A digest for conscious living
`You worry yourself unnecessarily,´ the Master comforted me. `Put the thought of hitting the target right out of your mind!´ You can be a Master even if every shot does not hit. The hits on the target are only the outward proof and confirmation of your purposelessness at its highest, of your egolesness, your self-abandonment, or whatever you like to call this state. There are different grades of mastery and only when you have made the last grade will you be sure of not missing the goal.´
`That is just what I cannot get into my head,´I answered. `I think I understand what you mean by the real inner goal which ought to be hit. But how it happends that the outer goal, the disc of paper is hit without the archer’s taking aim, and that the hits are only outward confirmations of inner events- that correspondence is beyond me.´
`You are under an illusion,´said the Master after a while, `if you imagine that even a rough understanding of these dark connections would help you. There are processes which are beyond the reach of understanding. Do not forget that even in Nature there are correspondences which cannot be understood, and yet are so real that we have grown accustomed to them, just as if they could not be any different. I will give you an example which I have often puzzled over. The spider dances her web without knowing that there are flies who will get caught in it. The fly dancing nonchalantly on a sunbeam, gets cught in the net without knowing what lies in store. But through both of them “It” dances, and inside and outside are united in this dance. So too, the archer hits the target without having aimed- more I cannot say.´
– Eugene Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery
Goodnight,
Kikta