This means that the mind or spirit is present anywhere, because it is nowhere attached to any particular place. And it can remain present because, ev….

The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfilment, but brace yourself for failur….

You can learn from an ordinary bamboo leaf what ought to happen. It bends lower and lower under the weight of snow. Suddenly the snow slips to the gr….

The hand that guides the brush has already caught and executed what floated before the mind at the same moment the mind began to form it, and in the ….

You must learn to wait properly..

You must act as if the goal were infinitely far off..

Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise. ….

This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself….

Far from wishing to awaken the artist in the pupil prematurely, the teacher considers it his first task to make him a skilled artisan with sovereign ….

He grows daily more capable of following any inspiration without technical effort, and also of letting inspiration come to him through meticulous obs….

Often nothing keeps the pupil on the move but his faith in his teacher, whose mastery is now beginning to dawn on him .... How far the pupil will go ….

The spider dances her web without knowing there are flies that will get caught in it. The fly, dancing nonchalantly on a sunbeam gets caught without ….

The shot will go smoothly only when it takes the archer himself by surprise..

I must only warn you of one thing. You have become a different person in the course of these years. For this is what the art of archery means: a prof….

The more a human being feels himself a self, tries to intensify this self and reach a never-attainable perfection, the more drastically he steps out ….

Assuming that his talent can survive the increasing strain, there is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to master….

By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension ..

Zen Buddhism does not preach. Sermons remain words. It waits until people feel stifled and insecure, driven by a secret longing..

The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further t….

In the case of archery, the hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality..

The man, the art, the work--it is all one..