After winning several archery contests, a young and rather boastful champion challenged a Zen master renowned for his skill in archery. The young man demonstrated remarkable technical proficiency when he hit a distant bull’s eye on his first try and then split the arrow with his second shot.
“There,” he said to the old man, “see if you can match that!” Undisturbed, the master did not draw his bow, but motioned for the young archer to follow him up the mountain. Curious about the old fellow’s intention, the champion followed him high up into the mountain until they reached a deep chasm spanned by a rather flimsy and shaky log. Calmly stepping onto the middle of the unsteady and certainly perilous bridge, the old master picked a far away tree as his target, drew his bow and shot a clean, direct hit. “Now it is your turn,” he said, as he gracefully stepped back to safe ground. Staring with terror at the seemingly bottomless and beckoning abyss, the young man could not get himself to step onto the log, much less shoot a target. “You have much skill with your bow,” the master said, sensing his challenger’s predicament, “but you have little skill with the mind that lets loose the shot.”
Gurumaa narrated this story to a group of people and asked them to meditate on it. They were then told to explain what they had understood. After a short silence, one by one they narrated their individual response. Please write in with your views on this story so that we may put all the responses together and present them to you in our next issue.