Tag Archives: brush art

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one continuous mistake

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Subtle-zen-web

When we reflect on what we are doing in our everyday life, we are always ashamed of ourselves….  Dogen-zenji said, “Shoshaku jushaku…”  (It) means “to succeed wrong with wrong, ” or one continuous mistake.  According to Dogen, one continuous mistake can also be Zen.  (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki)

I’ve been looking over my calligraphy.  “One continuous mistake” seems to sum it up. That’s not a bad thing at all.  In fact, it’s probably the one thing I feel I’ve actually achieved: make that single line of errors and step back to actually see it.  Sometimes, I laugh at myself wholeheartedly, there are all 108 lines overwhelming the paper.  Many single continuous humilities to step back from!

Kaz Tanahashi does incredible things with one single line, one brush stroke – though I’d have a hard time calling his single-stroke paintings ‘mistakes.’  Kaz sensei also said one day that it’s not whether something is perfect or imperfect. It’s about being complete.  An enso, Kaz sensei said, is complete.  Complete because it contains everything: the perfect and the imperfect.

I like that.  Much as I have no association with the little demon, hope, that gives me hope.  I am complete: containing  the perfect and imperfect.

So are you.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

completing

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scattered books

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Ryokan was born in 1758 in the province of Echigo near the Sea of Japan.  He became a monk in the Soto Zen lineage and despite having the opportunity to rise to heights, wandered off on a lifetime pilgrimage.  He lived in a mountain hermitage resisting the requests to be abbot or anyone special until he died at the age of 73.  In his lifetime he wrote thousands of poems and created many brushwork paintings.

ryokan1

i sat facing you for hours but you didn’t speak;

then i finally understood the unspoken meaning.

removed from their covers, books lay scattered about;

outside the bamboo screen, rain beats against the plum tree.

Ryokan’s poetry tends to catch me off guard.  I pick up Dewdrops on a lotus leaf expecting he will let me drift like a crumpled leaf in a lazy brook.  Or flipping through the pages, there’s a hope that the old monk will grant illumination to my hidden question like the hexagrams of the I-Ching.

One of these days, he may just do what I ask!

Genju