Eugen Herrigel

Eugen Herrigel (20 March 1884, near Heidelberg - 1955) was a German philosopher who taught philosophy at Tohoku Imperial University in Sendai, Japan, from 1924-1929 and introduced Zen to large parts of Europe through his writings.

Writings

While living in Japan from 1924 to 1929, he studied "kyūdō", traditional Japanese archery, under Awa Kenzô (1880-1939), a prominent master of the art, in the hope of furthering his understanding of Zen. In July 1929 he returned to Germany and was given a chair for philosophy at the University of Erlangen. In 1937 Herrigel joined the NSDAP.

In 1936 he published a 20-page article describing his experiences entitled "Die Ritterliche Kunst des Bogenschiessens" (The Knightly Art of Archery) in the journal, "Zeitschrift für Japanologie". This later formed the core of his most famous work "Zen in the Art of Archery". In the book, Herrigel does not mention the Master's name.

Professor Herrigel died in 1955. Among his papers were found voluminous notes on various aspects of Zen. These notes were selected and edited by Hermann Tausend in collaboration with Gusty Herrigel, the author's wife (who studied Japanese flower arranging) and were published in German under the title "Der Zen-Weg". This version was revised and edited by Alan Watts in 1960 and published by Vintage Press as "The Method of Zen".

Dispute

It was discovered that Master Kenzô, although a teacher of archery, was not a teacher nor an adherent, of Zen Buddhism. What Kenzô calls the "Great Doctrine" in the book was his own original practice, the Daishakyôdô, the "Way of the Great Doctrine of Shooting" rather than Zen. [ [http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/pdf/586.pdf The Myth of Zen in the Art of Archery] ]

At first, Herrigel did not characterize his lessons as a form of Zen when he wrote about his experience in 1936. When he read D.T. Suzuki in 1938, he decided that Kenzô's teaching actually was Zen. Suzuki obviously endorsed this identification, since he wrote the introduction to the post-war edition of Herrigel's book. Modern scholarship on Zen has come to regard Suzuki's own reading of Zen as idiosyncratic and not grounded in traditions of Zen. What distinguishes the approach of Suzuki, Herrigel, and Master Kenzô himself is the way they developed the Taoist features of the tradition. [ [http://www.friesian.com/divebomb.htm Zen and the Art of Divebombing, or The Dark Side of the Tao ] ]

References