Zen and the Art of Horn playing

Professor Herrigel studied with his archery Master for six years. It took him a year just to learn to draw the bow correctly; three more years to learn to release the shot; and finally at the last he learned to aim at the target. At one point the Master tried to learn a little Western philosophy to help him from a side he already knew. But he soon gave up, saying that now he could "understand that a person who interested himself in such things would find the art of archery uncommonly difficult to learn".

Science has recently begun to make investigations into the nature of the mind. They have found that the left hemisphere of the brain is the site of the rational functions: the left side can use language, do mathematics, and think about the past and future. The right hemisphere cannot use language or numbers, but has to do with the wordless feelings of the body, the experiencing of the here-and-now. Left side: reason; right side: feelings and intuition. It seems that we all have the entire East-West Weltanschauung dichotomy in our heads. Studies show that the two sides operate independently of one another. In one experiment, the subject was a person who, for medical reasons, had had the connection between the two brains severed. He was blindfolded and when a comb was placed in his left hand, he could not say the name of what he was holding (the hemispheres link up with the opposite sides of the body, i. e. left hand — right brain). The right brain has no words for its feelings, so though he knew exactly what he held in the left hand, he could not say the name associated with the feel of this object until the right hand had touched it as well. Studies also show that the operation of one side interferes with the operation of the other, but we will take that up later.