Eugen Herrigel

In 1936 he published a 20-page article describing his experiences entitled "Die Ritterliche Kunst des Bogenschiessens" (The Knightly Art of Archery) in the journal, Zeitschrift für Japanologie. This later formed the core of his most famous work Zen in the Art of Archery, which is perhaps one of the most influential works ever written on Zen in a European language.

Herrigel died in 1955. Among his papers were found voluminous notes on various aspects of Zen. These notes were selected and edited by Hermann Tausend in collaboration with Gusty L. Herrigel, the author's wife (who studied Japanese flower arranging) and were published in German under the title Der Zen-Weg. This version was revised and edited by Alan Watts in 1960 and published by Vintage Press as The Method of Zen.

Dispute

Yamada Shōji has demonstrated that Herrigel's teacher, Awa Kenzō, never practiced Zen or even studied under a Zen master. While John Stevens has reproduced a photograph of a calligraphy by Awa that reads "The Bow and Zen are One.",^[5] Yamada quotes Awa's biographer Sakurai Yasunosuke, who wrote "While Kenzō used the phrase 'the bow and Zen are one' and used philosophical language of Mahāyāna Buddhism in particular to describe shadō, he did not approve of Zen unconditionally."^[6] Rather, Kenzō was focused on establishing his own religion of archery and claimed he was doing missionary work in promoting it.^[6] Herrigel either intentionally or inadvertently misinterpreted Awa's teachings as an expression of Zen.

Herrigel himself never really learned the Japanese language and instead relied on interpreters, who have since confessed that they seldom understood Awa's cryptic phrases.

Volker Zotz revealed in his book, Auf den glückseligen Inseln, on Buddhism and German Culture, that Eugen Herrigel was a strong supporter of the Nazi party. For his involvement in Nazism he was forbidden to teach at the University for three years after 1945.^[8]

References