KYUDO & SHAKUHACHI

MEDITATIONS

Ice scars thicken bamboo walls

To hold future tones,

Like Wind blowing

Through the bamboo grove;

Clack, clack clack...

And now a note:

Nightingale calling.

Poetry like other forms of meditation, suizen and kyudo require that you stay fully present during the process, rather than focusing on any predetermined outcome. Doing so releases any inhibitions or ideas of what needs to happen, so that your actions can flow freely through you. When you play shakuhachi, you are able hear the reflections of your innermost self as voices singing through bamboo and in kyudo, as you prepare to let the arrow fly each action is a reflection of your inner being that projects the arrow to its mark. And in poetry words and phrase become the evocation of the author’s inner mind.

Blow the breath through bamboo and listen to shakuhaci’s voice; move through kyudo’s forms and observe the arrow’s path, write each word and line as poetry and hear each evocation. Such are meditations: gateways to our inner selves.

Eric B Würsten

Founding partner of ZEN KYUDO CLUB BARCELONA