Quotes from Eugen Herrigel

Assuming that his talent can survive the increasing strain, there is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to mastery.

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.

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.

The right art, cried the Master, is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. 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.

You worry yourself unnecessarily. Put the thought of hitting right out of your mind!

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!

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.

The man, the art, the work--it is all one.

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

You have described only too well, replied the Master, where the difficulty lies...The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You...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.

He who has a hundred miles to walk should reckon ninety as half the journey," he replied, quoting the proverb.

The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.

The hand that stretches the bow must open like a child's hand opens. What sometimes hinders the precision of the shot is the archer's over-active will. He thinks: What I fail to do will not be done, and that's not quite how things work. Man should always act, but he must also let other forces of the universe act in their own due time.

the Master's warning that we should not practice anything except self-detaching immersion.

The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

archery is still a matter of life and death to the extent that it is a contest of the archer with himself;

This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose.

only the truly detached can understand what is meant by "detachment"

You had to suffer shipwreck through your own efforts before you were ready to seize the lifebelt he threw you.