Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

"Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another"

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

At the 9.35 min. she reaches in lalaland... at 15.15 she says she found Nirvana...

...

Tomorrow I'll upload the text...

Meanwhile what do you think is about?

Tomorrow never came, of course, what did ya expect! In Zen there’s no tomorrow. But really, summarizing some points I did this while reading the Ikkyu text. It mentioned a lot about emptiness, void, and skeletons and Voila!

I was painting an Enzo and while doing this it turned into a skull. I thought it was very appropriate for the whole Ikkyu thing because of his emphasis on the nothingness. It’s difficult to talk about this one, reducing it to words and explanations I just see it and get it but maybe if I were to explain this one I would just say that is about impermanence and well the meaning depends on each person’s insight.

As I said before, It doesn't require much rationalization, I expected to be comprehended in a much more individual level, so whatever you think of this is ok and if you feel like telling me it’s great.

By the way the haiku talks about impermanence as well.

“All things come to naught. For death is a return to one’s original state.”
-Skeletons by Ikkyu

Chopping the kitten in Two

I found this zen painting in a book, and it's based on the Zen priest of T'ang China who is said to have cut a kitten in two to illustrate the escence of Zen. Artists who painted this kind of zen scenes were required to have not only a natural gift for art but also a personal experience of Zen enlightenment, therefore there were a lot of zen priests who dedicate time to this particular practice.

However I just copied this one to upload it here due to the fact that we already discussed this koan in class. The real painting has two more monks on the right looking scared and just starring at Nen as if there were nothing they could do. I find interesting that the cat doesn't look like a kitten at all, isn't it? Anyways, a simple non-verbal response would saved his life.

"The monks of the east and west halls were arguing about a cat.
Nan Ch'uan picked it up and said:

If you can tell me something, I will spare it: & if you
cannot tell me anything, I will kill it.

No one replied: so Nan Ch'uan killed the cat."

Ensō

The first image I painted I think it gathers three of the ways depicted in the previous post, it seems easy, but actually beneath this simple appearance there is a lot more going on. Basically it’s made with a single unplanned calligraphy brush stroke, it is said to represent enlightenment or void, or just the "expression of a moment" that is always different for our impermanent nature.

Walking around I’ve seen it printed outside some houses in little signs with the family's name, is this a way of letting others know that they practice Zen Buddhism? Nowadays sometimes it's found in advertisement pieces such as a company logo (Lucent technology), or even in publicities; getting in the commercial world I wonder how much of its meaning has lost, how far away from its true escence it went?

Ensō (円相) is a japanese world meaning "circle" and one of the deepest symbols in Japanese Zen. Zen Buddhists believe that the character of the artist is fully exposed in how he paints ensō, and that only one who is mentally and spiritually whole can paint a true ensō. When man becomes empty of illusion, he appears to himself in the clearest light, it is this state what can be reflected in this single simple ink trace; or at least that's what every book I read says, but can you really tell in which state I was while painting this ensō? Maybe a zen monk would know just like they intuitively know if the student has the right answer to the given koan or not.
You can leave suggestions about how you feel about this ensō, if you sense anything, what do you think of it?

It is said that some artists will paint ensō daily, as a kind of spiritual diary due to the fact that It could be thought as an exteriorization of one's intimacy, a wordless discourse, a graphic demonstration of one's what... self? state? interior being? Does Dogen talk about images?, he does talks about language and how it is used for teaching purposes, he talks about wordless actions, gestures, maybe a painting could belong into this category.

Should the circle be complete? while I was writing the ensō, my shōdō sensei said that the circle shouldn't be close, that there should be a space between the beginning and the end, however I've seen different circles and some have an opening and others are totally completed; If I were to analyze this in a much more semiotic approach, considering some basic zen thoughts, I would have to say that the opening makes much more sense. Yes, life is suffering, is a vicious circle that never ends, we are born, pursue thousands of different things we'll never get and then we die, however if there is an opening... at least a couple of millimetres space between the point where it all start and where it all ends, then we could think about the enso not as something closer to the Ouroboros jurisdiction but as a possible definition for what is zen. So the begining and ending of this image doesn't symbolize neccesary life and death or an infinit continum but the moment when you engage the way or realize the truth, that moment is the stop, the void.
In my own personal opinion having painted quite a lot of this intimate circles, I realized that the most important thing about the whole brush stroke is that white little tinny space, that simple gesture one makes while reaching the beggining to stop before, and... white. Somehow, not being completed gives me the sensation of a profound pause, the feeling of being out, thinking only about the now, out of the conventional definition of time. To me this could be one graphic definition of what zen is.

Researching in the web about this matter, it is said that some artists paint ensō with an opening in the circle, while others complete the circle. For the former, the opening may symbolize various ideas, for example that the ensō is not separate, but is part of something greater, or that imperfection is an essential and inherent aspect of existence.

I would like to finish this post with a fragment of a text that I really liked about ensō, it's from a book called Zen Paintings and you can find it in the library in the reserve section of Prof. Swanson

"This form is also simplest representation of the experience of the absolut Void; it encompasses the universe with one endless line. As such, it also served the purpose of a Koan for the Zen initiate. This kind of simple circle would seem extremely easy to draw, but in fact is one of the most difficult of Zenga; it is not a product of chance, but expresses fully the enlightenment and profundity achieved by the artist. No deception is possible in painting an enso, for the character of the painter is fully exposed in its nakedness. The enso is the revelation of a world of the spirit without beginning and end, and can be said to transcend anything that qualifies as art in the ordinary meaning." - Zen paintings

Any ideas?,

welcome

How to start a Zen Blog and not die in the intent!
At first, when I read about the topics we could choose for the paper I was immediately attracted to the idea of creating a Blog about Zen images, actually it is about one’s own images of Zen. But then again the big question kept popping in my head What qualifies an image as zen? What is Zen?!

The next step was doing some research, at that time I didn’t know much about it, neither zen nor its paintings, but I do recall thinking first about the Enso* maybe the main symbol or at least the easiest graphic sign to relate with this particular school of Buddhism. Anyway, not knowing where to start, I decided to consult some teachers about it. Prof. Scott showed me a book of Zenga, with many paintings of Hakuin Ekaku, then I realized that maybe what makes the image a zen one is the subject of it. A very common topic is the daruma, intense brush traces get together to represent this old grumpy looking old man. After going through the book, she told me Prof. Barry made a really interesting research about darumas in particular and so I went to talk with him. Prof. Barry recommended me to read a book called “Zen and Fine Arts” first and so then he could talk to me about some main points of his thesis; In this book I found a list of 7 characteristics that a zen painting should have.
At this point I found out that I had too ways of carrying on with the task. On the one hand I could make it about a zen subject, such as monks, objects, or just creating something with a minimal expressionist aesthetic would be fine, would that fulfill the requirement? Maybe. On the other hand I could just have in mind the main principles that a zen painting have, wait, Have in mind? and there comes the third way; according to a text I read somewhere in the internet there is no planning, no thinking nor struggle in the process of creating this types of images.
So, three different alternatives of dealing with this assignment -all seem fairly valid- However, one last thing to consider is a four way to proceed (according to this quick draft of how to make a zen image) and that shall be discarded due to the fact that a zen image can only be made by someone who practice zen and truly understand the escence of it. I struggled with this idea a considerable amount of time, but for the sake of this project it was indeed necessary that I put an end to those thoughts, if not I would had get a really bad grade.

Finally I do think is appropriate to state that the images produced and being expose in this blog are merely illustrative (illustrative illustrations!) I don’t think I would ever be able to create a true real zen image (whatever that is!:)) and therefore the ones in here are to be thought only as examples... perhaps someday I will...

Thank you, and feel free to comment!