Kenkō on time and study

& (verbiage overflow)Sun 21 April 2013RSS

Kenkō writes:

A certain man who was learning to shoot a bow aimed at the target with two arrows in his hand. His teacher said, “A beginner should not hold two arrows. It will make him rely on the second arrow and be careless with the first. Each time you shoot you should think not of hitting or missing the target but of making this one the decisive arrow.” I wonder if anyone with only two arrows would be careless with one of them in the presence of his teacher. But though the pupil is himself unaware of any carelessness, the teacher will notice it. This caution applies to all things.

A man studying some branch of learning thinks at night that he has the next day before him, and in the morning that he will have time that night; he plans in this way always to study more diligently at some future time. How much harder it is to perceive the laziness of mind that arises in an instant! Why should it be so difficult to do something now, in the present moment?

— Kenkō Yoshida 吉田兼好 (1283–1352), Tsurezuregusa 徒然草, 92 (Donald Keene, Essays in Idleness; New York: Columbia University Press, 1981)

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