One Hand

Last week I visited an exhibition at the Japan Society, "The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin." Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768) was a Rinzai Zen Master who is attributed with renewing the Rinzai (or Lin-zi) tradition, which is Thích Nhất Hạnh's root tradition. Hakuin promoted koan practice and was the creator of the koan, "You know the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand?" I was interested in the show because of this, but also because he was such an accomplished artist and calligrapher, in the true Zen way.

It was a wonderful show, well-lit and spaciously laid out, with helpful but not overwhelming commentary beside each piece. I only wished that there were benches in front of a particular few of the works, because for those I wanted to linger long, really absorb them.

One such work was the calligraphy titled "Middle." This is a big work, fifty-three inches tall, and as with all calligraphy, each line is made with one stroke. Thus that long stroke down (the final stroke when making this character) would have involved not just the hand or arm, but the whole body. Hakuin was elderly at this point; such a stroke required, and conveys, deep conviction.



The commentary pointed out that here, "middle" is used in the sense of "in the middle of," "amid." The smaller calligraphy reads,

Contemplation amid activity is a hundred million times better than contemplation in stillness.*

This saying became Hakuin's motto, but he borrowed it from an 11th- and 12th-century Ch'an ancestor, Ta-hui Tsung-kao. I think it was Hakuin's way, in part, of validating his criticism of what he saw as the quietism of Soto Zen practice, of "just sitting." What is interesting to me is how the saying echoes Thầy's view of right engagement. Or, better, how Thầy's view echoes this saying.

Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help.

Below is another painting that I wished I could have spent more time sitting with. Called "Large Daruma," it is one of many paintings of Daruma, or Bodhidharma, Hakuin made over his lifetime. As I looked at it, I felt I could tell the order in which he laid down his strokes: first the large eye (a mini enso), then the nose, then the other eye, then the wonderful pate (with fresh ink) and face, and then the short strokes of the beard and eyebrows. I'm guessing, largely, of course, but I know from experience that in Chinese brush painting (i.e. sumi-e in Japan), the ink itself leaves clues: first strokes always remain "on top of" later strokes.

Very striking are the touches of dark ink added to the face, the folded robe about the neck, and the bottom swoosh. From an artistic point of view, these varieties of tone, this use of white space, and use of wet and dry brush are all masterful.



The calligraphy was probably added last. It reads, quoting from Daruma himself,

See your own nature and become Buddha.

I like the way Daruma seems to be regarding his own words with approbation, as if he is thinking, "These words have nothing to do with it." And in fact that is the gist of the saying in its entirety:

A special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not founded upon words and letters;
It lets one see into [one's own true] nature and [thus] attain Buddhahood.

*  *  *

* Another translation I found of this teaching is, "Zen practice in the midst of activity is superior to that pursued within tranquility." This sounds much more solemn and officious than "a hundred million times better." I also found, "Meditation in the midst of activity is a thousand times superior to meditation in stillness." I wonder which is closest to the original Chinese?

Perfectionism, Foiled Again

Yesterday I decided to try, for the first time, to wet-mount a few of my paintings, with home-cooked wheat paste. I'd seen my teacher do it, and I'd read about it in two books, and also watched a video on YouTube. I felt prepared, very prepared. And excited.

The first attempt went well. I really enjoyed stirring up the paste, and spraying the painting (image side down) and the backing paper, and smoothing on the paste with a wide brush. Just as Mr. Choey had done, I was able to lay the wet backing paper over the wet painting, then pull both up together and, holding up the wet, newly-fused work like a freshly-processed photo, draped it against a vertical board so that it could dry. Very satisfying.




So I thought I'd move on to the painting that really mattered to me, a painting of two fish. I have been planning to send this as a gift to a friend for many weeks now, as soon as I had mounted it.

Everything went well once again. The whole activity was absorbing and very enjoyable. I was taking risks, learning, exploring. Smiling a lot. The experience, and the work, were, dare I say, perfect.

It wasn't until this morning, when I checked whether the two paintings had dried, that I noticed the problem. Somehow, I had managed to paste the fish image-side down against the backing paper. When everything was wet, the paper was translucent and it was hard to tell which side was which. (Though the backwards calligraphy should have been a clue.) Now that it was dry, it was clear that everything had gone oh, so wrong.

Well, only one thing had gone wrong, but it was a very important thing. So much for perfection. Now I was looking at loss. A lost painting, a lost gift.

But not yet. I wasn't giving up on it yet.

I couldn't find anything in my books or on-line about how to remove a wrongly-applied backing from the front of a painting. Just the note from one of my books:

Take care not to paste the rice paper on the painted side! Mounting a painting back to front is a common mistake made even by professionals.

Made even by professionals. Cold comfort.

I decided to try to separate the backing from the painting by brushing water over the whole thing, hoping the paste would dissolve and release the paper before it all turned into one soggy rice-papery mess.

After about twenty minutes, I found that I could begin to peel away the backing. But bits of the painting, onion-skin fine, stuck to the backing paper. Gently I held up the backing with one hand and eased the painting layer back in place with a knife. I would say "scraped," but the effort was to approach the notion of "scrape" without truly meeting it.

The suspension of paper, the suspension of breath; the suspension of fear, lest fear pierce the onion-skin boundary between not-lost and lost.

Here is the painting, face-up, after I had removed the backing. A bit torn and ragged, but mostly whole.



After a few hours, it was dry again. I cooked up more paste, rewetted the painting and a new piece for backing, stroked on the paste, and made certain -- certain -- that I was applying the backing to the back of the painting.

Here it is, re-mounted and drying on a vertical board.



The painting is bruised and scarred, but nobly so, I hope. I think that it wasn't perfectionism, in the end, that drove me to transform back-to-front to back-to-backing. For through all this anxious, meticulous effort there was a lot of joy. I think this was Right Effort, Right Diligence. For if someone were to ask me why I was doing this, I would say, "Because I like it -- it is bringing me joy."




This fish has been through the wars, so to speak, but it still embodies joy to me, and I hope to others.

The calligraphy means "Friend." Jacqueline, this painting will soon (I hope) be on its way to you.

Nice things happen

This is the painting I will enter for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Student/Teacher Art Show.

Plum Blossom Awakening by Lauren Thompson

Mr. Choey wet-mounted it for me so that all the wrinkles are gone, and it will be preserved. I still need to matte and frame it.

We have the option of listing a price for our paintings, not that very many of them sell. Last year, when I submitted for the first time, I had no idea how people price their work for a show like this, so I put $75, which would cover the cost of the frame and matte and some of the supplies I'd bought for the class. When I went to the show, I was amazed to see that prices ranged from $150 to $800, with $300 being about average. Some pieces looked very professional, and others, well, not so much. But most artists had listed a price; only a few went with "NFS." I thought, "Next year, I'm pricing up."

I didn't expect that anyone would buy my painting, though of course I was a tiny bit hopeful. Over the month that the show was up, only about five works out of eighty were awarded with the red dot sticker: "sold."

The last day of the show was a Saturday, when I was at the Garden anyway for the Chinese brush painting class. I took a break from the class in order, I hoped, to pick up my painting, so that I wouldn't have to come back for it the next day. (This was in February, and I'm dependent on my bike for travel, so I was hoping to avoid another cold ride. And Sundays are always busy for me anyway.) The gallery and adjoining cafe were posted to closed at 4:00 pm, but when I arrived at the entrance at 3:20 pm or so, I was told by the guard that it was too late to go in. There were a number of us who wanted to visit that building, but she was firm -- NO. Soon they were going to start asking people to leave, and they didn't have enough guards, so no one new was allowed to enter.

Well, I started to get annoyed. It wasn't the first time that I had experienced the Garden as rigid and nonaccomodating; up came the memory and resentment of bringing my toddler son to the Garden and being scolded for serving him his sippy cup and a baggie's worth of Oatios -- no outside food allowed. And other memories, too. The garden is a beautiful place and there is so much I love about it, but I have found it hard to let go of these little grudges against it. Now, being denied access to my painting and being forced to return another day in the cold were felling blows.

I was able to walk away from that guard before I spoke in anger, but by the time I reached the guards at the entrance of the classroom building, I couldn't hold back. I complained to them about the other guard, and they jumped to her defense. The rules aren't up to them, there aren't enough guards, there's nothing any of them could do. I could see, in the eyes of one of the guards, a look that to me read, "Oh yes, another entitled Park Slope type, always wanting things exactly her way." Meanwhile, I'm saying, "I just want to pick up my painting!" To which one of the guards responded, "They probably wouldn't let you take it anyway." Which was probably true.

After venting a bit more, I went back down to class and tried to paint. I knew I had behaved badly.  Equanimity, I counseled myself. Let go. But I was still annoyed.

The next day, I arrived during the two hours designated as "pick up" time, cold and a little miffed. When I got down to the gallery, I saw a couple standing near my painting. It turns out that they had just decided to buy it. They were thrilled to meet me in person -- they treated me like a celebrity, and I blushed a lot. All I could say was, "Thank you. I feel so honored that you like my painting. I feel so honored."

I had with me the packing material for the frame, so I packed it up for them. They gave the exhibit director a check and then went off, hand in hand, taking my painting with them. I felt so full of joy, so grateful. As I climbed the stairs to leave, unexpectedly empty-handed, I felt an immense urge to bow. Along the stairway are planted soaring bamboo and palm trees, so I bowed to them. I bowed deeply, tears in my eyes. Then I thought, I have to apologize.

I went back to the education building -- fortunately, one of the guards from the day before was at the desk, the one with the eyes. I looked right into those eyes. I said, "I don't know if you remember me, I gave you a hard time yesterday about not being able to get my painting. Well, I'm here to apologize. I'm sorry that I took out my frustration on you. I shouldn't have done that."

He rocked back in his chair, smiling, and said, "Well, that's all right! Don't worry about it!" Then I told him how a couple had just bought it -- how if I had been able to take it home the day before, that wouldn't have happened. It wasn't so much that they bought my painting, but that they wanted it, and that they were so nice. The guard kept saying, "You see? Everything works out. You see?" Then he said to one of the other guards, "That's why I like working here. Nice things happen. You see?"

So I bundled up and put on my helmet, thanking him, thanking both of them, and giving them a little bow. Then I rode home, smiling and thinking about how I would tell my husband what had happened. Not just about the painting, but about the gratitude.

Nice things happen.

Birth of a star amid space dust 
[Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/P.S. Teixeira (Center for Astrophysics)]

P.S. That painting was of a wild orchid. It looked something like this:

My teacher, Mr. Choey, had seen it in the show. He never said, exactly, that my painting was incorrect, but he did say, "I will show you the right way to paint orchids." And he did, but his were cultivated orchids, not wild orchids. I'll keep working on them on my own. My goal is to paint something like this:

Orchid Dance by Cindy Pon. She is an up-and-coming children's book author and illustrator, as well as a dedicated Chinese brush artist.

Poetry Friday: Bamboo

In truth, Basho isn't my favorite haiku poet, but I like this one. It goes with my painting.

a cuckoo's cry --
moonlight seeping through
a large bamboo grove

[translation by Haruo Shirane]

“When composing a verse let there not be a hair’s breadth separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.” (Matsuo Basho)

Discrimination: Sometimes You Gotta Choose

I want to enter a painting for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Student/Teacher Art Exhibit. I can only enter one. I could choose something that I have already done, or I could enter something that I paint over the next week. The paintings can be quite large -- the only real limitation is the cost of backing, matting, and framing. (We are responsible for all of that, including meeting the Exhibit's requirements.)

Two paintings I'm considering are small enough to fit on my scanner, so I thought I would post them here, in the M & L Student/Teacher Art Exhibit. (I would love to enter both, as a unit that look very much like two paintings but are really just one painting, as Required.)

Brush Sweeps Mind

In Chinese Brush Painting class, we always start with calligraphy, as is traditional. One practices the strokes in calligraphy, then applies them in painting.

Our teacher, Mr. Kwok Kay Choey, explains the composition and origin of the characters. Some are a teaching in themselves.

Awakening

The radical on the left means "heart/mind"; the character on the right means "my." Together, it means "awakening." If you know your own heart and mind, you have awakened.


Enlightenment














The top portion depicts reeds or branches and means "broom" or "sweep." In the middle, we see dust in a dustpan. At the bottom, "heart/mind." Your heart and mind swept clean of dust: that describes the state of enlightenment.

This reminds me always of a saying by Jakusho Kwong Roshi, a successor of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi: "breath sweeps mind." I have a CD set of talks by Jakusho Kwong which I am slowly making my way through. "Breath sweeps mind" is an often helpful gatha for me as I try to settle into meditation.


No Fear














I think of this concept now as "no more fear," because of Mr. Choey's explanation of the character. The top portion, "No," depicts a person carrying wood. All of the timber has been carried away from the hillside, there is "no more," it has been taken away. The bottom portion means "Fear": on the left, the heart/mind radical; on the left, the character for an owl with its two big eyes. I have to admit I'm not clear on this last part, so I will ask Mr. Choey for clarification and update this post later.