Before you …

Before you release your arrow,
do not think about what you are doing.
Learn to wait.
Be free of yourself.
Leave behind who you are and all that you possess,
so that all that remains of you is pure tension,
without any goal.
Look at the bamboo leaf as under the weight of the snow
it bends further and further down.
The snow falls suddenly from it without the leaf having moved.
Be like the leaf.
Until the tension is maximum,
and the arrow is released,
because when the tension is maximum,
the arrow MUST leave ;
your shot must leave you just as the snow leaves the bamboo leaf “.
There is no better description of pure action and the state of mind it requires.
– one of the last grand masters of Kyudo

– Suzuki