Tag Archives: ikkyu

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white space

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White is one color, but from white, space is created, and many colors.  From this you can see the huge scale of the world. (from Breeze in the sumi painting in Returning to Silence by Dainin Katagiri)


Without the emptiness of white space, the wind in the pines cannot be captured, cannot blow cool and gentle across the sky in the paper.

Emptiness is form; form is contained by emptiness.

My favourite verse in the Tao te Ching is verse #11 (from the Feng & English translation):

kazebw1thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;
it is the center hole that makes it useful.
shape clay into a vessel;
it is the space within that makes it useful.
cut doors and windows for a room;
it is the holes which make it useful.

What space fills your heart?


Thank you for practising,

Genju

Image: Kanji character for kaze / wind

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black ink

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what kind of thing is kokoro
I cannot say –
it is painted in ink…
the sound of wind in the pines

Ikkyu (translation by Stephen Addiss)


matsubwSumi painting uses just black ink and a brush.  Black ink is black ink, but black ink is not black as a single color. Katagiri roshi (Returning to Silence) draws our attention to the subtle color in black.  When I draw a pine tree or the kanji character that is in effect the abstraction of a pine tree, I’m drawing the tree, the ground, the sky, and all the beings that inhabit the environment containing this lone pine.  You may not immediately perceive it; it’s a collection of black lines after all! But perhaps, you can sense what these lines evoke in you.  A scent, an outline along a ridge, birdsong, a rustle of movement in the needles under the branches.


Thank you for practising,

Genju

Image: Kanji character matsu/pine tree