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Thread: The Myth of Zen in the Art of Archery

  1. #76
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    [QUOTE=Earl Hartman]Ah, yes, the "s**t eating grin" emoticon. Now I know we've come to the end of the line on this discussion...

    Indeed remember never lose your sense of humor...

    However, today I did receive an email from author Kenneth Kushner. tracking his email down from the internet. He advised the following:

    "I am aware of the article and, to a degree the controversy, although I do not participate in e-budo. I am on my way out of my house now to catch a plane to China. I will get back to you when I am back in town. Thank you for your interest." - Kenneth Kushner

    I would be interested on his perspective.
    Tracy Reasoner
    shunshinkan
    www.hawaiikiaikido.org

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    Default Semantics

    Quote Originally Posted by TLR
    The "expert" Mr. Hartman hitting himself with his own arrow would be a site to see.
    Did you mean 'sight' (site is a whole other kettle of fish).

    Be well,
    Jigme
    Jigme Chobang Daniels
    aoikoyamakan at gmail dot com

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    Default Zen in the Art of Anything

    As a new member, I have read these pages with relish. I admire Master Tracy for her stamina and unbending belief in "The Way," and Master Earl for his prolific unbending belief in his Way as the only Way. There is no doubt you have both been validated by your writings.

    I read Zen in the Art of Archery well before I even thought about studying martial arts. It was required reading for a conducting course I was taking when I studied music in college. What I got from it (and please bear in mind this was from the perspective of a 20-something year old college student who was all eyes and ears about spirituality and how to acquire it through drugs) was that Zen was a spiritual state, and that state can be achieved through any art. Regardless of what Herrigel intended, I really believe, although I have no doubt both Masters Tracy and Earl would vehemently disagree with me, that the point of the book was not that you required a Zen state to achieve mastery in archery, but that studying the art of archery would enable you to acquire a Zen state of mind. Just as studying conducting would enable you to acquire a Zen state of mind. To me, that meant you achieved an altered state of consciousness, without smoking a joint first.

    Wonder of wonders. And I did experience it through the art of conducting.

    Now, I am using "Zen" as a generic term, because I am definitely not a student of Zen (although I did explore its foundations, I also determined it was not for me). I am a student and teacher of energy. And when you think about the energy involved in becoming a Master Archer, or a Master of Aikido, or a Master of Zen, Tai-Chi or any martial or healing art form, then you must reach a place where you move beyond the physical, to that which makes the physical, which is vital life force -- ki. Sorry, Master Tracy (sisterhood, and all that), but that is where the book fails. There could have been alternative definition to Herrigel's experiences, but because he could not define what transpired with the energy of his studies, he labeled it with what he could define, using a word to encompass that which he could not define: Zen.

    But it really was all about energy. I have no doubt Master Earl's study of the art of archery provide him with the qualifications to indeed trash Herrigel's text. I also have no doubt Master Tracy's study of Zen provided her with the qualifications to place the book back on its pedestal. They are both right; and they are both wrong.

    Omigosh. How incredibly yin and yang of the two of them.

    What a wonderful thread this has been. Thank you for this brilliant discussion of a point that for me has become moot.
    NLMontana Freemăn

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    Yikes. That should be good for another page or so...

    Oh...I believe Tracy is a man...

    Best,
    Ron

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    NLMontana says:

    "Now, I am using "Zen" as a generic term, but..."

    Inadvertently or not, I think she has put her finger on the problem, which is, quite simply, the sloppy use of words.

    "Zen" is not, and should not be, a "generic" term. Zen Buddhism, and the practice thereof, is something very specific. When kyudo is called "Zen archery", people in the West, not unreasonably, assume that it is part and parcel of the religious practice of Zen Buddhism, that it was invented by Zen monks specifically as a form of meditation, that it is somehow an outgrowth and a physical representation of Zen Buddhist teachings, that it is concerned wholly with the spirit and disdains the practical; that it is, in sum, an altogether mysterious, arcane, weird mystical Eastern conundrum, wrapped in a riddle and shrouded in an enigma.

    It is absolutely none of these things. And Herrigel and D.T. Suzuki are the two people whose work, and the misunderstanding of that work by ignorant people in the West, convinced people that this was so.

    It is precisely the use of the term "Zen" as a general rubric to decribe some sort of free-floating spiritual something-or-other, that can be anything anyone wants it to be, that is the reason kyudo is so misunderstood in the West. And it is Herrigel's fault.

    It is quite true, as Ms. Montana says, that the study of any art can bring a person to certain plane of realization. The mistake is that people call this "Zen".

    Master Urakami Sakae, my teacher's teacher, says that in order to shoot well, one must "awake to the as-it-isness of Nature". That is, one must become "enlightened" as to the way Nature naturally works and how it functions through the shot, which is a complex interaction of the archer, with his physical, mental, and spiritual capacities, and the natural functioning of his equipment. This interaction between the archer and the bow is a natural phenomenon which has its own "nature". When the archer understands this, he will achieve a certain "enlightenment" about the intrinsic nature of his "Way".

    My only point has been is that this is not "Zen". It is intrinsic and essential to the art of archery and needs nothing from anything else to be what it is.
    Earl Hartman

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    Quote Originally Posted by Earl Hartman
    Master Urakami Sakae, my teacher's teacher, says that in order to shoot well, one must "awake to the as-it-isness of Nature". That is, one must become "enlightened" as to the way Nature naturally works and how it functions through the shot, which is a complex interaction of the archer, with his physical, mental, and spiritual capacities, and the natural functioning of his equipment. This interaction between the archer and the bow is a natural phenomenon which has its own "nature". When the archer understands this, he will achieve a certain "enlightenment" about the intrinsic nature of his "Way".

    My only point has been is that this is not "Zen". It is intrinsic and essential to the art of archery and needs nothing from anything else to be what it is.
    Since capital Z-Zen is, by definition, something related to a particular formally organized sect of Japanese Buddhism, anybody using the term to denote anything else obviously doesn't have a clue what they're talking about.

    And since lower-case z zen is simply a romanization of a Japanization of a Sinification of a word that we could transliterate into English as dhayana but truth be told is really most beautifully represented in Siddham or Devanagari script, it's not even necessarily Buddhist.

    But I hear that Arjuna was a pretty good hand with a bow...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arjuna

    As for the relationship between Shambhala and Kyudo, Kyudo is one of a number of "secular contemplative arts" taught at Shambhala Centers, for the frankly stated purpose of drawing people who are not primarily interested in the immediate pursuit of Buddhist practice into relationship with the Buddhist community that was initially centered on Chogyam Trungpa, who was succeeded by first by Osel Tendzin, and subsequently by his son who is known by the name Sakyong Mipham. Since Shambhala is based on Tibetan Tantric Buddhism and Shibata's group has some relationship with Japanese Tantric Buddhism, maybe they just kind of got along real well.

    The only real relationship between Shambhala and Zen is that Trungpa was very taken by oryoki table etiquette.

    Earl's suggestion that Shambhala is Shibata's US Patron is very much to the point.

    As with Earl's experience, on the few occasions when the matter of Zen Buddhism has come up when I have spoken with a Shingon or Tendai priest, misgivings have been expressed.

    The same is true the other way around.

    And the Soka Gakkai people I've encountered seem to think everybody but them is going to spend 10,000 kalpas in Avici Hell.

    I'd tell the story about a bunch of jaded NY intellectuals oohing and aahing when D.T. Suzuki offered them "treat others as you would have them treat you" as a pearl of buddhist wisdom, but that would be really mean to godforsaken secular cosmopolitans so I think I'll just let it go right there.

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    Actually, that sounds like a good story. I'd like to hear it.

    Also, may I ask what you mean by "godforsaken secular cosmopolitans"? Quite a mouthful. And are NY intellectuals different from other intellectuals?
    Earl Hartman

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    Oh, yeah:

    Do you mean to say that Shambala uses kyudo as sort of "bait" to try to get people interested in their brand of Tibetan Buddhism? One of my kyudo students, a young woman from Japan who did kyudo in high school, was looking for kyudo in the Bay Area and went to the Shibata group in Berkeley for one practice, but apparently they were required to meditate for a half hour before shooting, and there were gongs and bells and bowing to Shibata Sensei's picture. Kyudo practice in Japan doesn't involve anything like that, and it made her feel that she had stumbled upon a religious cult rather than a kyudo practice group. She never went back. But if that what Shamballa is trying to do, her story makes sense.

    I am only relating what she told me. Perhaps Spencer can tell us if this is how things are normally done.

    Also, you say that Shibata Sensei's group has a relationship with Japanese Tantric Buddhism. Can you tell us more about this? Never looked into it, myself.
    Earl Hartman

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    Default Shambala Center

    Earl,
    I used to live right down the street from the Shambala center. My room mate at the time, Kevin, was one of your students. Anyway, the center often had flyers both for kyudo and for Tantric Buddhism seminars, which I thought was intersting since I was under the impression that Shambala was out of Japan.

    The tantric stuff is interesting to me, specifically the mudras and how they interact with some of the Aunkai material that I have been exploring. I would be (and am) exceptionally curious about how Shibata's group views it. The reason I bring this up is that Kevin has shown/explained to me the use of the upper back and tanden in kyudo. It is interesting to me because in the Akuzawa/Aunkai material, tension in the upper back "cross" is heavily emphasized. I've experimented with seeing how changing the formation of my hands changes the tension in the upper back.

    Just to make it clear...I'm not in this for some kind of hippie dippy unity-with-the-universe stuff. I'm interested in this as a means of improving my fighting skills in the full contact stuff I practice.
    Tim Fong

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    Quote Originally Posted by Earl Hartman
    Actually, that sounds like a good story. I'd like to hear it.

    Also, may I ask what you mean by "godforsaken secular cosmopolitans"? Quite a mouthful. And are NY intellectuals different from other intellectuals?


    First the Suzuki story as the late Philip Yampolsky at Columbia's Department of East Asian Language and Culture passed it along. Allegedly, it was an after-lecture party in the mid-sixties, on the cusp of the final transition out of the bohemian era and into the hippie era. Many black turtlenecks and hipsters who spoke French, read existentialism (hold the Kierkegaard please), listened to jazz, adopted a typically cynical pose toward everything and everyone, particularly anything or anyone associated with (shhhhhhhhhhhhhh) organized religion of any kind. Of course, in that cultural climate, "organized religion" meant Judaism, Catholicism, or Protestantism. Nothing else was on the map and nobody had heard the word "multiculturalism." So "godforsaken secular cosmopolitans" could also be read simply as "upper west side post wwii europhile snobs."

    But D.T. Suzuki was an academic. And he wrote about Zen Buddhism. And those legendary Beats and Columbia Bad Boys Made Good Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac wrote about Zen Buddhism too. And he was.....Oriental!

    So someone asks Suzuki what the highest teaching of Buddhism is, and everyone in the room falls dead silent and listens to him with rapt attention and he utters the line, very softly and sincerely with a vapid smile on his face.

    And then, everyone in the room oohs, and aahs and nods approvingly, and not a single person among this normally argumentative and contentious bunch asks a followup question or makes a pointed observation and Yampolsky said he just shook his head and muttered under his breath that "if a rabbi or a priest or a minister said the same thing, you people would have chewed him up."

    (After Edward Said and the whole hippie thing, we can now clearly identify this behavior as "bliss ninny Orientalism.")

    Suzuki subsequently told Yampolsky that his interests had moved beyond Zen and it was his sense that the most complete teachings of Buddhism were found in Pure Land practice, and that is a point of view that is, shall we say, even more of an outlier than his mistaken views about the primacy of Zen Buddhism as a key to Japanese cultural patterning.

    It's worth noting that Yampolsky gave us what remains the authoritative translation of the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, so he might know a thing or two about Zen as well, although what that has to do with his turn toward country music in the last few years of his life I have no idea.

    For your last question, yes, NY intellectuals are different. They are so convinced that NY is the center of the universe that they are more provincial than their counterparts in other cities or (horrors) those who don't live in cities at all.

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    Default Getting a Pass

    Fred,

    It's still going on. I've met plenty of people who slam organized Christianity and Judaism but are perfectly happy to sign up for the latest Buddhist or Hindu based cult. Or Scientology =)
    Tim Fong

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    TiM:

    Are you talking about Kevin Lo? I haven't seen him for a while, but if you're still in touch with him, say hey for me.

    I don't know anything about how Shibata Sensei teaches kyudo, nor do I know anything about his supposed relationship with tantric Buddhism. You'll have to ask him. However, it wouldn't surprise me if there was some relationship between the body mechanics of kyudo and tantric practices. Kyudo technique is based on the natural and balanced action of the body as it applies to shooting a bow, so assuming that physical principles are the same wherever you go, it wouldn't surprise me if there were similarities. My discussions with Western archers has led me to the conclusion that the technical fundamentals of Western archery are the same as those of kyudo, although they are expressed differently because of the difference in equipment. (This is a big "duh", by the way, since once you free yourself from the Herrigerl-inspired smugness that Japanese archery is ineffably differrent from Western archery, it is obvious that the fundamental physics of shooting a bow simply must be the same wherever you go.) However, I don't know the first thing about tantric Buddhism, so I'll have to pass on making any comment on that. And I have absolutely no idea what Akuzawa/Aunkai is at all.

    However, kyudo technique is based on a series of crosses, where the vertical and horizontal axes of the body must be maintained at right angles to one another and to the bow. This puts the archer's skeletal structure in a position so that the bow can be pushed properly using the skeletal structure instead of unnecessary muscle power. The position of the joints is maintained by using the extensor muscles with little or no interference from the flexor muscles. This allows the archer to push and pull the bow by expanding his body from the center, an action which brings about a natural release. I assume that Shibata Sensei teaches according to these principles as well.

    Kokumo:

    Pure Land? Good grief. That's just about as far from Zen as you can get.
    Earl Hartman

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    As far as the Shibata kyudo group in San Francisco/Berkeley goes, the only way that Shambhala is directly part of the class is that we rent space from them in Berkeley (in SF, we use space in the (Shinto) Konko church) and the class gets a mention in their pamphlets. I do not believe that any of the currently active members of the dojo are involved with Shambhala, although some practice Zen. There has never been any sense in the dojo of being part of their organization or being "recruited" (nor would such overtures be well received). None of their ideas (or tantric theories) are present the beginner's level that I have been exposed to. Shibata emphasizes that kyudo is "moving meditiation," but I have never heard anything more esoteric. I have, however, heard all the technical principles that Earl just mentioned.

    All or our classes do start with 20 minutes of meditation (with a bell to mark the start and finish). We then do fairly standard bowing at the altar (with a picture of Shibata sensei on it) and the teacher. The bowing is nothing that would seem out of place in an Aikido dojo, but I can see where the Shambhala tapestries, pictures, and whatnot in the room could make it seem more religious than it is. Certainly the class I usually go to, in a concrete basement of the Konko church, doesn't seem religious at all unless you feel that meditation is inherently so.

    I've also been to classes at the New York dojo, and the situation seemed similar. My impression is that while the organization started very tight with Shambhala, as it has grown larger it has diversified along with the different instructors. However, I have not been to any of the large National seminars and have only met Shibata once, so I really can't speak much about what goes on outside of Lucy's dojo. Certainly I'm not somebody who has any standing to speak for the organization. For official background read http://www.zenko.org/about.html

    Any more senior members of the organization who frequent this board would currently be off at the "Zen Mt." seminar. Perhaps some of them will have more insight (or corrections) to add when they return.

    To summarize: it what I have experienced in our dojo, neither Shambhala nor any other religion is central to our practice—meditation is central but non-sectarian. I would expect that some people have used this kyudo as a stepping stone to Buddhism, and we have had Zen practitioners take up the bow, but at least in the kyudo I have seen, religion and practice are not intertwined.
    Spencer Burns
    <a href="http://www.yachigusaryu.com/">Yachigusa-Ryu Aiki-Bugei</a>
    San Francisco, CA

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    Mr. Hartman, my point was not inadvertent. It was quite deliberate. You just happened to pick up on it.

    And Master Tracy, my apologies for the incorrect gender designation.

    Sorry for the interruption. Have back at it.
    NLMontana Freemăn

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    Default Akuzawa etc

    Hi Earl,

    Yep, Kevin Lo. I still talk to Kevin pretty regularly, though I don't see much of him.

    As to Akuzawa's material, we actually had a long thread about it recently here on E-budo.
    http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32854

    There is also an article that one of Akuzawa's students, Rob John, wrote recently. It is available on b u l l s h i d o .com , I can't link it because the stupid swear filter will remove it.

    The article is called "Developing efficient martial movement" and you can get there from the main page.

    I'm still in the very-much-beginning stages of learning thru imitation of the videos and some written correspondence from Rob. Hopefully I will get to Japan early next year.

    The thing that is very interesting is that, at least as it's been explained to me, Akuzawa's exercises are supposed to strengthen the body along the same lines as the "crosses" shown in the kyudo manual:

    http://www.kyudo.jp/sekai/shaho.html

    Kevin sent me the link to that manual and in fact after we both did a show and tell (with him more skillfully than me, clearly) we figured out that we were working on the same stuff.

    Specifically, Akuzawa's guys focus on the "cross" in the upper chest.

    I can say that the exercises have allowed me to hit harder and be more stable on my feet. Specifically, it has allowed me to train stuff like the one inch punch delivered strictly with upper body. That's not that optimal either...but it most definitely surprised me.

    Fascinating stuff.
    Last edited by edg176; 18th August 2006 at 06:26.
    Tim Fong

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