The Archer's Aim
The archer strengthens the bow arm, grips the leather, nocks an arrow, and bends the sinew to the corner of the mouth. Breath enters as the bow is drawn, breath is stilled as the arrow is poised for flight, and all is released together. Release.
And the arrow, willed to its destination strikes home.
Meditation is the arrow on the string, and the fingers which hold it; it is the arrow in flight, and the fingers which let it go; and it is the arrow arriving at the heart of the archer.
We are laden with so many gifts, that it is difficult to unclothe ourselves sufficiently, to treat Yoga as anything more than a calisthenic treatment, a detour on the road from work to home, or from home to work, another way to move the same body in the same reality. Meditation is sold to a hopeless public – to whom no vision of greater purpose has been offered for years, save for a few seekers, or for a few who have been lost enough to desire a better math – sold to a hopeless public as a curative for stress, or a preventative of physical ailment. All we know is our insurance, we have been fed so many fears, and all we hope to do is escape from the inevitable…
These are wonderful uses of ancient and eminently current techniques. To offer yourself a few moments out of a day, or a week, to strengthen the body or to ease the mind – there is no blame and no shame in aiming at a near target. We need, as novices in this life, to aim near, to find our balance and refine our ability; it helps us on our road to succeed in small things, so that we are comfortable with modest failure as we attempt a longer and longer aim.
But the archer must never be mistaken: the aim is to strike a far target after drawing with the eyes closed. And it is possible. The meditator must know that while health is a beautiful aim, and balance a noble one, there is a place far beyond what can be found along the shaft of an arrow, the mind’s arrow: it is out of the body, and out of the mind; it is beyond them both.
One who was born and raised in the West will, generally speaking, roll their eyes at the thought, because it is outside of structured, scientific understanding. It is, in fact, Galileo stating what had been known for centuries – No, the heavens do not revolve aroundĀ us! – and the fear and persecution which followed as he upended the tables in Churches of the time. When a word challenges common knowledge, ah then, you have many possible responses to choose from, the most convenient and accessible being to push it away as madness.
True madness does not have the power to cause such discomfort, because the speaker is contorted, twisted by a mental agony which is plain for all to see.
When the greatest lights of history speak a word, and they are still, and strong, and compassionate… then it is your anguish to deny the beauty of their words. The Earth spins round the Sun; and the Sun around a greater gravity; and that gravity around yet another force, and we here, least of all – yet the greatest actor of our own small play, the only archer whose nocked arrow points to our Self – we are asked to witness, too.
That arrow of meditation flies to nothing less than the meaning of your life; and having touched it, the meaning of all life. Everything is orthodoxy, until you take the road of meditation. Then, suddenly, everything is intention, all possibility and certainties. And the hand releases.
And the arrow flies… true.