fresh decision is required, for the breathing slows down of its own accord, becomes more and more economical in the use of breath, and finally, slipping by degrees into a blurred monotone, escapes one's attention altogether.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“...being able to wait without purpose in the state of highest tension...without continually asking yourself: Shall I be able to manage it? Wait patiently, as see what comes - and how it comes!”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“You must learn to wait properly... By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“This exquisite state of unconcerned immersion in oneself is not, unfortunately, of long duration. It is liable to be disturbed from inside. As though sprung from nowhere, moods, feelings, desires, worries and even thoughts incontinently rise up, in a meaningless jumble.... The only successful way of rendering this disturbance inoperative is to keep on breathing quietly and unconcernedly, to enter into friendly relations with whatever appears on the scene, to accustom oneself to it, to look at it equably and at last grow weary of looking.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“And what impels him to repeat this process at every single lesson, and, with the same remorseless insistence, to make his pupils copy it without the least alteration? 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 gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work can be done.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“He who has a hundred miles to walk should reckon ninety as half the journey,” he replied, quoting the proverb.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“I must only warn you of one thing. You have become a different person in the course of these years. For this is what the art of archery means: a profound and far−reaching contest of the archer with himself. Perhaps you have hardly noticed it yet, but you will feel it very strongly when you meet your friends and acquaintances again in your own country: things will no longer harmonize as before. You will see with other eyes and measure with other measures. It has happened to me too, and it happens to all who are touched by the spirit of this art.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“I learned to lose myself so effortlessly in the breathing that I sometimes had the feeling that I myself was not breathing but—strange as this may sound—being breathed.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“Put the thought of hitting right out of your mind! You can be a Master even if every shot does not hit. The hits on the target is only an outward proof and confirmation of your purposelessness at its highest, of your egolessness, your self-abandonment, or whatever you like to call this state. There are different grades of mastery, and only when you have made the last grade will you be sure of not missing the goal.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“... the Master's warning that we should not practice anything except self-detaching immersion.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“You had to suffer shipwreck through your own efforts before you were ready to seize the lifebelt he threw you. Believe me, I know from my own experience that the Master knows you and each of his pupils much better than we know ourselves. He reads in the souls of his pupils more than they care to admit.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“...the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating... that collectedness and presence of mind...the right frame of mind for the artist is only reached when the preparing and the creating, the technical and the artistic, the material and the spiritual, the project and the object, flow together without a break.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“I must only warn you of one thing. You have become a different person in the course of these years. For this is what the art of archery means: a profound and far-reaching contest of the archer with himself. Perhaps you have hardly noticed it yet, but you will feel it very strongly when you meet your friends and acquaintances again in your own country: things will no longer harmonize as before. You will see with other eyes and measure with other measures. It has happened to me too, and it happens to all who are touched by the spirit of this art.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“The instructor’s business is not to show the way itself, but to enable the pupil to get the feel of this way to the goal by adapting it to his individual peculiarities”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“How far the pupil will go is not the concern of the teacher and Master. Hardly has he shown him the right way when he must let him go on alone.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“archery is still a matter of life and death to the extent that it is a contest of the archer with himself;”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“only the truly detached can understand what is meant by “detachment”,”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“why try to anticipate in thought what only experience can teach?”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“What must I do, then? " I asked thoughtfully. " You must learn to wait properly. " " And how does one learn that? " " By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension. " " So I must become purposeless˙on purpose? " I heard myself say. " No pupil has ever asked me that, so I don’t know the right answer. " " And when do we begin these new exercises? " " Wait until it is time.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“You had to suffer shipwreck through your own efforts before you were ready to seize the lifebelt he threw you.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“You only feel it because you haven’t really let go of yourself. It is all so simple. You can learn from an ordinary bamboo leaf what ought to happen. It bends lower and lower under the weight of snow. Suddenly the snow slips to the ground without the leaf having stirred. Stay like that at the point of highest tension until the shot falls from you. So, indeed, it is: when the tension is fulfilled, the shot must fall, it must fall from the archer like snow from a bamboo leaf, before he even thinks it.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“To be free from the fear of death does not mean pretending to oneself, in one’s good hours, that one will not tremble in the face of death, and that there is nothing to fear. Rather, he who masters both life and death is free from fear of any kind to the extent that he is no longer capable of experiencing what fear feels like.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“That’s just the trouble, you make an effort to think about it. Concentrate entirely on your breathing, as if you had nothing else to do!” It took me a considerable time before I succeeded in doing what the Master wanted. But—I succeeded.”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“You cannot do it ", explained the Master, `because you do not breathe right. Press your breath down gently after breathing in, so that the abdominal wall is tightly stretched, and hold it there for a while. Then breathe out as slowly and evenly as possible, and, after a short pause, draw a quick breath of air again − out and in continually, in a rhythm that will gradually settle”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery