Kyudo is a form of meditation in action stemming from a blend between Zen Buddhism and the Japanese Samurai Traditions. It was brought to the United States by a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa, to help build a bridge between his students’ sitting meditation practice and their daily lives. Trungpa invited Kanjuro Shibata Sensei, the twentieth bow maker to the emperor of Japan, over to the United States in the 1970’s to teach his students. Shibata Sensei still teaches today. This Kyudo Range, along with a sister range three hours to the south in Ojai, California, are dedicated to him.

In the drawings, I had the kyudojo sited a bit to the west, overlooking the precipitous drop off on that side and increasing the sense of grandeur and spaciousness. Cost restrictions related to the required grading, however, made it impossible. Once it was cited in the center of the meadow in front of the big house, a fence was added on three sides to make a clear boundary between the range and the parking just to the north.