Tag Archives: ikkyu

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touching the heart

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shin0

What kind of thing is kokoro (heart)?
I cannot say…

There is an openness in Stephen Addiss’ translation of the first two lines of Ikkyu’s poem.  It’s an invitation to enter the aspect of life that cannot be spoken to through the intellect.  It’s also an invocation of an aspect of my life which often slides away from me.  The idea of not knowing conjures up much anxiety:

not knowing what
not knowing how
not knowing when

Zen stories abound with the idea of not knowing.  They repeatedly say “not knowing is the most intimate.”  It’s taken a long time for me to accept that “not knowing” is not “being ignorant.”  Nor is it “not caring.”  At the same time, to say “I don’t know” is a death knell in our current culture of information addiction.  Power and control are now exerted through knowledge.  But knowledge is not the same as knowing.

Perhaps that’s the difference.  In practice, to say “I don’t know” is not about knowledge.  It is experiencing this life as it is, for what it is.  It is realizing that anything is possible and – like it or not – I will end up intimately participating in it.

shin1

Knowing has no doubts.  It is “just exactly so”; from the bottom of our heart, we say “Yes.”  (From Returning to Silence by Dainin Katagiri).

shin2

Allowing the brush to carve the lines for shin (heart/mind), I have to be willing to “not know”, to be open to all possibilities of edge, tip, and ink.  The form of the character for shin or heart/mind is simple shin3enough; a schematic of the physical heart, the organ.  Yet when I bring together breath, body, brush, and ink, there is no knowledge of technique that will help.  There is simply the sensation of our relationship whose only trace is the black ink line.

The final goal is that we have to participate in intimacy itself.  We have to live there.  This means we have to live in the samsaric world.

shin4

The experience of intimacy is not a particular practice we have to do, separate from everyday life.  We have to see intimacy within the form of everyday routine.  Everyday routine is the practice of intimacy.  This is the basic practice that we have to carry on forever.


shin5

To not know what kind of thing is the heart allows for all possibilities to be openhearted.  It becomes a progression from the strict form of a character to a spacious yet subtle notation that is the beating of my heart.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

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Katagiri and the heart strings

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shin_sealWhen we have an experience that lets us touch the heart strings, at that time we feel great joy, with words or with our mind or body.  Sometimes we cannot say anything, because touching the heart strings is a deep, spiritual experience.

Sometimes it can be explained, and sometimes it cannot; but it really influences your life.

(From Touching the Heart Strings in Returning to Silence by Dainin Katagiri).

Around 1978 or ’79, I picked up my first Japanese ink brush. It cost $1.98 and that seemed a reasonable investment along with a course in brush painting.  The handle is a rough bamboo and the bristles are some mix of hairs (if you want to explore the details of sumi-e brushes wander over to Acorn Planet for a delightful education on how to wear out your credit card).  The course never happened because death, divorce, and deconstruction did.

The brush, however, outlasted all the psychological and physical shifts.  It took couple of decades to finally attend that brush painting course.  Now, another decade later, I’ve accumulated a number of brushes, ink stones, and enough reams of paper to feel very guilty about trees and bushes.  The paper recycle box is usually full of practice attempts and I’m never at a loss for packing or wrapping paper. And occasionally, I can even churn out something quite passable.

In the process of learning a new skill and finding a new way to pacify old cravings for possessions, the practice of sumi-e has become a way to touch the heart strings. It has become a practice of learning to let go, to lose, to understand what “good enough” means.

It is that moment when discerning arises between “not yet” and “now let go.”

It is a seeing without eyes, a hearing without ears, a feeling without touch.

It is the teaching of Ikkyu Zenji:

shin_clerical

What is it, the heart?
it is the sound of the pine breeze,
there in the sumi-e painting.

Kokoro towa
ikanaru mono wo
iu yaran
sumie ni kakashi
matsukaze no oto

Roshi Katagiri teaches from this poem which he translated in Returning to Silence. Although there are various translations that shift the context slightly, there are a myriad variations when read by the brush.

This has been my practice for about a decade: crafting the lines of the characters over and over, hearing, feeling the heart strings.

kokoro towa… matsukaze no oto.
what kind of thing is heart?  … the sound of the wind in the sumi-e pines.

Please enjoy this week as we play with the brush mind.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

(upper image:  seal script for shin heart/mind
lower image: clerical script)