A Tiger for Tết

Today is the Lunar New Year, which in Vietnam is called Tết Nguyên Đán (or just Tết). The monastics, along with many of my sangha brothers and sisters, are celebrating at Blue Cliff Monastery this weekend.

I read that it is traditional in Vietnam to exchange gifts during Tết (more specifically, to give gifts to family and friends who visit your home on the holiday) and I decided I wanted to give the monastics a painting. It is also traditional to give a piece of artwork created in the village of Dong Ho, in their particular style, a woodblock print with black line and bright colors. I don't know how to make block prints, but I could create a painting with black outline. The new year is the Year of the Tiger, so a tiger it would be.

And here it is:








[click on image for an enlarged view]

Seeing it all complete like this, the process is hidden. Here is the process revealed.

I generally need a lot of art reference when I paint or draw. I used to feel guilty and embarrassed about this. But my self-judgment has loosened up a bit since I started studying Chinese brush painting. Traditionally, brush painting students have always copied. That is how they are expected to learn. One should look at mountains, but also look at great paintings of mountains. And copy them. That is the way to enter the spirit in which the artist partook, perhaps centuries ago. It is a way of borrowing the great artist's more enlightened eyes, and more expressive stroke.

So, for this tiger painting, I spent time finding just the right reference. First, some examples of Dong Ho paintings.















While searching for Dong Ho tigers, I found tiger images in another style by a Vietnamese artist, Duy Thai. I liked this one in particular:























I also needed an actual mountain to look at -- a tiger in all his actual stripes:







As well, I looked up the place of tigers in Buddhist lore, in case something interesting came up. What I found was the Zen story about the the sweet-tasting strawberry. (Retold here by Paul Reps, in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.)

The Buddha told a parable in a sutra:

One day while walking across a field a man encountered a vicious tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him.

Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he picked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted.

Fortunately, I don't need reference for a strawberry vine, since one grew in my garden last summer.

Now I was ready to try to paint a tiger. I painted three; one of them became the Tiger for Tết.

Finally, I looked up how to write "tiger" in Chinese calligraphy, and practiced writing it over two evenings. And I practiced writing "meditation," or "zen," since my teacher had told me that "zen" was almost always an appropriate character to add to a Chinese brush painting. The complete inscription reads, "tiger meditation."

This was the process of painting the painting.

Then there was the process of mounting it on backing paper, with improvised potato starch glue; trimming the backed painting and mounting it with linen-tape "hinges" to the background sheet, a piece of corrugated paper that I'd held onto for more than a year which did not want to lie flat; finding strips of wood lathing to glue onto the back to make the thing rigid, since when it rolled up, the painting would pop off; and packing it up for mailing, flat. A lot of process for this Tiger for Tết.

But how could one expect otherwise? And where else would the joy reside?

Happy New Year!

Chúc mừng năm mới!

A Message for My Readers

Dear Readers,

First, thank you for reading this blog. I know very little about you beyond how many of you there are. But I am grateful. I would probably post even if no one ever read what I post, but it is wonderful to know that someone, somewhere, will at least glance at it.














Second, to those readers who subscribe: Thank you for subscribing! Whether you receive the posts via e-mail or an RSS feed reader, please consider clicking on the title of the post, to be sent to the blog itself. The post will look the way that I intended, and often, I make corrections or improvements to a post after it has been sent out as a feed. Recently I noticed, too late, how many typographical errors there were in the Heart Sutra which I included in the post. I hadn't typed it myself -- I copied and pasted from another website -- and didn't check it carefully. I promise to proofread more carefully in the future; nonetheless, you will always find a more polished, finished version of a post by going to the blog site.

Third, to those readers who don't subscribe: I know that many people have no idea what an RSS feed is or how to use it. Not long ago, I had no idea, either. But if you've ever wished that you could know when a new post on any blog goes out, without having to check the blog itself, then subscribing is the answer. To make it easy for the least technical among us, I installed a subscription tool which allows you to have new posts sent to you as an e-mail message (as well as to numerous feed readers). You can easily unsubscribe at any time, and I won't have any idea who you are. I generally post once or twice a week (less, lately, since I am busy with my wage-earning writing at the moment), so subscribing won't fill up your in-box.

Fourth, to everybody: please don't feel shy about leaving a comment, if you've ever thought about it. You can sent a comment meant only for me by mentioning that you want the comment to stay private. I preview all comments and I won't post any that are intended to be private. Or you can let me know that a comment is "public OK." Who knows, an interesting conversation among readers could ensue. E-sangha building -- I like that idea.

And if you just want to stop by the blog now and then, that's fine, too. More than fine.

Thanks again, everyone.

Bowing and smiling,

Lauren

Contending

In honor of the terrific snowstorm we had this week, I am featuring one of my favorite haiku, by Takai Kito, a disciple of Buson.

Contending –
temple bell
winter wind

I encourage you to read it through a few times. To assist you, here it is again:

Contending –
temple bell
winter wind

My understanding of this poem has changed over time. I once wrote a sermon (as a lay leader at the Unitarian Universalist church I used to attend) based on this haiku, essentially exploring key moments of my life in terms of contention between "temple bell" moments, in which transcendent reality broke through, and "winter wind" intervals of harsh existence. I imagined myself as a hermit, huddled in a hut while a winter storm raged, hearing both the howling wind and the bell of distant temple calling the monks (or nuns) to practice. A chilling picture of the world indeed. Thank heavens for those temple bell moments!

Then, at some point, I had one of those temple bell aha! moments about that word "contending." The poem is saying something much more interesting about life than that the sacred and profane (or mundane) are in contention with one another.

No. I now interpret the poem's imagery this way: the winter wind is the force that is allowing the bell to ring in the first place. Suffering is the very capacity which allows -- invites -- the bell to ring. We think of the peaceful bell and the harsh wind as if they are opposed to one another, but they are working together, in dialectical collaboration (to get all grad-student on you). The harder the wind blows, the louder the bell rings. The wind may gust, bluster, and fume; the bell will only clang and peal with equal urgency. Wake up! Wake up! The music is calling you!

I now also picture myself a practioner within the temple, or at least, as a hermit affiliated with the temple. Missing sangha because of the storm. ("Missing" in both senses of the word.)

Here is the scene out my back window, during the height of the storm.
























But I think that this image captures the scene more exactly:



















Because it was really blowing out there!


From Wikipedia: "Another way to understand dialectics is to view it as a method of thinking to overcome formal dualism and monistic reductionism. For example, formal dualism regards the opposites as mutually exclusive entities, whilst monism finds each to be an epiphenomenon of the other. Dialectical thinking rejects both views. The dialectical method requires focus on both at the same time. It looks for a transcendence of the opposites entailing a leap of the imagination to a higher level, which (1) provides justification for rejecting both alternatives as false and/or (2) helps elucidate a real but previously veiled integral relationship between apparent opposites that have been kept apart and regarded as distinct."