Sunk without purpose in what he is doing, he is brought face to face with that moment when the work, hovering before him in ideal lines, realizes itself as if of its own accord.

by the “art” of archery he does not mean the ability of the sportsman, which can be controlled, more or less, by bodily exercises, but an ability whose origin is to be sought in spiritual exercises and whose aim consists in hitting a spiritual goal, so that fundamentally the marksman aims at himself and may even succeed in hitting himself.

Perfection in the art of swordsmanship is reached, according to Takuan, “when the heart is troubled by no more thought of I and You, of the opponent and his sword, of one’s own sword and how to wield it – no more thought even of life and death. All is emptiness: your own self, the flashing sword, and the arms that wield it. Even the thought of

I gradually came to realize that only the truly detached can understand what is meant by “detachment,” and that only the contemplative, who is completely empty and rid of the self, is ready to “become one” with the “transcendent Deity.”

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.

The man, the art, the work – it is all one. The art of the inner work, which unlike the outer does not forsake the artist, which he does not “do” and can only “be,” springs from depths of which the day knows nothing.

Zen Buddhism has struck out on paths which, through methodical immersion in oneself, lead to one’s becoming aware, in the deepest ground of the soul, of the unnamable Groundlessness and Qualitylessness – nay more, to one’s becoming one with it.

He sticks to this traditional custom because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating. The meditative repose in which he performs them gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work

all right doing is accomplished only in a state of true selflessness, in which the doer cannot be present any longer as “himself.”