Diana Soeiro
New University of Lisbon. Faculty of Social and Human Sciences
https://www.ifilnova.pt/en/pages/diana-soeiro
Publicado en: Enrahonar. Quaderns de Filosofia 47, 2011 199-210
Este artículo pretende describir el
problema mente/cuerpo desde el punto de vista de la filosofía oriental y más
específicamente desde el Kyudo, el arte marcial japonés del tiro con
arco, y en segundo lugar a partir del filósofo occidental Gilles Deleuze.
La ética, en la filosofía occidental, trata
de la forma cómo tomamos decisiones y cómo actuamos a partir de estas.
Decisiones y acciones se analizan desde la racionalidad y la intuición, pero
rara vez desde la racionalidad e intuición propias del cuerpo —que el Kyudo ejercita—.
Podemos encontrar en la filosofía de Deleuze conceptos importantes para
entender mejor esto: la diferencia, la repetición, el caos, la identidad, la
energía, la fuerza, el escenario y las micropercepciones.
¿En qué medida el enfoque dominante en el pensamiento
oriental sobre el tema mente/cuerpo podría ser eficaz para cumplir con el
aforismo griego clásico «conócete a ti mismo» (γνθι σεαυτν), inscrito en el Templo de Apolo en Delfos?
Know
thyself: Mind, body and ethics.Japanese archery (Kyudo) and the
philosophy of Gilles Deleuze
This article aims
to describe the mind/ body problem from an Eastern philosophy point of view
addressing firstly Kyudo, the Japanese martial art of archery; and
secondly the Western philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
Ethics is, in
Western philosophy, what deals with the way we take decisions and act upon
them. Decisions and actions consider rationality and intuition but seldom the
body’s own rationality and intuition —which Kyudo exercises. We can find
in Deleuze’s philosophy important concepts to better understand this:
difference, repetition, chaos, identity, energy, force, stage and
micro-perceptions.
To what extent can
the dominant Eastern thought approach on the mind/ body topic be effective to
fulfill the Ancient Greek aphorism «Know yourself» (γνθι σεαυτν) inscribed in the
Temple of Apollo at Delphi?
1. What is Kyudo, the Art of Japanese Archery?
Asking «what is kyudo»
while writing on a piece of paper is one of the less kyudo-like things
one can do. Kyudo is about doing and not about talking about it. The
best way to understand what kyudo is, is to find a place where it is
taught and start practicing and observe others to practice.
Still, in this
article we will aim at not only describing kyudo, but also at trying to
understand what kyudo is confronting its principles with what in Western
culture translates as Ethics. How can kyudo knowledge enrich our Ethics
concept?
In the West, there
is a dominant cultural tradition that separates mind and body activity. Though
it has existed before, this separation was conceptualized first by Descartes
(1596-1650) and since then many have attempted ways to explain the mind/ body
relation and how do they interact. But those attempts have always considered a
way to do so either rationally or by offering a neurophysiologic-based
explanation. What do we mean here by «rationally» is «not using the body». This
may still seem obscure but we hope we will clarify it. The point is that kyudo
offers a third way to solve the mind/ body separation: the Way of the bow.
The Japanese affix
the suffix «do» to the names of the Zen arts. It translates into Chinese
as «Tao». In English, its translation has no direct equivalent but it usually
translates as «Way» connoting path or road to spiritual awakening. «The Zen
arts can be referred to as «Ways» and are not limited to the martial arts: kyudo
is the Way of the bow; kendo is the Way of the sword; karate-do is
the Way of the empty fist; shodo is the Way of writing («spiritual»
calligraphy); and chado is the Way of the tea (tea ceremony)».
A «Way»
in its essence is therefore best described in action. Moreover, «actions become
Ways when practice is not done merely for the immediate result».2 This
means that action, in this context, should be taken as gesture.
This distinction is crucial to understand that what is at stake in the practice
in any of the «Ways» is not the result but the act of doing itself. It’s about
the body as something able to perform a gesture, in such a way
that that gesture, with time and through repetition, appears as action.
In order to simplify the understanding of this passage (from gesture to
action) we give an example.
Awa Kenzo
(1880-1939) is known for having been one of the great kyudo masters. He
was the one teaching the German professor of Philosophy in Tokyo, Eugen
Herrigel (1884-1955), the first Westerner to be taught kyudo, also
responsible for writing on kyudo for the first time (Zen in the Art
of Archery, 1936), offering Westerners the possibility of getting in touch
with this martial art.
It is
told that «Kenzo once had the students gather in a garden to demonstrate that
a kiai (ki concentration) did not have to be a loud shout to be
effective. A makiwara3 was
set up. Kenzo held a sword. He took a deep breath, raised the sword, and in a
flash split the very thick bundle in two (...)» hardly making any noise. Then
one of his students, after a new makiwara was set up, gave it a try.
«The sword bounced off the makiwara, barely making a dent in it».4 The
gesture of raising the sword and then lower it as surely as possible,
that is what is practiced and repeated having as main focus «what can be
learned». One can learn the gesture but one can never learn its
result —and that is why in kyudo hitting the target or not is
irrelevant. Teaching the body a specific gesture (or a sequence of gestures)
through persistence, humbleness, and bravery, by repeating it over and over is
what can be learned (and therefore known). The body’s physical
limits and resistance to learn, and the ability to overcome them through
practice, is what the body teaches the mind. Kyudo is therefore a method
that orients both mind and body through a simultaneous learning process. One
does not progress without the other.
Each gesture
is progressively perfected in order to become an action and that
happens when mind and body are leveled, synchronized. We are not born knowing
how to act. It is something that has to be learned through gesture. And gesture
is educated and exercised through the body. When Kenzo slices the straw bundle
in two or when he (frequently) hits the target with his arrow the result is not
measured by the feeling «I hit it» but from the feeling «I know». In kyudo the
body is therefore NOT dismissed of the act of knowing.
We have briefly described the
passage form gesture to action but what happens when action happens?
Let us focus most of all on this way of putting it: action happens.
Gesture is something that is done, conventioned, performed but action itself
happens. In a very specific sense we can take it as something caused by chance.
But let us not forget, that in this situation chance is not an effect of
randomness, but instead something instilled by repetition, promoted by a
method, and enabled by a progressive process, in short, kyudo.
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El ZKCB agradece a Diana Soreiro la autorización para reproducir el artículo.
