Personal Transformation
“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 profound and far-reaching contest of the archer with himself. Perhaps you have hardly noticed it yet, but you will feel it very strongly when you meet your friends and acquaintances again in your own country: things will no longer harmonize as before. You will see with other eyes and measure with other measures. It has happened to me too, and it happens to all who are touched by the spirit of this art.”
–Eugen Herrigel (German Philosopher and Daishakyôdô Practitioner, 1884-1955)
Climbing On the Shoulders of Your Teachers
“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 is not the concern of the teacher and master. Hardly has he shown him the right way when he must let him go on alone.
There is only one thing more he can do to help him endure his loneliness: he turns him away from himself, from the Master, by exhorting him to go further than he himself has done, and to “climb on the shoulders of his teacher.”
–Eugen Herrigel (German Philosopher and Daishakyôdô Practitioner, 1884-1955)
Climbing the Mountain On the Shoulders of the Teacher
“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 is not the concern of the teacher and master. Hardly has he shown him the right way when he must let him go on alone. There is only one thing more he can do to help him endure his loneliness: he turns him away from himself, from the Master, by exhorting him to go further than he himself has done, and to “climb on the shoulders of his teacher.”
–Eugen Herrigel (German Philosopher and Daishakyôdô Practitioner, 1884-1955)
