Zanshin: Learning the Art of Attention and Focus From a Legendary Samurai Archer

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1. Intro

Zanshin is the Japanese art of mindfulness and focus. Zanshin unagi means “the skill of mindful swordmanship”.

We have a famous zanshin teacher in our school, or at least we know about him. His name is Masami Yano (or Yano-sensei, as he is sometimes referred to). He was a student of the famous samurai swordmaster Katori Soke, and for a long time he taught at our school.

Yano-sensei began his career as a young samurai in the Meiji period under the tutelage of Soke (a product of the penological system called shugo-ryu or “schools of punishment”). But during World War II, when Japan was occupied by allied forces after its attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he was arrested and imprisoned by American troops who were occupying Japan.

After five years in prison, Yano escaped and made his way to America via Hawaii. After studying at Columbia University and MIT in Boston, he eventually returned to Japan and became an instructor at Nagoya University, where he taught until his retirement in 1992.

Yano-sensei’s zanshin technique involves focusing on one thing at a time with perfect attention: leaving your thoughts behind you entirely so that you can see only what is happening before you (compared to other techniques which involve thinking about things all around you—for example, those dealing with auditory stimulation or visual stimulation).

2. How It Worked

Zanshin: Learning the Art of Attention and Focus from a Legendary Samurai Archer by Eugen Herrigel

It’s a short, but powerful book that was one of the first ones I came across when I started learning Japanese. It was written in Japanese by a German professor who arrived in Japan in the 1920s. He spent time studying with some of the best samurai sword-makers and eventually ended up teaching at a university. He wrote this book about what he learned, which is mostly about how to study for tests and how to teach his students.

The book is brief and pretty compact, but it’s full of great advice for beginners who have no experience with Japanese culture (or any culture really). It covers learning from masters, studying the way they think (which is often very similar to modern Western thought), memorizing poems and stories (he also recommends listening to classical music while studying), and how to focus your attention while doing all that stuff.

One thing this book doesn’t cover though is Zen philosophy (since Zen doesn’t require attention). But there are plenty of great quotes from Zen masters that you can take away from this book:

3. The Results

This is the story of a Japanese sword master, who became famous for his extraordinary skill with a sword and for his zeal for martial arts.

In this case, the pdf file is the audio book. For comparison, here is the audio book version:

Subtopic: The Art of Attention and Focus from a Legendary Samurai Archer

Keywords: zanshin the japanese secret of aiming movie, zanshin book pdf

Text: This is the story of a Japanese sword master, who became famous for his extraordinary skill with a sword and for his zeal for martial arts.

In this case, it’s the audio book. For comparison – here is the video version:

Topic: Leadership in Sales

Subtopic: The Value of Selling to an Audience of One

Keywords: value proposition, sales funnel, ROI, customer research

Text: It’s tough to say how much time you should spend on each step in your sales funnel when you have limited resources (time). In order to get an accurate idea about how much money you should be spending on each step in your sales funnel, there are several things that you need to know about your target audience. The first thing you need to do is understand who they are and what makes them tick. They could be employees or customers or both. They might also be competitors or partners or friends or family — but we will focus on our target audience here rather than all possible audiences. After understanding why someone would want to buy from you (and their prospect personas), all you need to do next is take some time and perform some customer research to get an accurate picture of what’s driving your potential customers right now. Once you know what they’re really buying — whether it’s a movie ticket or something else — all that remains is figuring out how best to get them there without wasting too much time on each step of your sales process! Here are some tools that can help make sure that doesn’t happen! Obviously I’m talking about things like customer interviews as well as data-driven insights like “Why does this person buy movies?” But there are many other ways of getting at these answers too! To start with an example from my own experience… I recently conducted my most recent speaking engagement where we focused more on engaging people emotionally rather than simply selling them products (which was quite challenging). I was struck by one question that was asked by one

4. Other Examples of the Method’s Success

Eugen Herrigel was a phenomenal student. He was quiet and shy, but he was smart and tremendously studious. He was also very good at archery. In fact, he had become the most successful archer in Japan. However, he had a problem: He couldn’t focus on one task for long enough to achieve his goals.

It was this that led him to come up with an idea he called Zanshin: “the art of attention and focus” (or more simply, zanshin mushin fudoshin). This is the art of focusing attention on one thing for a short amount of time in order to perform well at it — it’s like meditating, but done with more precision and speed.

Zanshin is not meant to be practiced every day or even every week; it should only be practiced when you feel like it will help you get through difficult situations more quickly or otherwise accomplish your goals successfully. Zanshin has been used for centuries as an antidote for stress (and its popularity among Japanese people pervades their culture).

5. Conclusion

The reason I chose this quote is that I think it is one of the best summaries on Zen, a philosophy of life and practice that dates back thousands of years.

In Zen, the focus is not on enlightenment but on experiencing the present moment: what you are doing right now. The goal is to be in the present moment with your current state of mind and be aware of it, not because you have to but because you want to.

In other words, focus isn’t about achieving existing goals or figuring out how things work. It’s about being present in your life right now and making sure that no matter what happens, you aren’t doing anything other than focusing on living in the moment. This approach represents a shift from “whatever works — or whatever feels good” towards a less judgmental “this is what I do, but don’t judge me for it” kind of attitude.

What does this have to do with marketing? Well, if you want to make money fast and efficiently (and we think we do), then the first step should be getting your product out there so people can use it (the second step will be learning how to use it). Once people start using your product and start appreciating its value based on their own experience with it (the third step), then you can begin marketing yourself accordingly by discussing how much value your product has given them or by talking about how much more value they can expect from it down the road.