Zen in the Art of Archery - Quotes | Eugen Herrigel

Quotes from Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel:

• The right art is purposeless, aimless!
• 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.
• 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.
• He who has a hundred miles to walk should reckon ninety as half the journey.
• We should not practice anything except self-detaching immersion.
• Only the truly detached can understand what is meant by “detachment.
• The effortlessness of a performance for which great strength is needed is a spectacle of whose aesthetic beauty the East has an exceedingly sensitive and grateful appreciation.