Kyudo fosters traits like patience, refraining from unnecessary action, and moderation. We are taught to make each arrow the best arrow we shoot, and to do so only with the greatest of honor and care. Seeking honesty, we often avoid side tracking distractions, and focus just on this one path.
It’s almost like when we get started we sign a blood contract with the bow to devote our whole selves to it and never relent.
This is how I’ve felt for a while, narrowing in on this hairpin path through the mountains. I am finding many things on this journey, but I miss the sunny views from the peaks. I miss the ocean. I miss the sky.
Change!
Kyudo aside, this was my first sacred rule: change.
For better or for worse, always keep changing. Variation will allow genius to rise from the cracks, and will allow for new creatures to come forth.
Upon my voyage across the sea, this may be the longest I’ve ever stayed on one island. Drawn in to the tales of its particular mountains and legends, I’ve been obsessed, and now slowly awakening from the local weeds, I look up and remember old laws within, like that of change.
Or rather that there are no laws. Just me, the bow, and the world I live in.
Create!
Create with more reps! Each its own individual interpretation of you in the world. Each expression cast out at each release, opening up the path for another revolution with the next arrow.
What are we wasting our youth and life for? Just this one arrow?
Not me, not now. It’s time to grow and create.
All of these rules:
“You must wait this long …”
“You must do this …”
“You must not do this …”
Now. This human. This life. This adventure.
More reps! More change!
The little things, the big things.
If you swear yourself to the rules and expect treasure from your abstinence, then you’re as good as stone.
But I believe that if you trust the gods and your gifts and your own faults and and your experiments to set you on the greatest path you can be on, then you will blossom forth infinitely like the lotus.
Purple lotus archery.
I kind of like that.
Reps and change.
Don’t stand in the way of yourself.
Cause in the end it’s just you in the target, no matter where you are or who you’re up against.
Don’t hold back.
Green Leaves Forest 