Summer 2023 Newsletter: Letter from the Abbot
The Artist of Life: Sauntering Along, Free and Uninhibited
At the Dojo, we are enjoying a revival of the arts. The Chado (Way of Tea) and Kado (Way of Flower) classes have regular students. New students are training in Shodo (Way of Brush) and Todo (Way of Clay, a term coined by Nanzan Ito, a noted Kyoto ceramicist, during his three-week training at the Dojo this summer.)
These young students have received the assignment to create calligraphy and ceramics for sale at the November Art Show. We are also fortunate that Takashi Nakazato, 13th generation in an unbroken lineage of Karatsu potters, has promised to train one of them as a ceramics teacher.
We have started an “Artist in Residence” program with Kana Ogawa as the first. Kana is an abstract painter. She impressed us with her performance as handaikan (meal server during sesshin) and has been invited to live and train at the Dojo to enable her to go deeply into her art. She practices Kyudo, Tai Chi, and ceramics.
During this Summer Sesshin, my teisho was on the Way of Art focusing on the fine arts. Whether the fine arts or the martial arts, however, the fundamental experience is the same. Suzuki Daisetz expressed it this way:
The artist’s world is one of free creation, and this can come only from intuitions directly and immediately rising from the isness of things, unhampered by senses and intellect. He creates forms and sounds out of formlessness and soundlessness. To this extent, the artist’s world coincides with Zen. (Zen and Japanese Culture, p.17)
It is indeed firmly believed by Japanese generally that the various specific intuitions acquired by the swordsman, the tea master, and the masters of other branches of art and culture are no more than particularized applications of one great experience…. The fundamental experience is an insight into the Unconscious. (Zen and Japanese Culture, p. 192-193)
This insight is the realization of the True Self. These quotes from Suzuki are from passages Tanouye Roshi selected for his priest’s class on Kan, intuition. Tanouye Roshi, himself, expressed the creation of art this way: “Ki (energy) ga Kan (intuition, perception) o ateba, Myo (mysterious, wondrous) no oto ga deru.” When energy strikes intuition, a wondrous sound emerges. He once thought of creating a school of fencing with this as the motto.
I remember Tanouye Roshi describing this intuition as “perceptive intuition”. It is even more basic than perception because it “sees directly” without the filter of precepts. I used to translate it as transcendent intuition because it sees beyond the intellect informed by the “knowledge” of the Unconscious. The artist’s challenge is to learn the technique through decades of practice and then to become unconscious of it. The artist reaches formless through form. When the artist is in samadhi, inspiration flows without conscious contrivance and is expressed through the artistic forms which have been mastered.
In Japanese culture, ideally the practice of an art becomes a Way to complete human being, and the fundamental experience is the realization of the True Self. Omori Sogen Roshi put it this way:
In the real world of yuge zammai (the play of samadhi), the Zen of the True Man without Rank (Rinzai’s term for the True Self) is vibrant with life. Because this is the basis of whatever the Zen master draws, everything is a magnificent work of Zen art…. For Zen art, it is of primary importance to strongly grasp your True Self and to realize the great light and power of the absolute freedom which transcends all restrictions. If this is lacking, one cannot create art which moves the spirit of people. Additionally, you must have the technique which can fully express this great light and power. (The Art of a Zen Master, p. 155)
Intuition is not a technique that the artist can consciously use. The artist must “just” abide in samadhi and mysteriously, wondrously art emerges. This abiding is actually non-abiding, Fudoshin, the immovable heart/mind which does not move because it does not stop.
I don’t think it’s true, however, that an artist must realize the True Self for their work to have great light and power to move people. Take the example of Vincent van Gogh. His paintings have moved millions. Recently I had the good fortune of happening upon the exhibition of his cypresses at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was mesmerized by the energy and depth of his paintings. They had such vibrancy that works by Gaugin seemed pale in comparison. There is no denying either Van Gogh’s artistic genius or his life of suffering. From the Zen perspective, when he was painting his masterpieces, he must have been in samadhi with energy striking intuition and wondrous works emerging, but his art did not lead him to his True Self. If it did, would his art have been lesser or greater?
At Chozen-ji we practice the arts to deepen our Zen training, but only when we have passion for the art can it become a Way. The forms of Zen training, themselves, can be an art. How to bow, how to enter the Dojo, how to breathe, how to sit, how to walk, and so on are all forms which can be practiced. These forms at the Dojo, particularly the forms at sesshin, can be considered performance art which gathers and focuses the heart/mind. If through our training, we abide in a deep samadhi long enough, we may realize our True Self and live like Zen Master Dogo whose everyday life was art.
Once Dogo was asked by an impatient student who had been studying with him for some time for instruction in Zen. Dogo said:
When you bring me a cup of tea in the morning, do I not take it gratefully? When you give me something to eat when mealtime comes, do I not accept it? When you greet me, do I not return it? When have I not instructed you in the essentials of Zen?... Saunter along self-sufficiently in accordance with your nature; be free and uninhibited in response to the situation in which you find yourself. Only do away with thoughts arising from your limited knowledge, and there is no realization specifically to be termed supreme. (The Mysterious Wonder of the Universal Mind, p. 127)
Sauntering along self-sufficiently, Dogo enjoys life as the play of samadhi.