T

LET GO

Work done for a reward is much lower than work done

in the Yoga of wisdom. Set thy heart upon thy work,

but never on its reward. Work not for the reward; but

never cease to do thy work.

—THE BHAGAVAD GITA

he great archery master Awa Kenzo did not focus on teaching
technical mastery of the bow. He spent almost no time
instructing his students on how to deliberately aim and shoot, telling
them to simply draw a shot back until it “fell from you like ripe fruit.”
He preferred instead to teach his students an important mental
skill: detachment. “What stands in your way,” Kenzo once told his
student Eugen Herrigel, “is that you have too much willful will.” It
was this willful will—the desire to be in control and to dictate the
schedule and the process of everything we’re a part of—that held
Herrigel back from learning, from really mastering the art he
pursued.
What Kenzo wanted students to do was to put the thought of
hitting the target out of their minds. He wanted them to detach even
from the idea of an outcome. “The hits on the target,” he would say,
“are only the outward proof and confirmation of your
purposelessness at its highest, of your egolessness, your self-
abandonment, or whatever you like to call this state.”
That state is stillness.