Likes Likes:  2
Page 2 of 5 FirstFirst 1 2 3 4 5 LastLast
Results 16 to 30 of 71

Thread: Zen Bow Zen Arrow - The life of Master Awa Kenzo

  1. #16
    Join Date
    Apr 2001
    Location
    Hiroshima, Japan.
    Posts
    2,550
    Likes (received)
    151

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by richard808 View Post
    I forgot to add my name there
    Richard Katz richard808 At gmail daht calm
    If you access User CP, at the far left side of the screen on the brown menu bar, you can Edit Signature and put your name as your signature. Then moderators like me would not need to give you infractions.
    Peter Goldsbury,
    Forum Administrator,
    Hiroshima, Japan

  2. #17
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    richmond ca
    Posts
    21
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default shooting and meditation, by Richard Katz

    the post about shooting archery and meditation was by Richard Katz
    Richard Katz
    richard808 Attt geemail daht calm

  3. #18
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Location
    Palo Alto, Ca, USA
    Posts
    1,324
    Likes (received)
    1

    Default

    Richard:

    Like I said, if you're shooting a compound bow, forget about Awa, kyudo, "Zen" and meditation. Talk to somebody who understands the bow you are using. Trying to effect a kyudo release with a compound bow is like trying to play Mozart on a tuba. Not gonna work.
    Earl Hartman

  4. #19
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    richmond ca
    Posts
    21
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Awa, kyudo, "Zen" and meditation
    Like Earl Hartman just said, if I want to play Mozart's Clarinet Quintet I better get a clarinet.

    Not a tuba.

    Not to differ with Earl Hartman by any means (a fifth dan archer) but any archer gains from learning about Awa. That's a personal journey, though. I'll never forget going into all those bookshops in downtown Kyoto and asking for a book, or anything, by or about Awa Kenzo; and one bookstore owner after another scowling and saying "No. Nothing." Sumimasen. Then you get to the Kyoto Budo Center, and there's a photo of Awa Kenzo shooting, high on the wall of the Kyudo Pavilion, and no pictures of anything (or anybody) else.

    (Zen and meditation? Can you imagine trying to make a half decent shot with that stuff running around in your head?)

    Personally, I"ve always used a simple three fingered glove, and no bowsight. Couple years ago I started slicing off the third fingertip of the glove and drawing with two fingers; works better, but with that third finger still there to position the glove a little. "Releasing a compound bow" sounds like I'm out there with some kind of space age gizmo like most of the shooters at the range. Maybe someday.

    That's kind of funny about the Mozart, though. I can play the Clarinet Quintet okay, not great. When I was a kid, I remember being a little surprised to find out that the version I was playing on the B-flat clarinet isn't the real deal, because Mozart wrote that piece for the A clarinet, which is just a little bigger and sounds different. So I rented one of those orchestral clarinets a couple times.

    Then maybe ten years ago I went to listen to that quintet being performed by some professionals playing vintage instruments, and the clarinetist had an early-model horn that somehow got out two extra notes at the low end. Turns out Mozart had written two passages in that piece that sound okay when you play them with our instruments, but damn if they don't sound just a little zippier the way that fellow played them with those couple extra low notes there, just the way Ol' Wolfgang had meant it to sound.

    I'm going to stop by the Emeryville dojo one of these days soon so I can perhaps see up close what is going on in the kyudo release. I'm just curious, and have been for years, about that. It's got nothing to do (as Earl Hartman has pointed out) with shooting a compound bow.


    A bow is just a tool; on the other hand, get the right tool for the job. How'se that for Zen? in the Art of Archery! One hand shooting.
    Richard Katz
    richard808 Attt geemail daht calm

  5. #20
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    richmond ca
    Posts
    21
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Earl Hartman View Post
    Richard:

    Like I said, if you're shooting a compound bow, forget about Awa, kyudo, "Zen" and meditation. Talk to somebody who understands the bow you are using. Trying to effect a kyudo release with a compound bow is like trying to play Mozart on a tuba. Not gonna work.
    I got to thinking about what Earl Hartman said, in reference to Awa Kenzo, and it occurred to me that Awa Kenzo was nearly a hundred years ago. So I wrote a few pages about that; it's a GoogleDoc:

    publicly viewable at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgkqn6xw_116ggpcqd

    the gist of it is that Awa Kenzo became aware of the "mental game" (the kind of mental game they talk about in golf, say); BUT, bearing in mind, that it was a LONG time ago and predates -- seems to me, but I'm no historian of the mental game -- the mental game in "practice makes perfect" sport in general.
    Richard Katz
    richard808 Attt geemail daht calm

  6. #21
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Location
    Palo Alto, Ca, USA
    Posts
    1,324
    Likes (received)
    1

    Default

    People were aware of the "mental game" of archery more than two millennia before Awa.

    One of the bases of Japanese kyudo is a section of document from 2nd century B.C.E China called the Li Ki , usually translated as "The Book of Rites". In Japanese it is called the "Rai Ki". It is a compilation of the various rites and rituals practiced in China around the time of Confucius. (I am not a China scholar, so I don't know when the document was first written down, but it contains descriptions of rituals dating back even further than that.)

    There is a section in it dealing with the proper conduct of archery, known in Japanese as the Shagi, or "Ritual of Shooting" which the Japanese adopted in their archery practice. It says the following:

    The shooting, with the round of moving forward or backward can never be without courtesy and propriety (Rei).

    After having acquired the right inner intention and correctness in the outer appearance, the bow and arrow can be handled resolutely.

    To shoot in this way is to perform the shooting with success, and through this shooting virtue will be evident.

    Kyudo is the way of perfect virtue. In the shooting, one must search for rightness in oneself. With the rightness of self, shooting can be realized.

    At the time when shooting fails, there should be no resentment towards those who win. On the contrary, this is an occasion to search for oneself.


    (This the official translation which is found in the English version of the Kyudo Mnaual put out by the All Nippon Kyudo Federation. I would have translated it a bit differently, perhaps, but it captures the gist.)

    Here is a link to the pertinent section of the document, translated by James Legge: http://www.sacred-texts.com/cfu/liki2/liki243.htm

    What it says, basically, is that when the archer's inner intention, that is, his mental state, is correct, he will be able to shoot his bow properly, and that when he can do this his shooting will be successful, that is, he will strike the target. This is the idea of 正射必中, or "a true shot never misses".

    To repeat, this document is more than 2,000 years old. It has always been the foundation of Japanese archery almost from its inception. By stressing the "mental game" of kyudo, Awa was absolutely not coming up with anything new, nor was he radically departing from accepted doctrine. Anyone who has ever shot a bow with any seriousness is aware of how vital the mental aspect is.

    Awa's departure was, so far as I have been able to tell, twofold: his apparent disdain for accuracy (I say apparent because I'm not sure it's true) and his establishment of his own school of archery which apparently was explicitly religious. Awa called his style of shooting "Daishadokyo" (大射道教) which means "Teaching of the Great Way of Shooting". The character for teaching (教) can also be translated as "doctrine" (Herrigel's "Great Doctrine"), or "church" (in Japanese Christianity is "キリスト教"). Personally, I believe it was Awa's emphasis on the religious aspects of his teaching, and his propagation of his style as a sort of church or sect, that angered the traditionalists. Yamada's research shows that Awa considered himself a missionary of sorts and taught Daishadokyo as a kind of religion. Sakurai mentions that the group led by Honda Toshizane (one of Awa's teachers) objected to his introduction of religion into kyujutsu where they felt it did not belong.

    We have to remember that Awa was formulating his ideas at a time of great cultural ferment in Japan, where Western ideas were inundating the country and people were aping Western ways. Honda Toshizane himself had fought in the Boshin War which accompanied the fall of the Tokugawa and the establishment of the Meiji government. I think it is safe to assume that he used his bow in this conflict. He was genuine "Old School" for whom archery was, literally, a matter of life and death. His apparent disdain for Awa's quasi-religious approach is not too surprising if you look at it like that. Interestingly, the style that Honda developed, later called the Honda Ryu, changed the traditional shooting method to better reflect Western ideas of physical education. It was a radical departure which, when first introduced, faced widespread opposition. So Honda was something of a radical in his own way.

    Awa, taking his lead from Kano Jigoro, tried to re-formulate traditional kyudo to make it fit better with the modern world. This is the real distinguishing characteristic of modern kyudo, which owes a lot to Awa and his disciples, many of whom were key figures in the establishment of the All Nippon Kyudo Federation after WWII: the emphasis is on the role that kyudo should play in society and what meaning it can or should have in a world where kyudo no longer has any practical value. This reformulation was quite conscious and explicit. Modern kyudo is not what it once was, even in Awa's time.

    The real question is: does one try to master the "mental game" in order to become proficient in archery or does one practice archery in order to understand the "mental game"? Where one stands on this issue determines one's attitude to kyudo.

    People always talk about kyudo being "spiritual". People who, influenced by Herrigel, think that the "spirituality" of kyudo is the goal will often disparage accuracy or technical training because they think that somehow this is not "spiritual". This is wrong. The Raiki Shagi shows that the proper spiritual intention is vital to the proper practice of archery. The spirituality of the archer is evident from the quality of the shooting. This is the fundamental attitude of kyudo and it always has been. If Awa truly and genuinely thought that accuracy was of no importance and that one's spiritual attitude was the only thing that was important, then he was, indeed, a heretic and the opposition to him makes perfect sense. Personally, I don't believe that is true and that Herrigel misrepresented him. However, he is on record as being supremely disdainful of kyujutsu and formulated his "Shado" in conscious opposition to it. I believe he did this not because he thought hitting the target was unimportant, but because he thought that kyujutsu was not being put to what he saw as the correct use and that his Shado would put kyujutsu back on the right path. It should surprise no one that this ruffled some feathers.
    Last edited by Earl Hartman; 25th November 2007 at 04:35.
    Earl Hartman

  7. #22
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Location
    Palo Alto, Ca, USA
    Posts
    1,324
    Likes (received)
    1

    Default

    A slight correction: "Shagi" (射義) is more properly translated as "The Morality/Meaning of Shooting". The "Ritual of Shooting" would be written with a different character for "gi" (儀).
    Earl Hartman

  8. #23
    Join Date
    May 2000
    Location
    Outside of Phila.
    Posts
    1,492
    Likes (received)
    1

    Default

    Thanks again Earl for your contributions here...I don't have any connection to the bow at all, but I find your posts very well written and extremely informative. They make an excellent back ground for Budo in general.

    Best,
    Ron

  9. #24
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    richmond ca
    Posts
    21
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    A lot of the quotes were familiar to me; then I realized I had read them on Earl Hartman's pages from the dojo in Emeryville. You can learn a lot from reading that syllabus front to back.

    I too, like Ron Tisdale, find Earl Hartman's posts extremely informative. It's generous of him.

    This rearrangement, on e-budo, of some of the teachings jiggers some of the thought into an interesting conformation; especially the part about

    "does one try to master the "mental game" in order to become proficient in archery or does one practice archery in order to understand the "mental game"?"
    That is one tough question; and there are some good teachings given to evaluate that question intelligently. The unknown aspect, for me and probably any number of others in all sorts of martial arts, is that I may very well be mentally operating at one tenth the intensity of a really good archer, even on a good day and on a really excellent shot. I just have no idea. (The converse is easier to ascertain though: Not that long ago I started having some pretty disturbing thoughts about archery, and I was just amazed at how inaccurate I became, and how badly behaved I got, acting just like all those golfers who act annoyed at a lousy drive (nearly all amateurs; not quite all though.) It just went away after a while, like the flu. ) That is actually somewhat encouraging, the idea that one must be doing it mostly right, because when something goes bad everything goes REALLY bad.

    One more note about Awa Kenzo: I don't want to sound like I"m marketing John Stevens' little book Zen Bow Zen Arrow; far from it. REally, save your money! BUT, that having been said, there's what sounds like an okay biography of Awa Kenzo on pages 5-27. On page 10, Stevens quotes from Sakurai Yasunosuke Awa Kenzo Sensei Shoten Hyakunensai Jikko Iinkai 1981 (100th Anniversary of Awa's Birthday) (having just recounted how Awa had won the national tournament in Tokyo when he was 30):

    "Kenzo Sensei had just been appointed archery instructor at our school. Archery was not very popular at the time, and Sensei lived in a tiny little house with his family. Sensei had a strict demeanor, and he used a huge, very strong bow. He made a bull's eye with almost every shot. The zip of his arrows in flight was extraordinary. Sensei was tremendously powerful physically ... During that period, Sensei stressed technique much more than philosophy; he was very critical regarding our posture, insisting that our form be perfect. ...."

    Steven ends the next Paragraph with: ".... by 1917, at the age of 38, he was widely recognized as the best shooter in the country."

    [Then Stevens gets into the morass of trying to figure out whether Awa was dabbling in religion, so let's quietly slip out the door.]

    The point is that technique-wise, we're talking about an archer who was a master. His students said that. Is there anybody out there who thinks that somebody who shoots with awesome accuracy all the time could have anything but excellent technique? Naaaaah. No way. But then he said something like "technique doesn't matter" ..... See, I don't question that; I'm just on a little expedition here to understand that. And I keep asking myself, Why don't you go to Sendai and see what word he used to use for "technique"?

    One last thing, and it's not really germane to the discussion of technique, or the discussion of the mental game:

    So if you get a really old text, and you translate it, you tend to invest and imbue your translation --- your words, your phrases --- with meanings you are getting from today's world.

    Let me give an example, that's not Japanese or Chinese or from the world of martial arts, just one that I bumped into that shows what I mean: There's a well known passage in the New Testament where Christ is quoted as saying "Don't be like the hypocrites in the Temple". I looked that up in the Greek dictionary: two thousand years ago, a hypocrite was an understudy, in Greek drama. The meaning of the statement is that the priests were just actors who didn't really believe in anything, they were just acting; and they weren't even good enough actors to get the lead role. (Quite an insult, really, when you stop to think about it.) But, when you read "hypocrite", you have the modern meaning that we all know, in your head: somebody who says one thing and believes quite another. Of course the two are related, but that modern shade of meaning hadn't been invented yet. The modern meaning is actually somewhat watered down; but we have to tap ourselves on the side of the head to remember that that was then, this is now.

    But you know what? If Earl Hartman is pretty sure that that phrase translated as "inner intention" from Chinese through Japanese means about the same as what we call "having your mind right" or "having you mental game together" I'm more than willing to go along with him, ie that the old boys were hip to the mental game at least as early as a couple or three thousand years ago. Homo sapiens had become conscious by then so why not?
    Richard Katz
    richard808 Attt geemail daht calm

  10. #25
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Location
    Palo Alto, Ca, USA
    Posts
    1,324
    Likes (received)
    1

    Default

    All the old kyudo texts stress the need to go beyond technique and that the release has to come naturally without thinking about it. Any Western archer will tell you exactly the same thing. This is archery, not Zen. But like I said, that can only happen once you have technique. You can't pass beyond something you don't have. Do you think Yo Yo Ma worries about technique when he plays? No, he doesn't have to any more. But I'll bet in the beginning his teacher made him play scales until his fingers bled.

    Awa's progress in his career strikes me as very typical: as a young man he was full of piss and vinegar, and like any good young man with testosterone poisoning, he was out to prove himself. You cannot achieve the kind of skill Awa achieved without impeccable technique. Kyudo technique is founded upon proper posture, so Awa, like any instructor worth his salt, drilled his students in proper posture. There is nothing out of the ordinary in this. My teachers did the same thing with me.

    Awa was clearly something of a prodigy. Everybody tries to do what he did, some people are just better than others. Awa had the natural talent and the drive to realize his potential.

    Anyway, regarding technique, my personal belief is that Awa got to the point where he never missed and looked around and said: "Is this all there is to kyudo? No, there must be something more." This is what the Japanese call "the luxury disease" (贅沢病): like a gourmet who has sampled all the delicacies the world has to offer and is disappointed that there is not another dish he can try, Awa had the luxury to worry about other things because technically there was nowhere further for him to go. Very, very few people ever get to the point where they have the luxury of being able to worry about things like that. There is nothing more pathetic than a diletante who cannot hit the broad side of a a barn yet who wanders around musing about the Real Meaning of Kyudo. You do not have the right to waste your time thinking about things like that until you can shoot. Most of us will never have the opportunity to worry about such things.

    Like I said, I don't believe that Awa didn't care about technique. Ultimately, as I explained above, the archer's mind controls his technique. Assuming two archers have an identical technical capability, the archer with the correct mind and spirit will be the better shot. In this sense, what kyudo people call "the working of the mind and spirit" (心気の働き) is the ultimate technique of kyudo since it holds the key to a successful shot, assuming that the physical technique is there. Kyudo technique is fundamentally very simple; what Awa was trying to teach Herrigel was that ultimately the solution to his problems lay within his own mind and spirit and that he should stop obsessing over little details, thinking that a little twist here or squeeze there would make everything work properly. This leads you down the wrong path. However, Herrigel, like an idiot, assumed this meant that technique wasn't important.

    Regarding the translation of "having your mind right", the Raiki Shagi says "内志し正しくして". There is only one way to translate that: "make your inner intention correct".
    Last edited by Earl Hartman; 27th November 2007 at 09:22.
    Earl Hartman

  11. #26
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    richmond ca
    Posts
    21
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Would you be so kind as to write out in Roma Ji how to say that phrase for "having your mind right"= "making your inner intention correct"

    yomu koto ga dekimasen.

    I'd sure appreciate it. Dozo.
    Richard Katz
    richard808 Attt geemail daht calm

  12. #27
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Location
    Palo Alto, Ca, USA
    Posts
    1,324
    Likes (received)
    1

    Default

    Uchi kokorozashi tadashiku shite
    Earl Hartman

  13. #28
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    richmond ca
    Posts
    21
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Earl Hartman View Post
    Uchi kokorozashi tadashiku shite
    Thank you.

    That's a great essay. I've read it a few times, since you wrote it a few days ago; to give it a chance to digest. It venerates the past, appropriately, whilst bringing the teachings right up to the present.

    (Let me know when my questioning becomes tedious, or a pain in the neck): Do any of those subelements in uchi kokoro za shi come from "head" or "brain", (e.g. the way the little square made from three strokes derived way back when from "mouth", in, say, katsuben shi*)?

    ______________
    *I only know that one because I took it for my name some years ago.
    Richard Katz
    richard808 Attt geemail daht calm

  14. #29
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Location
    Palo Alto, Ca, USA
    Posts
    1,324
    Likes (received)
    1

    Default

    Sorry, I wouldn't know.
    Earl Hartman

  15. #30
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Location
    Nagoya, Japan
    Posts
    522
    Likes (received)
    31

    Default

    No, they don't. And incidently, it breaks down as "uchi-kokorozashi", with kokorozashi being one word (which is why Earl wrote it that way), and the uchi acting as a prefix.

    内 - uchi: inside, inner
    志し - kokorozashi: aim, ambition, intention, desire

    It's often a mistake to assume that the elements or a kanji are actually made up of similar looking characters and mean the same thing. Here, for example, there appears to be the kanji for "person" in uchi, but actually it's a corrupted form of "enter". It looks like kokorozashi has the character for "gentleman, scholar" in it, but actually that's an altered representation of advancing feet.
    Josh Reyer

    Swa sceal man don, žonne he ęt guše gengan ženceš longsumne lof, na ymb his lif cearaš. - The Beowulf Poet

Page 2 of 5 FirstFirst 1 2 3 4 5 LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •