Practise to be as deliberate as you can now,
so that you can be as free as you can later.– Shilashanti
In the case of archery, the hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects, but one reality… Zen is the ‘everyday mind’; this ‘everyday mind; is no more than sleeping when tired. eating when hungry.’ As soon as we reflect, deliberate, and conceptualise, the original unconsiousness is lost and a thought interferes. We no longer eat when eating, we no longer sleep when sleeping. The arrow is off the string but does not fly straight to the target, or does the target stand where it is. Calculation which is miscalculation sets in.
D.T. Suzuki
(in Eugen Herrigel’s ‘Zen and the Art of Archery’)
