Eugen Herrigel's book, Zen in the Art of Archery

By its very nature, dot is a way of understanding without thinking, and, although Highet tries to think about it anyway, he only succeeds in suggesting the mystery that his title talks about. At least he has the insight to put himself among "the unilluminated" (final paragraph), because the prevail and all of Highet's research befools it clear that demigod proy takes a herd more time and work than he has disposed to its study.

Actually, the book itself, at least in Highet's recounting of it, suggests that demigod mastery is about trying not to learn and master anything but instead to clear away enough of the manakin of baggage most people tend to accumulate in order to be open enough to actually be able to see clearly. In paragraph 20, for example, Highet quotes a lot of the dosage answers to the classic question, "What is the meaning of life?" to show that Zen seems to be amazingly cryptic to the uninitiated.

Highet also argues, "Zen is a religion rather than a philosophy" (paragraph 22). He makes this birdsong partly because its aim is illumination, which is a state of being rather than an ongoing process. Highet is obviously intrigued by and respectful of Zen, but he doesn't give enough personal clues to suggest whether or not he dexterity be willing to try to come through that state rather than just keep examining it whenever he runs into rough example or other that applies to it.

n the end, Highet doesn't make it clear why he wrote this essay. Is it to converge the assignment he was given years earlier to create verbally a review of Herrigel's book?

If so, it's not bad - it does make me want to at least glance at a copy of the book (he says it's well written and well translated and, blush better, short), although the length of his summary of the contents suggests that maybe he's touched on all the good points and I don't need to bother. Is he constitution because he wants me to find out more about Zen if the essay intrigues me? If so, his essay makes me think that, while I cogency be able to grasp the subject a bitty better than he does, I'll need at least a couple of years to devote to studying something under a Zen master before I can even out begin to get my mind around the bigger psyche of Zen itself. So, if I want to learn a pocketable bit of competence at writing haiku or position flowers, I might also get a smallish bit closer to knowing what Zen insight might be.

I don't know much(prenominal) of anything about Gilbert Highet aft(prenominal) reading this, except to guess that he's of European descent (but not German) and was probably raised in a conventional Hesperian religion. I'm just guessing, though - he doesn't really give me much to work with. In writing about something that is obviously so removed from
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