Over the last several years I have been involved in archery. My first involvement came as a 9 year-old boy making my first bow using a willow tree branch and twine used for baling hay. I would cut off the branches and with twine tied on one end, I would step through to bend the branch into a bow shape and then tie the loose end to the other side of the branch. Smaller branches were sharpened to a point and a v-notch cut in the back to fashion a nock. I've come along way since then - fibreglass recurve, to laminate recurves and longbows to modern compounds.
About 3 years ago I read a book called Zen in the Art of Archery written back in the late 1940's, early 1950's by a German philosophy professor named Eugen Herrigel. Herrigel made the journey to Japan in a quest to learn about Zen and was encouraged by a friend to take up Kyudo because of his background in target pistol shooting. The book was a description of Herrigel's journey while studying Kyudo. During his many lessons over the years, Herrigel's sensei told him that the loose of the arrow should come without conscious thought or "no mind." What he described was the very thing I was experiencing when I was in the zone as a target archer. This ignited a keen interest in the subject.
On October 29th and 30th of this year, I finally had the once in a lifetime chance to begin the journey in becoming a Kyudoka (practitioner of Kyudo). The archery club I am affiliated with has had a kyudo program for sometime and periodically brings in an instructor from the Halifax kyudo dojo affiliated with Sabata Sensei and his organization Zenko International. Over the two days, I learned the seven coordinations of kyudo and experienced my first shot.
I certainly learned over those first two days that, while kyudo appears to be simple and graceful, it is actually quite difficult with the precise prescribed body movements (kata) required in the seven coordinations. I found myself sore at the end of the two days and mentally exhausted as the amount of concentration required to perform these precise movements is significant. I found myself totally lost in the execution of the coordinations and totally focused on each exact moment as though the world around me did not exist.
Just after our mid day meal, I executed my first shot. Reflecting on that moment, I am surprised at how I reacted to the culmination to all that effort. I was neither elated or disappointed. It just "was." I wonder if this is what Herrigel's sensei meant by "no mind?" I don't know. I think it would be very arrogant and egotistical for me to conclude that I had reached this stage so quickly.
I hope to take the lessons learned from my initial kyudo training and transfering them to my everyday life and to my target shooting.
In the meantime, I will continue my kyudo training and have started reading the book, One Arrow, One Life written by Kenneth Kushner.
My journey begins.
