“When I felt better, I asked him to teach me the art of the bow; it was far more interesting than looking after horses. He told me that my death had come a great deal closer, and that now I could not drive it away. It was just two paces away from me, for I had done great physical harm to my body.
“If I wanted to learn, it would only be in order to keep death from touching me. A man in a far-off land, on the other side of the ocean, had taught him that it was possible to avoid for some time the road that led to the precipice of death. But in my case, for the rest of my days, I needed to be aware that I was walking along the edge of this abyss and could fall into it at any moment.
“He taught me the way of the bow. He introduced me to his allies, he made me take part in competitions, and soon my fame spread throughout the land.
“When he saw that I had learned enough, he took away my arrows and my target, leaving me only the bow as a souvenir. He told me to use his teachings to do something that filled me with real enthusiasm.
“I said that the thing I liked most was carpentry. He blessed me and asked me to leave and to devote myself to what I enjoyed doing most before my fame as an archer ended up destroying me, or led me back to my former life.
“Every second since then has been a struggle against my vices and against self-pity. I need to remain focused and calm, to do the work I chose to do with love, and never to cling to the present moment, because death is still very close, the abyss is there beside me, and I am walking along the edge.”
Tetsuya did not say that death is always close for all living beings; the boy was still very young and there was no need for him to think about such things.
Tetsuya did not say either that the way of the bow is present in any human activity.
He merely blessed the boy, just as he had been blessed many years before, and asked him to leave, because it had been a long day, and he needed to sleep.