The Unmoved Understanding
This Material Was Adapted From Passages in
Zen In The Art Of Archery by Eugen Herrigel, Which According
to the Author Were Adapted From a Treatise by the Zen Master Takuan.
It Appears We Are Each Borrowing Ideas From Someone Else. I Hope You
Will Find The Insights in This Material Helpful.
It is a fact of common observation that new runners lose their self
confidence, and become increasingly self conscious as soon as they begin
running races. No matter how talented they are at the outset, they
are soon forced to admit that they are at the mercy of all runners who
are more talented and more experienced than they. The serious beginners
see no other way open to them except ceaseless practice, so they stake
everything on surpassing the others and even themselves. They learn
the nuances of eating, drinking, training, and pacing and think they are
drawing nearer and nearer to the desired goal. But actually they are really
worse off than before, when, half in jest and half in earnest, they gamboled,
galloped, surged and sprinted at random under the inspiration of the moment
and as the joy of racing suggested. The competence the beginners
gain through hard practice only leads to their "hearts being snatched
away by their need to excel in their races."
That a runner does not become an Olympian, or a world's record holder,
despite his zeal and even despite his inborn skill is understandable
enough. But why is it that he, who has long since learned not to let
himself be swept away by the rush of competition, but to keep a cool
head, to conserve his strength, and who now feels inured to ultra-distance
races and can hardly find an opponent to match him in all his circle,
why is it that, judged by the highest standards, he fails at the last
moment and makes no headway.
The reason is that the competitor cannot stop watching
his opponents and his stop watch; he is always thinking about racing strategies,
and pacing in minutes and seconds per mile. He is always thinking
about running a particular pace, setting personal records, and/or the right
time to surge by his opponents in order to win the race. In short he relies
all the time on his art and his knowledge. By so doing he loses his
"presence of heart": he struggles with his pacing and the decisive move
to win always comes too late, or not at all. The more he tries to make the
brilliance of his racing dependent on his own reflection, on the conscious
utilization of his skill, on his pacing experience and tactics, the more
he inhibits the free "working of his heart." He becomes like the centipede
who is frozen by his inability to figure out which leg he should move first.
How does sovereign control of technique turn
into expert racing? Only by the competitor becoming purposeless and
egoless. The competitor must become detached from his opponents, the pace
he wants to run and even from himself. Does this not sound as nonsensical
as the demand that the archer should hit without taking aim, that he should
completely lose sight of the goal and his intention to hit it?
 The
competitor must make himself independent of all conscious purpose.
He must develop a new sense, or more accurately, a new alertness of
all his senses which will enable him to monitor his energy expenditure
so as to avoid exceeding his racing ability. Once he has mastered
this art of observation, he will no longer need to monitor his running
pace with undivided attention. In this state, the competitor sees
and feels the consequences of his current running speed and adjusts
his pace accordingly without there being a "hair's breadth" between
perceiving and adjusting and without conscious observation. In
this respect at least the competitor makes himself independent of all
conscious purpose, and that is a very great gain.
What is very much more difficult and of truly
decisive importance is the task of stopping the competitor from thinking
and spying out how he can best defeat his opponent. Actually he should
clear his mind of the thought that the race has to do with an opponent at
all and that it is a matter of life and death (winning and losing).
To begin with, the competitor understands these
instructions as meaning that it is sufficient for him to refrain from observing
and thinking about the behavior of his opponent. He takes this non-observation
very seriously and controls himself at every step. But he fails to notice
that, by concentrating his attention on himself, he inevitably sees himself
as the competitor who has at all costs to avoid watching his opponent.
Do what he may, he still has his opponent secretly in mind. Only in
appearance has he detached himself from him, and the more he endeavors to
forget him the more tightly he binds himself to him. (Note: In foot
racing, your opponents are time, distance, and other competitors. The above
paragraph applies to all three.)
It takes a good deal of very subtle
psychological guidance to convince the competitor that fundamentally he has
gained nothing by this shift of attention. He must learn to disregard
himself as resolutely as he disregards his opponent, and to become in a
radical sense, self-regardless, purposeless. Much patience, much
heart breaking practice is needed, just as in archery. But once this
practice has led to the goal the last trace of self-regard vanishes in
sheer purposelessness.
This state of purposeless detachment
is followed automatically by a mode of behavior which bears a surprising
resemblance to the previous stage of instinctive racing. It is as
if the "Race" ran itself, and just as we say in archery that "It" takes
aim and hits, so here "It" takes the place of the ego, availing itself
of a facility and a dexterity which the ego only acquires by conscious
effort. And here too "It" is only a name for something which can
neither be understood nor laid hold of, and which only reveals itself to
those who have experienced it.
Perfection in the art of racing is reached
when the heart is no more troubled by the thought of pacing, of the opponent
and his skills, the runner's own talent and skills, no more thought even
of winning and losing. All is emptiness; even the thought of emptiness
is not there. From this absolute emptiness comes the most wondrous
unfoldment of doing-being-running-winning-and personal records.
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