The master sticks to his traditional customs because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating. The meditative repose in which he performs these preparations gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work can be done. Sunk without purpose in what he is doing, he is brought face to face with that moment when the work realizes itself, as if of its own accord. The right frame of mind for the artist is only reached when the preparing and the creating, the technical and the artistic, the material and the spiritual, the project and the object flow together without a break. - Eugen Herrigel, *Zen and the Art of Archery*