Speaking from my own experience, it's like this: fights procede too quickly to think much, unless you step back from your opponent to create a pause. When you're in the middle of parry-and-riposte, most of what you do is sheer habit or rote-learning, but every once in a while you do something that surprises you, that's different from your training. You have an impulse, and suddenly you're carrying it out. It's a sort of flash of brilliance, like suddenly taking advantage of a move of your opponent to find a hole you didn't realize was there. You wonder, after you do it, whether it was just an accident.
Well, to my understanding, the elusive Zen quest is this: can you free yourself both from thinking too much and from rote technique so that you're brilliant all the time, so that you simply react? The reaction is like an animal reacts, automatic and free, but at the same time is disciplined, shaped, born of all your experience and analysis and practice.
The idea, incidentally, is invoked also in acting theories, for instance those of Meisner and Grotowski.
Following are general remarks from Zen in the art of archery (1953; tr. RFC Hull) by Eugen
Herrigel, a German who went to Japan and trained for six years.
'"You must hold the drawn bowstring," answered the Master, "like a child holding the proffered finger. It grips it so firmly that one marvels
at the strength of the tiny fist. And when it lets the finger go, there is not the slightest jerk. Do you know why? Because the child doesn't
think: I will now let go of the finger in order to grasp this other thing. Completely unselfconsciously, without purpose, it turns from one to
the other� Do you know why you cannot wait for the shot and why you get out of breath before it has come? The right shot at the right moment
does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfilment, but brace yourself for failure. So long as that is so, you have
no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will
not open in the right way -- like the hand of a child: it does not burst open like the skin of a ripe fruit." [pp 45-6]
It is this mastery of form that the Japanese method of instruction seeks to inculcate. Practice, repetition, and repetition of
the repeated with ever increasing intensity are its distinctive features for long stretches of the way� Nothing more is required of
the pupil, at first, than that he should conscientiously copy what the teacher shows him� 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. The pupil follows out this
intention with untiring industry. As though he had no higher aspirations he bows under his burden with a kind of obtuse devotion, only to discover
in the course of years that forms which he perfectly masters no longer oppress but liberate. He grows daily more capable of following
any inspiration without technical effort, and also of letting inspiration come to him through meticulous observation. The hand that guides
the brush has already caught and executed what floated before the mind at the same moment as the mind began to form it, and in the
end the pupil no longer knows which of the two -- mind, or hand -- was responsible for the work. [pp 58-60; if you
know a musical instrument, compare the way, in training, you simply focus on the technique]
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. [p 68]
Do not forget that even in Nature there are correspondences which cannot be understood, and yet are so real that we have
grown accustomed to them, just as if they could not be any different. I will give you an example which I have often puzzled
over. The spider dances her web without knowing that there are flies who will get caught in it. The fly, dancing nonchalantly on a
sunbeam, gets caught in the net without knowing what lies in store. But through both of them "It" dances, and inside and outside are united in
this dance. So, too, the archer hits the target without having aimed -- more I cannot say. [p 80]
You know already that you should not grieve over bad shots; learn now not to rejoice over the good ones. You must free yourself
from the buffetings of pleasure and pain, and learn to rise above them in easy equanimity, to rejoice as though not you but another
had shot well. This, too, you must practise unceasingly -- you cannot conceive how important it is. [p 85]
Among swordmasters, on the basis of their own and their pupils' experience, it is taken as proved that the beginner,
however strong and pugnacious he is, and however courageous and fearless he may be at the outset, loses not only
his lack of self-consciousness, but his self-confidence, as soon as he starts taking lessons. He gets to know all the
technical possibilities by which his life may be endangered in combat, and although he soon becomes capable of straining his
attention to the utmost, of keeping a sharp watch on his opponent, of parrying his thrusts correctly and making effective
lunges, he is really worse off than before, when, half in jest and half in earnest, he struck about him at
random under the inspiration of the moment and as the joy of battle suggested. He is now forced to admit that he
is at the mercy of everyone who is stronger, more nimble and more practised than he. He sees no other way open to him
except ceaseless practice, and his instructor too has no other advice to give him
for the present. So the beginner stakes everything on surpassing the others and even himself. He acquires a
brilliant technique, which gives him back some of his lost self-confidence, and thinks he is drawing nearer and nearer to the desired
goal. The instructor, however thinks differently�
Yet the initial instruction cannot be imparted in any other way; it is thoroughly
suited to the beginner� [W]hy is it that, judged by the highest standards, he fails at the last moment and makes no headway?
The reason, according to Takuan, is that the pupil cannot stop watching
his opponent and his swordplay; that he is always thinking how he can best come at him, waiting for the moment when he is
off his guard. In short, he relies all the time on his art and knowledge. By so doing, Takuan says, he loses his "presence of heart": the decisive thrust
always comes too late and he is unable to "turn his opponent's sword against him". The more he tries to make the brilliance of his
swordplay dependent on his own reflection, on the conscious utilization of his skill, on his fighting experience and
tactics, the more he inhibits the free "working of the heart". What is to be done? How does skill become "spiritual", and how does sovereign
control of technique turn into master swordplay? Only, so we are informed, by the pupil becoming purposeless and
egoless. He must be taught to be detached not only from his opponent but from himself. He must pass through the stage he is still
at and leave it behind him for good, even at the risk of irretrievable failure�
The pupil must develop a new sense or, more accurately, a new alertness of all his
senses, which will enable him to avoid dangerous thrusts as though he could feel them coming. Once he has mastered this art of
evasion, he no longer needs to watch with undivided attention the movements of his opponent, or even of several opponents at
once. Rather, he sees and feels what is going to happen, and at that same moment he has already avoided its effect without there
being "a hair's breadth" between perceiving and avoiding. This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation�
What is very much more difficult and of truly decisive importance is the task of stopping the
pupil from thinking and spying out how he can best come at his opponent. Actually, he should clear his mind of the thought that he has to do with
an opponent at all and that it is a matter of life and death.
To begin with, the pupil understands these instructions -- and he can hardly do otherwise -- as meaning that it is
sufficient for him to refrain from observing and thinking about the behaviour of his opponent. He takes this non-observation very seriously and
controls himself at every step. But he fails to notice that, by concentrating his attention on himself, he inevitably sees himself as the
combatant who has at all costs to avoid watching his opponent. Do what he may, he still has him secretly in mind�
It takes a good deal of very subtle psychological guidance to convince the pupil that fundamentally
he has gained nothing by this shift of attention. He must learn to disregard himself as resolutely as he disregards his opponent, and to
become, in a radical sense, self-regardless, purposeless. Much patience, much heart-breaking practice is needed, just as in archery.
This state of purposeless detachment is followed automatically by a mode of behaviour which bears a surprising
resemblance to the previous stage of instinctive evasion. Just as, at that stage, there was not a hair's breadth between perceiving the intended
thrust and evading it, so now there is no time lag between evasion and action. At the moment of evasion the combatant reaches back
to strike, and in a flash the deadly stroke has fallen, sure and irresistible�
The swordmaster is as unselfconscious as the beginner. The nonchalance which he forfeited at the beginning of
his instruction he wins back again at the end as an indestructible characteristic�
Like the beginner the swordmaster is fearless, but, unlike him, he grows daily less and less accessible
to fear. Years of unceasing meditation have taught him that life and death are at bottom the same and belong to the same stratum of
fact. He no longer knows what fear of life and terror of death are. He lives -- and this is thoroughly characteristic of Zen -- happily enough
in the world, but ready at any time to quit it without being in the least disturbed by the thought of death. It is not for nothing that the Samurai
have chosen for their truest symbol the fragile cherry blossom. Like a petal dropping in the morning sunlight and floating serenely to
earth, so must the fearless detach himself from life, silent and inwardly unmoved. [pp 94-103]
Back to main page.