The Master Archer
thinking about means and ends and playful art
There was once a general of war who had been fighting in wars all his life. Now he was weary and wished to end his career as a fighter. Having perfected all the arts of war but one, he thought it a fitting project to learn what he had neglected. He decided that he would spend the rest of his days studying archery. For he had heard that there were people who practiced archery neither to hunt nor to make war, but merely to perfect their skill. He began to search for someone to teach him.
After a long journey he found a monastery deep inside a range of mountains where the monks practiced day in and day out. He entered the monastery and asked if he could live there and study. They said, “Yes,” and he thought that his life was now over as the remainder of his days would be spent in study and meditation behind these monastery walls.
Ten years passed. One day the abbot of the monastery came to him and told the former-general of war that he must leave. “You are now a Master Archer,” said the abbot. The former-general protested saying that his life in the world outside the monastery was over and that all he wished was to spend the rest of his days here. But the abbot insisted, saying that the Master Archer must now leave and go into the world to learn what there was still to learn.
The Master Archer had to do as he was told. Having nowhere to go when he left the monastery he decided to return to the village of his birth. It was a long journey and as he neared the village he noticed a target on a tree with an arrow dead-centre – right in the bulls-eye. He was surprised by this only to notice more targets on trees and, in the centre of each, an arrow. Then, on the barns and the buildings of the town he saw dozens, hundreds of targets with arrows in the bulls-eye of each one.
The peace he had attained in ten years of study in the monastery had left him and he approached the elders of the town, indignant that, after ten years of devoted study, he should return to his own home and find an archer more skilled than he. He demanded of the elders that the master archer meet him by the edge of town in one hour and he turned and strode away without looking back, expecting, like the general of war he had once been, to be obeyed. Waiting by the mill the Master Archer saw no one coming to meet him though he did notice a young girl skipping along the road. The girl noticed him and came over.
“Are you waiting for someone,” asked the girl, looking up at the Master Archer.
“Go away,” he said.
“No, no,” said the girl, “you look like you’re waiting for someone and I was told to come and meet someone here.”
The Master Archer looked unbelievingly at the little girl and said, “I’m waiting for the master archer responsible for the hundreds of perfect shots I see around here.”
The girl looked pleased and said, “Then it is you I was sent to meet. I made all those shots.”
The Master Archer looked even more skeptical, convinced that this girl was trying to humiliate him. But he said to the girl, “If you’re telling the truth, then explain to me how you can get a perfect shot every single time you shoot your arrow.”
“That’s easy,” said the girl. “I take my arrow and I draw it back in the bow and point it very, very straight. Then I let it go and wherever it lands I draw a bulls-eye.”
I learned this story from my friend dian marino who was a visual artist and professor at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto until here death in 1993. Dian had been a student of American artist Corita Kent who was a teacher at Immaculate Heart College in California and whose work continues to be influential around the world. Dian liked to tell this story to the incoming class of Masters students whose first task was the creation of their individual curriculum called a Plan of Study. The process of designing one’s own Master’s curriculum is an opportunity for creativity and fun. Unfortunately, few experienced it as such. So Dian would offer them this tale that could act as inspiration for some and solace for others.
I told this story to a group of Masters students last week and found myself remembering the words of 13th Century Persian Sufi poet Saadi of Shiraz: “ None learned the art of archery from me who, in the end, did not make me the target.” I have contemplated this thought for decades now and find it to be one of the most bracing pieces of wisdom i have come across for educators. It is an onion of a saying with layer after layer of meaning that leads one to deeper and deeper mysteries.
I am in the last weeks of writing a dissertation on popular education and this story and Saadi’s words are guiding me to my destination.
If you find this story intriguing, i encourage you to learn it and tell it. I have told it to the young and the old and have seen that most times the young are faster than their elders to grasp the delight and the challenge of this tale.