108zenbooks

Tag: brush art

August 23, 2010

compost 1

Practice life started very simply for me.  I noticed there was a donut somewhere between the middle of my chest and stomach.  Much of my waking life was spent avoiding the hole in the middle and most of my energy was spent pulling myself out of the guck around the hole.  Occasionally, I would try to back fill the hole using all manner of matter one finds in books, educational programs, athletic activities like jogging, playing squash, biking, hiking and what not.  Too often I’d set my sights on some vague set of coordinates outside the donut, a target like some teacher – school or Buddhist – and run like hell in the hopes that the momentum could haul me out of the guck.

None of it really worked to make my life any happier.  However, as these things tend to do, it taught me lots about guck, holes and the nature of finding one’s way around such galaxies.  It also taught me some bad habits – like excusing my lack of development in practice as “waiting for the right moment” or “the teacher hasn’t come so why waste my time being ready.”  Of course, the life of practice is simply Life – the getting on with things like cleaning the house, going to Work, getting out the brushes and paper, learning how to use that new camera.  It can also include doing three prostrations, sitting on a zafu without falling off, and learning the Prajnaparamita chant.  But since I didn’t want to waste time being ready for a teacher who seemed to have no respect for my schedule, the Life time for these things tended to get killed “watching crime shows” (to quote one of Aitken Roshi’s gathas).

This feeling of having wasted my life is quite overpowering at times.  It’s the edge between the guck and the hole.  Over the past couple of weeks, I mentioned on Bookbird’s delightful post panic! with a houseplant that I was disappointed to discover I did not own the rights to “Procrastination as Inspiration.”  That particular skill was my pride and joy.  Working on my shodo: “No, I’m not delaying the inevitable.  I’m waiting for my Muse.”  Working on my photography: “This camera is too complicated to figure out the lighting.  I’ll just wait until the sun moves.”  Working on my writing: “The publisher wants too much front-end legwork.  I’ll just start a blog.”

Later in the week, I commented on ZenDotStudio’s post Creative Compost that my procrastination had really been challenged by her dedication to her art.  She along with her artist friends are a formidable group (and I have to include Dakini Dreams as well).  Their work has turned me towards my own, not just in terms of the shodo.  There’s a fearlessness in their risk-taking that I love – using the catch in the breath right at that edge where the ink drips onto the paper as a pause before leaping.

Ready or not, the teacher arrives.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

3 comments
July 12, 2010

remedial practice

After a conversation recently, I got the impression I needed some remedial practice – something to remind me of the usefulness of boundaries.  buddha41 is the outcome of setting the frame of practice and working through what the hell is happening on this journey of going nowhere, being no one.  Yes, I’m frustrated and angry and really not feeling much faith in what I’m doing or who I am.

End of pity party.  Please take the empties and leftovers as you leave.

Zen practice is no different from calligraphy practice.  In Zen, we go from the 2.5 sq feet of mat and cushion to the vastness of the life we inhabit.  With calligraphy, we start with a frame to define the space in which the character must develop and move into vast canvasses and variations.  Traditionally, the practice sheet is a grid of 9 x 15 squares which are also outlined to highlight units of 3 x 3 squares.  The little squares allow practice of the character itself.  There’s not much room to fake it in one square inch.  The larger 3 sq in squares allow for composition and a bit more freedom of expression.  I chose the 1 x 1 inch squares and counted off 108 squares, a 9 x 12 grid.

The intent was to see where my attention drifts and where my entitled mind kicks in.  Square #1 is the answer.  First character in the first upper left corner got me off on the wrong foot.  It looks like “Buddha” but it actually isn’t; it’s what I’ve been practicing for the last few months, a swooping set of lines which may suit the post-of-the-day but is not the intent of this exercise.  By square #25 (circled), I realized I had not even started the project honoring the intent.  Square #26 corrected that.

Such is practice, I suppose.  We start out with all our skills sharpened on other desires and are blind to the fact that the starting point is not when an event touches our life any more than when the brush touches the paper in this moment.  It began sweeping its downward arc long before this singular desire, this moment of wanting something to emerge from the joy and mess we’re in.  Correct it in the next moment.

Attention held well for the next 27 squares and I decided I need to let go of the wrist support (starts with the second circle outline).  It’s not a really bad habit to brace on my wrist when I’m using a small script brush but the actual skill is in the brush tip being the only contact – and fulcrum of balance.  Shaky, insecure, uncertain strokes invited the peanut gallery of Inner Critics.  Then the fear and grasping kicked in: I can’t do this without more support.  I NEED more… more… more.  Not asking for or taking what is neither offered nor available is a deep practice.  And I rarely see it as applicable to what I ask of myself too.  Correct it in the next square.

By the third outline circle, I’m ready to fly solo with variations.  All kanji characters have variations drawn by the Old Masters.  There’s a dictionary-like book of them – a lexicon of pretzel lines and ancient scripts .  I neither speak nor write Japanese so I’m pretty proud of being able to find the variations of different characters.  Sometimes I get it wrong or I can’t find the version I need.  Such is practice too.  Zen centers, Zen traditions, Zen teachers, Zen concepts – the language of communities is as complex as their practice preferences and the variations are all in a format which takes persistence to decode.  I find myself leaning into some variations but, as with this exercise, I devote time to as many as I can before settling on one… or two, remembering all the while that while the flesh and bones vary, the marrow is the same.

On the last line, I choose the formal script and become hyper-focused – yet the mind has wandered off – until I realize I’ve lost the grid and am drifting up into the previous lines.  I reset using two of the last three squares (fourth circle outline) for a seal script – the ancient style used to inscribe characters onto hard surfaces like tortoise shells and wood.  This is where I am in practice: returning to the source teachings, seeing that the grid of discipline has faded from the paper and that the drift says I still need these constraints.

Still, that’s not going to stop my rebellious 108th character from falling totally outside the wire!

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

3 comments
July 1, 2010

first love

the stream of all ancestors

carrying the wisdom
of all my teachers

in empty hands,
shaped, hollowed out,

by the stream of
all ancestors

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thich Nhat Hanh has written almost a hundred books; I’ve lost count.  Each one is a jewel but none as challenging and raw as Cultivating the Mind of Love.  In it, he speaks candidly of his first love, a nun met when he was teaching at a temple in the Highlands of Vietnam.

I knew that I loved her.

How simple.  How incredible.  I knew that I loved her.  Thay takes this story of his “first love” and weaves it into a journey to find our “original face.”    Just as the face we are born with may not have been our original face, our first love may not really be our “first love.”  So he “goes upstream” to show the many streams that feed into who we are in this moment.  For Thich Nhat Hanh, the source of who he is in the present moment arose in his childhood experiences of seeing a drawing of the Buddha, searching for the hermit in the woods, drinking from a clear mountain stream, his brother’s ordination as a monk, and his mother’s dedication to his well being.  When he met the young nun who ignited strong feelings of love, he writes that he could see the line of ancestors that flowed into the stream of his life and hers.

Please look into the river of your own life, and see the many streams that have entered it, that nourish and support you.  If you practice the Diamond Sutra and see the self beyond the self, the person beyond the person, the living being beyond the living being, the life span beyond the life span, you will see that you are me, and you are also her.  Look back at your own first love and you will recognize that your first love has no beginning and no end.  It is always in transformation. (p. 60)

He goes on to say,

Whether water is overflowing or evaporating depends on the season.Whether it is round or square, depends on the container.  Flowing in spring, solid in winter, its immensity cannot be measured, its source cannot be found.  In an emerald creek water hides a dragon king.  In a cold pond it contains the bright full moon.  On a bodhisattva’s willow branch, it sprays the nectar of compassion.  One drop of water is enough to purify and transform the world in ten directions.  Can you grasp water through form?  Can you trace it to its source?  Do you know where it will end?  It is the same with your first love.  Your first love has no beginning and will have no end.  It is still alive in the stream of your being.  Don’t believe it was only in the past.  Look deeply into the nature of your first love, and you will see the Buddha. (pp. 75-76)

I struggle with this, trying honestly to see all the loves and not the losses.  Going to the source of the mind of love, bodhicitta, means letting go of the loss and opening to each love as a branch of the stream that originates deep in the past and flows forever into the future.  If I value that powerful, steady outpouring of love in the river of my life, I have to value myself as a steam in the lives of those I touch.

For now, I invite you to look far enough into the future, so far that you cannot help but see yourself, become yourself, the source of a stream of love and life.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

5 comments
June 28, 2010

going home

going home

here,
in this moment
we tread a path

that not-knowing
stamped out.

familiar
and new,

ordinary
and amazing.

as simple
as
going home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now that was an eventful week!  Before I continue on this meander, let me give a deep bow to Philip Ryan at the Tricycle Editors’ Blog who graciously picked up 108ZB’s Ox Herding adventure and made this whole enterprise a chance to practice a lot of calming breaths.  It was fascinating to watch the oxy-moronic mind grab the event and create catastrophic dramas out of it – with rumbling omens provided by our little 5.5 earthquake on Wednesday.  And that precisely is the process of Ox-Herding, isn’t it?  How great to have it unfold all in Real Time!

In this stage of Ox-Herding we are in partnership with ourselves, integrating practice into the everyday, bringing the disciplined mind into service so that there is a seamless quality in our interactions.  In my own staggering along the path, I get to a point, after the dance and the trusting embrace, where I can no longer deny the relational.  Not only do the Ox and I continue to create each other, we now also create the world we move in.  In that world, I can no longer see things the same way, interact with the same unskillfulness – well, I can, but no longer without awareness that I’m doing so.  And interestingly, I don’t want it to be any other way.  This feels real; it feels like the compass is set in the right direction.

In sangha, last week, I was asked to talk about where I was with the Upaya Chaplaincy studies.  I preferred to talk about Ox-Herding.  It turns out it’s one and the same.  One of the sangha members asked if the stages were re-visited at different points in our lives or if we “got it” enough to fall forward continuously.  If I think about the unfolding of many (all?) of my experiences, I can definitely say it starts with a search; more accurately it starts with a yearning.  After that, trajectory and mileage on the ox will vary.

That this is a recursive process was really evident upon seeing my posts tagged as “art” on the Tricycle Editors’ Blog.  It threw me into Stage 3 (Seeing the Ox), triggering all the concepts what “this means.”  Twenty or thirty years ago, when I bought my brush for $1.96 + tax, the only intent was to take lessons to feed my love of all things Japanese (there’s a karmic link there that I will explore someday).  As my teacher’s inept student, taming the grasping and wild mind definitely overlay the other stages of seeing the traces and actuality of how I could grow.  At some point, I invested myself in the process (in first glimpse, did you notice the hat transforming into the horns of the ox).  If I rode the ox home then, it was along paths that were tangled with thorny bushes which tore at my skin.  I left the teacher but not the path – or the ox – and started the search again and again.

The Chaplaincy process is similar – but different.  The ox is larger – about the size of Babe the Blue Ox and I’m no Paul Bunyan.  It too started with a search; unlike the art, this began with a yearning to create some meaning out of this mess I call “my life.”  What I saw as traces and then the reality of who I am in this particular journey has been hard to comprehend.  I feel I’m asking to learn how to offer the incense but instead, I’m caught up in a whirlwind of learning how to grind the ingredients and glue them together.  But that’s fine because I’m reminded that when I grind the ink for my paintings, it gives them a special depth.  More important, there are moments when I am struggling to do things differently; graduate school was an abusive environment and it gave me survival skills that I’d prefer never to re-activate.  So up to this stage, dancing with the Ox is giving me a lot of practice cultivating different skills – trust, boundless joy, equanimity, understanding presence.  And walking away quietly.

I do feel I’m riding the Ox home in the Chaplaincy and the path has to be negotiated with both intention and awareness of lessons learned.  It cannot be goal-driven, not simply to catch a ride home; this time it must be different at every level of my body/mind.  But, cattle love to take the same route home to the barn each evening.  Look out across a field where they have been wandering and you will see well-defined tracks.  Creatures of habit, they are not easily dissuaded.  So Babe the Blue Ox and I have some negotiating to do because some of these well-worn tracks are not how I want to get home.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju (and Babe)

4 comments
June 25, 2010

surrender

taming the Ox

strike
and i am the anvil

fly
and i am the air

stop
and i am the stillness

when nothing more is possible
we submit

to trust

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From The Sabbath Poems

1979:  I

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
Around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
Where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
And lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
And the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
And the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
Mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
And I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

From the book A Timbered Choir, by Wendell Berry.
New York: Counterpoint. 1998

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

8 comments
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