A classic work on Eastern philosophy, and a charming, deeply illuminating story of one man's experience with Zen.

Eugen Herrigel, a German professor of Philosophy in Tokyo, took up the study of archery as a step toward an understanding of Zen Buddhism. This book is the account of the six years he spent as a student of one of Japan's great kyudo (archery) masters, and of how he gradually overcame his initial inhibitions and began to feel his way toward new truths and ways of seeing.

Zen in the Art of Archery, originally published in German, was first published in English in 1953, the first book to introduce Zen Buddhism to a Western audience. The translation was rather formal and scholarly, making for difficult reading about a subject that was already hard to understand. This new translation skillfully transmits the book's original meaning in a simpler, smoother style more accessible to modern readers, but with all of the author's fascinating experiences, explanations, and anecdotes intact.

In this illuminating account, the author recounts his six-year study of archery as a way to understand Zen. Under the guidance of one of Japan's great archery masters, he gradually overcomes his initial misconceptions and inhibitions and begins to feel his way toward new, true ways of seeing, acting, and living.

The author writes, The art of archery is like a preparatory school for Zen, enabling beginners to understand, through their own experience, events that are not in themselves intelligible.

Mastering archery is not the key to achieving enlightenment, and this is not a practical guide to archery. Rather, it is a fascinating introduction to Zen principles and learning, an excellent and informative guide for anyone who wants to know more about the Great Doctrine practiced by the spiritual teachers of the Asian tradition.

A classic work on Eastern philosophy, 'Zen in the Art of Archery' is a charming and deeply illuminating story of one man's experience with Zen. Eugen Herrigel, a German professor of Philosophy in Tokyo, took up the study of archery as a step toward an understanding of Zen Buddhism. This book is the account of the six years he spent as a student of one of Japan's great kyudo (archery) masters, and of how he gradually overcame his initial inhibitions and began to feel his way toward new truths and ways of seeing.

2020 Reprint of the 1953 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Up to the time of publication, this was the only book written by a westerner, and indeed the only book in a western language that describes the difficult path of learning Zen. A simple, vivid account of personal experience, it may well serve to mitigate the unspeakable queerness of Zen to the average westerner--to make the kicks and shouts of the Zen patriarchs seem less like the behavior of lunatics. Students of Japanese culture, too, will find that it sheds much light on the way in which art and religion have been traditionally blended. New Statesman

Herrigel's book may have inspired Tim Gallwey's 1974 book The Inner Game of Tennis. Both Herrigel and Gallwey approach sport and life as opportunities for learning inner cooperation. Zen in the Art of Archery also relates to the inner child idea in humanistic psychology. This work most likely inspired the titles of many other works, either directly or indirectly. Foremost among these is Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. J. D. Salinger's fictional character Seymour Glass applied one aspect of Zen archery--aiming by deliberately not taking aim--to playing the children's game of marbles. The wider theme of many of these works is that a regular routine can have a spiritual dimension.

Zen in the Art of Archery (Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschie ens) is a book by German philosophy professor Eugen Herrigel, about his experiences studying Kyūdō, a form of Japanese archery, when he lived in Japan in the 1920s. It is credited with introducing Zen to Western audiences in the late 1940s and 1950s. The book sets forth theories about motor learning. Herrigel has an accepting spirit towards and about unconscious control of outer activity that Westerners heretofore considered to be wholly under conscious-waking control and direction. For example, a central idea in the book is how through years of practice, a physical activity becomes effortless both mentally and physically, as if our physical memory (today known as muscle memory) executes complex and difficult movements without conscious control from the mind. Herrigel describes Zen in archery as follows: (...) The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art (...)

A classic work on Eastern philosophy, 'Zen in the Art of Archery' is a charming and deeply illuminating story of one man's experience with Zen. Eugen Herrigel, a German professor of Philosophy in Tokyo, took up the study of archery as a step toward an understanding of Zen Buddhism. This book is the account of the six years he spent as a student of one of Japan's great kyudo (archery) masters, and of how he gradually overcame his initial inhibitions and began to feel his way toward new truths and ways of seeing.

Zen in the Art of Archery (Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschie ens) is a book by German philosophy professor Eugen Herrigel, about his experiences studying Kyūdō, a form of Japanese archery, when he lived in Japan in the 1920s. It is credited with introducing Zen to Western audiences in the late 1940s and 1950s. The book sets forth theories about motor learning. Herrigel has an accepting spirit towards and about unconscious control of outer activity that Westerners heretofore considered to be wholly under conscious-waking control and direction. For example, a central idea in the book is how through years of practice, a physical activity becomes effortless both mentally and physically, as if our physical memory (today known as muscle memory) executes complex and difficult movements without conscious control from the mind. Herrigel describes Zen in archery as follows: (...) The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art (...)