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Anyone into Archery?
Mingle
Veteran
I've wanted to get involved for a couple of years now but now I've finally gone and got a bow (granted its weak as hell so I've just ordered another). I love the simplicity of it, the skill involved and it just looks so elegant too. Dont intend on goin against the eightfold path and killing anything, I just love the raw power you get from something so simple.
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I have a bow. Highly recommend a forearm guard if you are not used to it. I went against that advice, worse a sweatshirt. Left with an 8x4 inch bruise on my inner forearm. I really love a nice wood recurve bow and would love to make one one day. Perhaps eventually. Right now it is just a compound bow. I do not hunt, just target practice for fun. We quite enjoy playing around with it as a family. While many people got their interest from Hunger Games, but for me it came from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, lol.
@Mingle
I know of that seduction. Even if you have no intention of using it to harm anything, I think the reasons why we love that power is an exploration that few folks are willing to honestly examine. You might find the 8 FP may apply to it in ways you have not yet considered.
Really ? How so? @how @karasti what bows do you have. Ive just ordered a 55lb compound cuz thee 20lb one is just to weak, bit worried I've bitten more off than I can chew. I like to think im a strong dude, I go to the gym so hopefully it should be fine.
I love archery, one of the joys of my life. Never practiced it as a sport, really, and I never felt any sense of power from it - more a sense of freedom, a connection to simpler times perhaps. I liked most of all to loose the shafts and watch them fly like birds into the sky. Sometimes I used to carry the bow on hikes, just carry it, shooting only rarely, an aborigine in my mind, only recently descended from the trees. Good way to lose arrows, though.
Mine is actually a youth bow, lol. I got it for free from a friend, so can't complain. It has a variable draw weight, I can't recall what the top is. Maybe 28 or 30?
It is more the same for me as @Fosdick. I do think about such things quite a bit. It is just a reminder to me of simpler times, less complicated days. A way to practice my perfectionism, lol. The historical connection is more why I'd love to spend the time making a nice recurve one day. Lots of people here do those kinds of things-make canoes by hand, make snowshoes, make clothing from furs. There are quite a few "woodsman" people who have learned Native ways and they still use them and teach them to others at our folk school. It's kind of neat, and I quite enjoy it. My oldest son learned flint knapping as a young kid, and still makes things with the skill. When I was a kid we made our own fishing lures and bullets.
There are definitely ways to expand the eightfold path, for sure. It encompasses literally everything, after all, if you consider it well enough.
I spent some time practicing Kyūdō, which is a form of meditative Zen archery originating in Japan, a few years ago. It was a lot of fun, although it is very ritualistic and very much driven by forms there is a sense of the 'perfect imperfect' in it. The idea is to reach a one-ness of the archer, the arrow and the target.
It's not the same as traditional competition archery or hunting archery though. It uses traditional materials for one.
Proper form, concentration and knowing when to release. A sport than can influence so many areas of your life.
A sport of agility, concentration and patience. I like it.
We have a public range near by but too much schedule overload and, well, something has to give... 
I like the tradtional bows. Some bows are complex pullies and levers. They do help a lot if you lack the strength.
Back to the Saha world and hot cocoa.
Peace to all
@Kerome -- I do think that the implicit or explicit linking of kyudo and (though the samurai) Zen Buddhism is at a minimum suspect and probably downright bogus.
The following quote is taken from a decorous academic essay entitled "The Myth of Zen in the Art of Archery" by Yamada Shoji. The quote gives some of the flavor of the essay as a whole. When stripped of its politesse, the essay says of the historic links between Zen Buddhism and kyudo: "Bullshit!"
As far as I can figure out, the links between Buddhism and kyudo are a bit like the latter-day enthusiasms for "yoga" or "mindfulness," both of which have been co-opted by terribly sincere people unwilling to dig into the foundations of what they are being sincere about.
FWIW.