In Eugen Herrigel’s 1953 classic, Zen in the Art of Archery, the author, a deeply serious student of Zen Buddhism, travels to Japan and enrolls in an academy of archery. In this school the physical act of drawing the bow and loosing the arrow (as also in other schools with meditation, martial arts, the study of calligraphy or flower arrangement or mastery of the tea ceremony) is not undertaken for its own sake but as a portal to insight, to enlightenment.